I was recently pondering onhistory Rome being the center of Catholicism and of course my mind wandered to what I know of the early church and how conversion of Roman Emperors was critical to the church’s survival.
Then I thought, what if the purported events of the Gospel and subsequent teachings of Paul had happened a few hundred years earlier when Jerusalem was under control of the Greeks?
That’s about where my knowledge of that time period ended and I thought that the minds of The Straight Dope might be interested in exploring this hypothetical.
The Grecian (usually referred to as the Hellenistic) rule of Jerusalem was under the so-called “successor kingdoms”, they were the unstable, constantly warring successors to the Alexander the Great. Jerusalem was under the rule of Seleucus, from whom the term Seleucid comes.
The success of Christianity was in large part because of the because of the continent-wide communication, trade routes, and relative stability of the Roman empire (and huge non-aristocratic bureaucracy who were very receptive to its message). Even at their (very brief) height the successor kingdoms had nothing on that scale.
Let’s assume things are similar initially and the Athenian Catholic Church is established. The question then becomes what happens when the Romans supplant the Greeks as the dominant power in the area? In our timeline Roman Catholicism spread to the barbarians (Franks, Visigoths, Vandals, etc.) fairly easily. I think that hypothetical Athenian Catholic missionaries are probably going to have a harder time preaching to the likes of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus than the real OTL Roman Catholic missionaries did with the likes of Clovis I of the Franks. In a world where Roman paganism is rising and a hypothetical Athenian Catholic Church is in decline, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Roman pantheon wins out.
If he really had magical powers, surely they would have, right? Speaking of which, did anyone outside his disciples ever document these alleged powers? Surely the Roman authorities would have noted down something so crucial about the prisoner they were going to execute, right? “got another prophet for the cross, today. Sure hope his magical powers don’t cause all my men to have their heads explode”. Or, later, after Jesus allegedly resurrected himself “oh shiiiit…we’re fucked. That prophet we killed seems to have resurrected himself and I can only assume our lives are now forfeit…”
This is kind of a crucial cornerstone for religious belief. If this was just a dude, with no special powers, then how can modern preachers claim he was speaking for some superior being?
First, his disciples didn’t write down his magical powers. Some guys who wrote some books which got attributed to his disciples did.
But would the Greeks have even killed him? Dying early adds to a legend. Look at Buddy Holly. If he lived to 60 and people started bugging him about when this new kingdom was going to start, the religion would probably not spread too far.
If I remember correctly Alexander of Macedon was proclaimed a messiah when he entered Jerusalem. This is because he fulfilled a prophecy of Daniel, the one with the goat (Greece) defeating the ram (Persia).
Back then a messiah was a divinely anointed liberator of the Jewish people; by fulfilling a prophecy and literally liberating Jerusalem, Alexander would literally be a messiah.
Alexander’s Seleucid successors were great until Antiochus IV. Under Antiochus’s oppressive rule some Jews revolted under Matityahu haCohen(who died) and his sons Yehuda haMakabi (also died), Yonatan, and Shimon. These are known as the Maccabees.
Antiochus died and Yonatan made peace with his successor Demetrius. The other Hellenic kingdoms (Ptolemy Egypt and Attalid Pergamon) had a falling out with Demetrius and backed Alexander Balas, who claimed to be the son of Antiochus. Alexander Balas bribed Yonatan with the position of High Priest and governorship of Israel. Yonatan accepted, Alexander Balas killed Demetrius, and the revolt succeeded.
Apparently some scholars think Yonotan’s political appointment displaced the “Teacher of Righteousness” from the Dead Sea Scrolls, a very Jesus-like figure who founded the Essenes sect.
Six years and as many wars later Yonatan was dead and the Jews elect Shimon as their leader and High Priest forever until the messiah comes. This time messiah means something more like “the savior who will end all these annoying wars and bring peace and stability”. And so was established the Hasmonean state in 142 BC.
There were few wars in the Jewish heartland for a while while the Seleucids were busy fighting (losing) at their borders. The Hasmonean state gained full independence when the Seleucids effectively disintegrated in 129 BC.
Things went relatively smoothly until 67 BC when two domestic Jewish factions vied for power: the Pharisees who believed in oral tradition and the Sadducees who rejected oral tradition and believed in the letter of the written Torah. Each faction backed a prince and the Pharisees won the subsequent civil war. This is also the death of Jewish fundamentalism. Before the dust settled Antipater the Idumaean convinced the princes to start fighting again just in time for Pompey to intervene. A few fights, backstabs, and favors and Antipater’s son, Herod the Great, becomes king of Judaea, protectorate of Rome.
Probably not. We don’t really have a lot of sources about ancient Rome. We kind of get caught up in the fact that we’re post printing press and have sources for everything, but in the ancient world, it just wasn’t true. You had some people that really wanted to preserve history, but this wasn’t the norm and many works that were written have been lost. There’s a reason that when we talk about 1st century Judea, basically the only works cited are the various Biblical works and Josephus, largely because there isn’t much else out there and the reality is that if Josephus died at Yosfat or Christianity didn’t view him as reliable, we wouldn’t know almost anything. One of the points I like to bring up is the siege of Masada. There is one historical source - Josephus. Maybe 1000 people died and a war ended at Masada and all we’ve got to go on is one guys retelling of something that he heard (or that might not have been true at all, who knows?) The ancient historical record is not nearly as robust as our history books teach us.
An even more interesting comparison is Alexander the Great. Dude literally conquered half the known world and we have exactly ZERO primary sources. None. (Actually, there are some fragments here and there and a couple of people quoted that MIGHT have been contemporaneous, but there is a good chance they were 100 years after the fact.) The earliest actual biography that we have of Alexander was written by Diodorus ca. 50 BC, roughly 300 years after the time of Alexander.
This is only to say if Alexander the Great didn’t have any surviving primary sources, we probably wouldn’t expect a poor dude from the Empire’s fringe to have any, regardless of his ability or lack thereof to perform miracles. As for records of crucifixions, there are very few and none official. Romans were fastidious about money, not so much about lives. They didn’t care why someone was crucified, they only cared whether it would impact the coffers by leading to rebellion or not.
It wasn’t only Jesus doing the miracles. Paul and many others went around healing the sick, bringing the dead back to life, etc. for 40 or 50 years after Jesus was out of the picture.
Like it was for the Greeks, the idea of a 1/2 God 1/2 Man was also a prominent feature in the Roman religion. If they saw a man doing miracles they’d be likely to listen; if they didn’t kill him first.
I have always put that one on the “maybe” list, since there was a chance that Eutychus could have just been unconscious. As far as the “many” by the other disciples, the only others I can recall is that one where Peter revived Tabitha.
We have almost nothing of day to day roman records, few writings at all. They might fill a decent bookshelf. So, it is by no means surprising we dont have- for example- Yeshua ben Joseph’s death sentence. Look, until very recently we had NOTHING that said Pontius Pilate was a real person. Not a single scrap of parchment with Pilates name survives to this day, and he was pretty important. We have a single stone with a partially intact inscription found in 1961 and a coin or two. That’s it.
Next, His miracles were pretty low key- healing the sick? Every tent revivalist can do that today, and since we now know the power of placebos and having someone believe you are gonna get better, some people are really healed. Raising the dead? Well, small crowd and maybe Lazarus was only “mostly dead”. And so forth. Quite a few prophets were wandering around the Holy Land doing “miracles” nothing that would have filtered down to the Romans would be been either believed or thought all that remarkable. The Romans believed in magic, do note. Augurs (Diviners) were a critical part of doing business and politics in Rome. Nothing important was done without one. Spells, charms and Amulets were everyday items.
Well, John dictated to his disciples in Ephesus who wrote down and edited what he said, so that’s pretty close.
Mark the Evangelist was possibly one of the Seventy Disciples, but not one of the Twelve. So he possibly knew Jesus, but likely not on a day to day basic.
Luke the physician was a companion of Paul, but he likely never met Jesus. Maybe once in a crowd or something.
We have no idea of who wrote Matthew. He copied a lot from Mark in any case.