Just as likely an outcome as any.

I read a great novella about a guy who was a devout Mormon who got sent to a truly chilling version of Hell because “I’m sorry, the correct answer was Zoroastrianism.”

Never heard of it before, but it seems to have been a major source for inspiration of Judaism, and from that of course Christianity and Islam.
So since Zoroastrianism seems to have been the original monotheistic faith of the 4, it makes sense that the copies of the original are the fake ones. Except of course they are all fake, and none of them make the least bit of sense.

it makes sense that the copies of the original are the fake ones.

Maybe that makes the most sense to you, but if that was bulletproof logic then Islam, Buddhism and Sikhism wouldn’t even exist, since they all directly reference older faiths which they “improve upon.”

To put it more clearly - their followers wouldn’t follow a “re-hash” religion if they believed in the rule of O.G.

But if there’s a ‘true way’ in religion at all, then who’s to say the God wouldn’t wait until later on before revealing their faith? If humans have free will maybe the God waited to see how they would fare under their own judgement before delivering the message.

And on Christianity-Judaism connection

Christianity considers itself the true ‘continuation’ of the faith developed by the Hebrews, and a great deal of jews (maybe even the majority) around at the time agreed with this and got baptised.

The Jews then faced persecution for rebelling against the roman empire, and were scattered and had their religious community sabotaged (i.e writings destroyed and centre of worship destroyed).

So to compensate for this some rabbis introduced a new book, the Talmud, which basically lead the jewish faith in a divergent direction from where it was. Modern jews are almost as distinct from Historical Jews (~ 30AD or earlier), as modern christians are.

Tbh, everything flows and changes. There is no “original” that survives without major changes for millenia. People change, language changes, the meaning of words and the understanding of the fundamentals governing day-to-day life changes all the time.

“Original” doesn’t exist in real life.