Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Parsees are linear. Cyclic religions have the idea of birth, death and rebirth, with reincarnation a major theme. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism are cyclic. Another classification is by deity numbers. The monotheistic religions are Judaism , Christianity , Islam , Parsees , Sikhism and the Bahai .
Polytheistic religions have many gods.
Most primitive or animistic religions are essentially polytheistic. Hinduism is the one major religion with many gods. In a historical sense, religions do not spring from nothing. There is an evolutionary progression of ideas leading from one religion to another. Sometimes a number of religions compete for pre-eminence at a historical period only for some accident to favour one over the others.