This took him on something of a forty year odyssey, during which time he led—by some estimates—as many as a half-million men, woman, and children (though those numbers may be mistranslated or overblown), in a brutal trek to not only survive the harsh life of the desert, but restore the Jews to the land of Canaan.
According to the prophet, man had been given the power to choose between good and evil, and it was this dualism that became the driving force behind monotheism in the Middle East while Zoroaster’s teaching became the guiding light of Persian civilization.
Confucius (the Latinized version of his Chinese name, Kong Zi) was not a religious leader per se, but more of a philosopher whose teachings on personal and governmental morality, justice, and sincerity deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese thought and life. His ideas eventually developed into a system of philosophy known as Confucianism, which was introduced to Europe by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci in the sixteenth century, and has since become popularized in the West. Since none of the man’s writings survive—his teachings being recounted by his students many years after his death—scholars continue to debate whether there was a real flesh-and-blood person named Confucius or if Confucianism isn’t just a term for a collection of ancient teachings from multiple sources all brought together under a single philosophical construct. In either case, he was the first to express the well-known principle, “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself”—an early version of the Golden Rule—so whoever (or whatever) he was, he was onto something big.
Something of a political heavyweight as a young man (having grown up in the Pharoah’s house and even being considered a shoo-in to ascend the throne one day) Moses apparently forsook all that and, being a Hebrew himself, decided to champion his own people in a quest to possess their own nation.
Zoroaster (Unknown. Anywhere between the 18th and 6th centuries BCE) Zoroaster, also called Zarathustra, was an ancient Persian prophet who founded the first historically acknowledged world religion known, not surprisingly, as Zoroastrianism.
We tend to use the term “Buddha” as a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment or wisdom, but there was a real flesh-and-blood person behind the mythology. Siddhartha Gautama (“Buddha” being a later acquired title) was a prince who spent the first 29 years of his life in opulent luxury before giving it all up and embarking on a quest for understanding. Becoming a hard-core ascetic who survived on a handful of nuts a day, after several years of living in complete destitution, he realized that too was futile as a means of coming into “awareness.” One day, while sitting beneath a bodhi tree considering his dilemma, he suddenly realized the key to enlightenment was the elimination of all desire, which is what made it possible for him to achieve enlightenment or, more precisely, a state of Nirvana. Quickly attracting a legion of disciples, his teachings laid the foundation for one of the world’s great eastern faith structures, Buddhism, which as of this writing claims nearly 400 million adherents worldwide.
She also reflects much of the theological bent of the famous fourteenth century theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart (1260-1327), who is today rapidly growing in popularity among many spiritually-inclined people. Today her followers are better known for refusing medical.