Once upon a time, there was a prince. He had all the wealth and comfort and luxury in the world. And yet, he was unhappy.
So he went looking for answers. He eventually found one: basically, everything in life involves suffering, even the things you enjoy. Because when you lose them (and you will lose them) the pain is worse than if you’d never had them at all. Think of it like drug addiction, and the solution is to quit cold turkey: if you want nothing, you will suffer nothing. People called him the awakened one.
After he died, his disciples were left with a problem. The people they were trying to reach were super poor. Telling someone who barely has enough food to eat to “want nothing” is a hard sell. So concepts from other local religions got added in. You’re suffering because of what you did in a past life. Do well in this one, and your next life will be better. It made it easier for regular people to stomach.
Then a king took notice. People who believe they deserve their suffering tend to complain less. They’re easier to govern. So the king helped spread the religion further.
The religion spread into new lands. Then this religion and the local ones got merged together. Suddenly there were more awakened ones. Then divine helpers. Then prayers for good health, for long life, for fortune. Hundreds of branches grew over the centuries.
The prince just wanted to understand why he was unhappy. Now there are entire pantheons built in his name.
In a different part of the world, there was a group of people who believed in a god. Like most ancient people, they made sense of the world by telling stories about him. Over generations, those stories got collected and turned into a book.
Then a carpenter read that book and said: hey that’s my dad, I’m the son of that god. Everyone was like, oh my god.
People started to follow him. He told people to love each other and forgive their enemies. Some people wrote it down, his stories became the sequel of the old book. The authorities found him too influential, so they killed him.
His followers claimed he came back from the dead. People believed it, then the emperor believed it, too. Suddenly the religion his empire had been trying to crush became the empire’s own religion. The emperor saw what the king before him saw: a religion is a useful tool for governing people.
But an empire can’t govern through a loose interpretation of love. You govern through laws, so the books became law books. The messages in the books were twisted into a loyalty test. If you don’t follow the books, you are breaking the law.
The religion chose who got to be king. It started wars. It decided what you were allowed to think.
Then people started pushing back. They started a new branch, mostly the same as the old one but with different rules. Then it split again. It kept splitting until there were thousands of branches, each convinced they were reading the same books correctly.
A few hundred years later, a travelling merchant heard about the story.
He spent some time in isolation, then said the same god had spoken to him directly. Through a messenger. Him.
He also wrote a book. He said it was the final, corrected version of the old stories. The previous versions had been corrupted by human nature and politics. The authorities also found him too influential, so they drove him out of the city.
But this time, the merchant managed to gather an army, and eventually came back to take it. He died soon after, without naming a successor.
His followers split almost immediately over who should lead. His son-in-law eventually took power, then got assassinated. His son tried to continue the line, then got assassinated too. The two camps are still fighting about it today.
One branch is far larger than the other today, because they controlled the early empire. If you have the political power, you get to decide which version of the truth gets to spread.
Not even gods, it turns out, can survive politics.