Alt Histories- Jesus Tetrarch & Pres WJ Bryan...?

I wasn’t sure if these should be in GD or CS or where, so move if need be…

But how could these Alternate History scenarios develop?

To the fears of the Sanhedrin Establishment and the chagrin of the Zealots, Procurator Pontius Pilate strikes a deal with a Davidic pretender from Galilee. Herod Antipas will remain figurehead tetrarch in Galilee, while Jesus Nazarenus is the Ombudsman to manage both public relations & popular services, the Disciples being his staff both in Galilee & Judea.

OR

William Jennings Bryan’s combination of Christian fundamentalism & Progressive politics so appeal to the masses that he gets elected President. He supports all the political positions he did before along with a Constitutional amendment declaring the US to be secular in Gov’t but Christian in heritage & culture. His main challenge- commitment to or compromise of his pacifism in dealing with enemies foreign & domestic. Also, supporting a Zionist Jewish homeland IF it allows unrestricted Christian evangelism.
(Did Bryan have Zionist sympathies? Was he PreMill AMil or PostMil?)

That would be a hell of an ombudsman. Talk about a guy with connections. :wink:
I think without the crucifixion that the teachings of Jesus may still have resulted in a sectarian schism but that Jesus himself probably would not have been mystified/deified.

the destruction of Jerusalem and the diaspora still would have occurred and “Jesuit” Judaism may have been an early competitor to rabbinic Judaism but without the ability to fuse with greco-Roman mystery cults, the Jesus movement probably would have died out.

That is, unless Jesus wqs really GOD, then of course it’s impossible to predict anything.

As to WJB, I don’t think he could have made major changes. The will of the people tends to be inexorable. A lot of what Jennings supported would have occurred anyway (women’s sufferage, prohibition, income tax). I don’t think his amendment could have passed. it would have been in conflict with the establishment clause and would have been legally somewhat vacuous. The “secular in government” part is what matters. It wouldn’t have given Christianity any more political power, it would have just been a gratuitous plug for that religion. Not to mention, the sentiment isn’t especially accurate. (What exactly is “Christian culture” anyway?)

Jennings’ support for Zionism probably would have received a tepid response from the Amercan public at that time, especially in the wake of WWI when Americans were weary of fighting orger people’s battles for them and Bryant’s push for open evangelism would have irritated Zionist Jews.

I couldn’t find anything about Bryant’s views on millenialism so i can’t comment on that.

I haven’t been able to find anything about Bryan’s stances on Zionism or Millenialism either.

I seem to find a lot of commentary that Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech was coded anti-semitism. If that’s the case, I doubt he would have been a Zionist unless he was a pre-millenialist with ulterior motives. I can’t dig up his Endtimes views on google, though.

Well, Ted, this is the part where I traditionally recommend Robert Graves’s historical novel King Jesus. In one of the final scenes, Pilate and then Antipas offer JC the tetrarchy, or at least a substantial bribe. Jesus refuses, and Pilate makes his immortal “Chrestos ei!” pun.

To my mind, Graves thesis that JC was the rightful heir of Herod the Great does not seem unreasonable.

I sent an e-mail to Bryan College in Dayton, Tennesee. It’s a Christian school that was founded after Bryan’s death and is dedicated to him. I’ll let you know if I hear anything. I believe he was a dispensational pre-millenialist, but I’m not sure.

And, yeah, I’ve heard that the cross of gold speech was anti-semitism. There was definately some anti-semitism in the Populist movement. However, I don’t believe Bryan was ever overtly anti-semetic. He did speak to Jewish audiences, and at one point, during the 1896 presidential campaign, told them:

Sorry…sent it early.

That quote tells me two things:

  1. That some people at that time saw something anti-semetic in populism or Bryan’s speeches

and

  1. That it concerned him enough to be seen that way that he repudated it.

What interests me is what would have happened if FDR had managed to keep Henry Wallace as his Vice President in 1944, leading to President Wallace in 1945.

My apologies for bumping this thread, but I had e-mailed Richard Cornelius, the archivist and Bryan/Scopes Trial Liason at Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn., trying to get his opinon on Bryan’s views on premillenialism and Zionism. He e-mailed this back to me today:

OK, I’ll bite.

Had Jesus become a major political figure in his time, then he would have gathered much more attention, and historians would have written about him much more thoroughly.

Holding as a premise that the major miricles (walking on water, etc.), were exaggerations (I’m not denying that Jesus probably had major psychic/spiritual powers), then I doubt that they would have “stuck” as history, as in fact they have. Further, as pointed out previously, no crucifixion = no martyrdom = hard to turn this thing into a major religion.

No Xianity means probably no Islam, either, at least not in its current form. We would have been spared the spreading of the world’s two most dogmatic and inflexible faiths; the world would be completely different.

The Roman Empire could not have converted to Xianity; hence paganism would have reigned in Europe probably until the current era. This in turn would have reduced conflicts with the pagan East. All in all, the world would probably be a better place, although I will admit that Xianity did support the flowering of science and philosophy, but that’s another argument.

WJB as president? Which election? Assuming he beat McKinley in 1896, that would have meant no Spanish-American war, which would in turn mean no Phillipino-American war. That would also mean no Teddy Roosevelt as Prez, who negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. So, you get those three big changes right off the bat.

McKinley was, according to my reading and views, a really shitty president with all manner of nutty Xian views himself, and a generally right-wing attitude. I don’t see how WJB would not have been an improvement.

Would he have been an improvment over Teddy? I don’t know, but Roosevelt led to Taft, a shit president, who led to Wilson, an even shittier. I mean, if a WJB presidency could somehow or another prevent Wilson from becoming Prez, you have a chance to avoid WWI and thereafter the whole shitball of the 20th century.

But would take WJB over McKinley any day.

I’ll get the quote later but the final paragraphs of an apologetics books SEVEN QUESTIONS by WJB shows such an optimistic view of Christian social reform that a happy form of amilllism or even postmillism is quite the possibility.