How Old Is Islam vs Christianity? A Historical Age Comparison

Judaism is the oldest of the three Abrahamic faiths, with roots scholars typically date to roughly 1200–1000 BCE or earlier, depending on whether one anchors the tradition to the Mosaic covenant, the patriarchal narratives, or the emergence of Israelite monotheism. The Hebrew Bible records figures like Abraham and Moses as foundational, and the text gives us occasional chronological anchors — for instance, Moses is described as eighty years old when he confronted Pharaoh Exodus 7:7, placing him within a narrative timeline that most historians associate with the late Bronze Age.

The covenant with Abraham, described in Genesis, is another early marker. Abraham was ninety-nine years old at his circumcision Genesis 17:24, an event the tradition treats as the founding seal of the covenant relationship between God and Israel. If one follows traditional biblical chronology, this pushes Jewish origins back well over 3,000 years.

Scholars like Yehezkel Kaufmann (20th century) and more recently William Dever have debated exactly when Israelite religion became distinctively monotheistic, but even conservative academic estimates place Judaism's recognizable form at least 1,000 years before Christianity and 1,600 years before Islam.

Christianity is approximately 2,000 years old. It emerged in the 1st century CE from within Second Temple Judaism, centered on the life, teachings, death, and reported resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Most historians — including non-Christian scholars like E.P. Sanders and Bart Ehrman — date Jesus's birth to somewhere between 6 and 4 BCE, and his public ministry to roughly 27–30 CE.

The Gospel of Luke offers one of the few internal chronological glimpses, noting that Jesus was twelve years old when his family traveled to Jerusalem for Passover Luke 2:42, situating him within a datable historical and religious context. The early church then spread rapidly through the Roman Empire across the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.

So Christianity is roughly 600 years older than Islam — a figure that, interestingly, is corroborated within Islamic tradition itself. Sahih al-Bukhari records the companion Salman al-Farsi stating that "the interval between Jesus and Muhammad was six hundred years" Sahih al Bukhari 3948. Christianity's formal institutional development accelerated after the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, but its founding moment is conventionally placed in the 1st century.

Islam is approximately 1,400 years old. The tradition holds that the Prophet Muhammad received his first revelation from the angel Jibril (Gabriel) around 610 CE in a cave near Mecca. The religion was formally established as a community (ummah) with the Hijra — Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina — in 622 CE, which marks year one of the Islamic calendar.

Muhammad died in 632 CE, and a hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari from the companion Ibn Abbas confirms that people in Muhammad's community were still reckoning time relative to his death within living memory Sahih al Bukhari 6299. The same collection records Salman al-Farsi's statement that "the interval between Jesus and Muhammad was six hundred years" Sahih al Bukhari 3948, which aligns well with the modern scholarly consensus placing Christianity's origin around 30 CE and Islam's around 622 CE — a gap of roughly 590–600 years.

Islam thus sees itself not as a new religion but as the final and complete revelation of the same Abrahamic faith shared with Judaism and Christianity. Nonetheless, as a distinct, organized religious tradition with its own scripture (the Quran), law (Sharia), and calendar, Islam is the youngest of the three, roughly 600 years younger than Christianity and over 1,600 years younger than Judaism in its recognizable institutional form.

For context on ancestral timelines, the Hebrew Bible records ages of key patriarchs; for example, “Abraham was ninety‑nine years old when he circumcised the flesh of his foreskin.” Genesis 17:24 Passages like this situate Judaism’s ancestral narrative in the distant past, though they’re not a direct comparator for the specific interval between Christianity and Islam Genesis 17:24.

Another example is the recorded ages of Moses and Aaron (“Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty‑three”), illustrating the text’s interest in life stages of foundational figures Exodus 7:7.

Christianity is anchored in the life and teaching of Jesus; the Gospel of Luke depicts him at age twelve, underscoring the early narrative framework around his person Luke 2:42. In a widely cited Muslim report, the interval between Jesus and Muhammad is given as six hundred years, which places the Christian movement’s beginnings prior to the rise of Islam Sahih al Bukhari 3948.

A concise traditional marker of relative chronology appears in Sahih al‑Bukhari: “The interval between Jesus and Muhammad was six hundred years” Sahih al Bukhari 3948. This report straightforwardly indicates that Islam emerged centuries after Christianity Sahih al Bukhari 3948.