Christianity doesn’t get a foothold in Europe through the Roman Empire’s decree. How does this alternate timeline turn out? Does it get a foot hold later? If so what form does it take? How does this change the future of Europe?
If Xianity hadn’t been established as the state religion of Rome, Mithraism probably would have become the prevailing western religion. How that would have changed history from then on out, I have no idea except we wouldn’t have had the Crusades or the Inquisition (or the Holocaust, for that matter). The broad outlines would probably be about the same. Rome still would have fallen eventually. Western Europe would have risen. The Americas still would have been discovered. Somebody would have invented modern democracy.
It’s possible that a different version of Islam could have won out eventually too.
Errr, wasn’t Rome pagan in 300AD? Constantine didn’t even say Christianity was OK until 313, and might never have converted, himself.
Yea I miss remembered the dates. Googling Mithraism I learned Christianity wasn’t decreed the state religion till 4 years shy of 400 AD :smack:.
That bit of ignorance fought, aside…
Man , it didn’t take long for you to go for the crusades-inquisition-holocaust trifecta.
Any evidence that Mithraism wouldn’t have taken “us” to the same basic “bad” things? Especially since Mithraism was particularly popular in the Army.
…and sure those peace-lovin’ pre-Christian Roman were huging bunnies all day long.
Whatever religion would have been established, it wouldn’t have been Mithraism. Mithraism was extremely exclusive. Women probably couldn’t join, and Mithras was pretty much a soldier’s god. If it was going to be any god, it would have been one like Sol Invictus.
As I understand it, the Roman decree had nothing to do with the spread of the religion - rather, it was the other way round : it was made the official religion because by that time it had become the most significant religion in the Empire.
Also, I recently asked a question re. monotheism as a factor of Christianism’s expansion, and someone pointed out that Christianity was one of the, if not *the *only religion that encouraged its believers to go out and convert others (that is, until Islam joined that racket). Polytheistic religions had no such incentive : they either incorporated your gods in their pantheon, no biggie ; or they were YOUR gods and no one else could worship them. But anyone could be a Christian, being a Christian wasn’t compatible with any other belief system, and Jehovah’s new social compact included provisions for spreading the good news all around.
So methinks this inherent “aggressivity” would have sooner or later led to the Christian meme spreading all over, that is unless it was somehow crushed thoroughly before it began spreading at all. It puts up quite a fight, that meme, even now…
And Sol Invictus was awful, um, not nearly far enough from Jesus. :eek:
Ditto, by then, for Mithra. Christianity appears to have been the catchall faith. And with the emperor’s blessing, we know who wins.
Robert Silverberg wrote a book on this: Roma Eterna. Definitely worth a read.
Any other religion could have resulted in bad things, but it’s exceedingly unlikely that any other religion would have resulted in the same bad things as Christianity.
Mithraism had its own set of badness, but from what I understand not many people outside Rome bought into it. I think without Christianity in Rome, there wouldn’t necessarily be a major uniting religion to fill its place. People would have kept worshiping their local gods.
Diogenes took my reply, but it wouldn’t necessarily have been Mthraism that took over. Imagine if the emperor Julian hadn’t gotten himself killed in the East. He was an intellectual who was anti-Christian (but not into persecutions). If he’d stayed in office I could easily see him pushing a renewed neo-Paganism, or mystery religgions while making things economically tough on the Galileans and propping up the Jews. You’d have religions that made all the Greek Gods allegorical and stuff. Not sure what it’d look like.
Read Julian’s writings in the Loeb Clasics edition, or Gore Vidal’s novel Julian
If I’m not mistaken, Julian came to the throne through descent from Constantine. While Constantine didn’t make Christianity the official religion of Rome, he did set the stage for it. In other words, by Julian’s time Christianity was well enough established in the Roman Empire–including among the power elite–that even if he had reigned longer he might not have stopped the eventual triumph of Christianity as the official cult of the empire.
Mithraism was also limited to men rich enough (or sponsored by friends rich enough) to afford a sacrificial bull for the initiatory bloodbath (literally). Christianity, OTOH, would take anybody, including women and slaves, at no charge. That is an enormous recruiting advantage.
Mithraism was most popular with Roman soldiers. The exact rituals, including initiation rituals, are unknown. Our knowledge of ritual practices is limited to the iconography of sacred caves “Mithrea,” anti-Mithraic writings and one 4th Century liturgy of contested authenticity (you can read the text here). While the Tauroctony (Mithra killing a bull) was the central Mithraic image, I don’t believe there is any evidence that it was an initiatory right. What evidence there is suggests some kind of symbolic death and rebirth accompanied by a branding of the hands.
To what extent were Mithra and Sol Invictus distinct, though?
The relationship is unclear, but apparently they had separate origins, Mithraism being in some way connected to Zoroastrianism, which was never a solar cult.
Separate origins, but eventually fused. Mithras was given the title of Sol Invictus and become more distinctly a Sun God. By the late 3rd Century, it was pretty much the same thing. I think SI lacked some of the mystery aspects as well.
Actually, I think I’m going to change my answer and say that Aurelian style Sol Invictus had more of a chance to become a dominant religion than then the Mithraic mystery cult per se.
Of course, Christianity started as a mystery cult too.
I believe the initial premise (I had the book for a while, but never really liked most of the stories in it) is that the Exodus never occurred. So it’s not that Christianity existed but was still persecuted but instead that Christianity never existed. There is a story where Islam (which reasonably could have done exactly the same thing as Christianity, just three centuries later) is stopped in its tracks as well.
Agreed, if that’s the intentoin, i.e. *different * bad things, I take back the sarcasm in my comment.