Hi there,
Could you show the difference between old, ancient and early, please?
E.g.:
old religions
ancient religions
early religions
Many thanks.
In your example, the phrases are interchangeable.
Thank you Beeesneees for your answer.
Did early religions emerge ealier than ancient ones?
Thank you.
Not necessarily. The phrases can mean the same thing - they are interchangeable. They might be the same religions.
For example:
We usually talk about ‘Ancient Egyptians’/ ‘Ancient Egypt’. Therefore we tend to say Ancient Egyptian religion.
However, we could also say ‘Early Egyptian religion’ and mean the same thing. It’s just less usual to do so because we don’t normally say ‘early Egyptians’.
The one difference that does occur to me, thinking about it in more depth, is that ‘ancient religions’ are often still practiced today, whereas use of the phrase ‘early religions’ usually indicates that the religion has now died out or evolved into something else - but this is not a hard and fast rule.
Paganism is one of the earliest religions in Britain and is still followed today.
Paganism is an ancient religion.