Did the total number of adherents of Roman Catholicism decrease

[Boojatta]

at any time during the lives of Martin Luther or John Calvin or did the rate of increase simply slow down?

When did the number of adherents of Roman Catholicism first exceed the number of adherents of Judaism and what are some of the reasons for the difference in numbers?

[shenmue]

1. None of the above

They won converts from the Catholic faithful, so they didn't create new people, they just took numbers from a population that was already established.

And the number of Roman Catholics would have exceeded the Jewish population fairly quickly, because Judaism was practiced primarily in what we would call Israel and did not do proselytizing. Roman Catholicism invited or sought out converts.

[Boojatta]

2. "they just took numbers from a population that was already established"

Perhaps you could elaborate on that explanation. I don't understand it.

An attempt at an analogy:

Suppose that you are in the business of traveling to various cities and selling, to small businesses, copies of a microcomputer operating system not made by Microsoft. Suppose that in many cases a sale by you results in a decision to install, on microcomputers that were previously running some version of a Microsoft Windows operating system, some operating system that is not made by Microsoft.

We could then ask: is the total number of microcomputers running Windows operating systems decreasing or are your efforts simply slowing down the rate of increase?

Now consider this answer: "None of the above. I am just taking numbers from a population that is already established."

Does that answer make sense to you? If it doesn't make sense, then can you identify where the analogy breaks down?

[Boojatta]

3. "would have exceeded the Jewish population fairly quickly"

Imagine comparing the number of adherents of Zoroastrianism in India and the number of Jehovah's Witnesses in India. If adherents of Zoroastrianism rarely or never attempt to make converts in India, then perhaps you could reasonably guess that the number of Jehovah's Witnesses in India will fairly quickly or already did fairly quickly exceed the number of Zoroastrians in India.

Let's round things to the closest multiple of 50 years. What does "fairly quick" mean? How many times 50 years?

After the invention of the first full alphabet with both consonants and vowels, how long was it before the first Gutenberg Bible was printed? Was it fairly quick or not?

Most readily available history books devote more pages to events after the birth of Euclid than to the interval between the big bang and the birth of Euclid. However, would you say that the birth of Euclid happened fairly quickly after the big bang?