The Parthians continue to use persecuted Christians as fifth column agitators in the Roman Empire. There is no reason for the purges in Persia because they aren’t afraid that the Christians would be agents of Rome.
If Star Trek is any guide, we’d now have televised gladiator matches.
That’s one of the few arguments that makes me regret that such an occurrence did not occur.
Of course Der Trihs would just be talking about how evil the followers of Mithras are.
Not many people outside of Rome bought into an ancient PERSIAN religion huh?
The Crusades and Inquisition were religiously motivated, sure (although that’s not to say there wouldn’t have been equivalent persecutions under another dominant religion). But the Holocaust? That was ethnic cleansing, not religious persecution. (In particular, the Nazis didn’t care if someone was a practicing Jew, only if they were of Jewish ancestry.) Why do you (apparently) think the same ethnic prejudices wouldn’t exist even among a non-Christian majority?
And he’d be right, if the Mithrans suppressed reason in order to protect their beliefs and the related power-structure.
Would Isis worship have had a shot at the big time? Wikisays that she was worshiped in Rome and other places about the right time.
Poul Anderson’s “In the House of Sorrows” shows an alternate world in which Judaism died early. Thus, no Christianity–or Islam. Mithraism lasted, as did Isis worship; the faiths appealed to different demographics.
Anderson loved his old pagan stuff, but he found this world lacking. The story has been anthologized several times. (Time for me to re-read it, I think.)
It was religious long before it was ethnicized. Pogroms agains Jews were a longstanding European tradition for centuries before Hitler came along. Religious antisemitism was preached from the pulpit for over 1000 years. Hitler didn’t create antisemitism, he just modified it and exploited it. He never could have done it without Christianity paving the way.
I really doubt Mithraism would have made it big.
I suspect ‘paganism’ (which is a widely-diverse set of practices) would have continued on its merry way, as it had been doing during the previous three centuries. Ultimately, Mithraism, Christianity, Isis, Judaism, sun worship, Manicheanism and other cults would either have made themselves a non-threatening part of the landscape (as, say, Isis (pre-Christianity) and Judaism did) or they would have died out through being oppressed – Christianity (or Judaism!) was not the first religion violently repressed by the Romans – check out what they did to the Bacchic cults in 186 BCE.
I suspect that Christianity would continue to grow in popularity, especially in the provinces (as it did in the East anyway). The first time an emperor was raised from a heavily-Christian area it is possible he would have officially legalised the cult (as was done on a limited level with various cults in the real timeline). If that happened, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Christian emperor soon after. What that later Christian emperor would do is hard to say; if Christianity had adapted itself to avoid persecution (along the lines, say, of Judaism) I would see no reason why this emperor would have instituted the laws as we have them now. In this scenario, a ‘pluralistic’ empire could have lasted indefinitely. If Christianity had been driven underground and somehow a later Christian emperor gained the throne, I suspect a more similar history to how it really happened.
There is some debate over whether Constantine banned animal sacrifice. I suspect that he did not, but that it was so stigmatised that, when it became too difficult to carry out in public, pagans turned to the new Christianity as the form of public worship. If sacrifices were never banned (they were eventually, before Christianity was made the ‘official religion’ by Theodosius), the ‘pagans’ would not have felt the compulsion to Christianise as strongly.
Is it possible that Judaism would have become dominate?
Very doubtful. Whilst it was not against proselytising or accepting converts, sticking to a timeline where the only difference is Constantine, the Jews were dispersed, their centre of influence barred to them, the Temple was destroyed, and rabbinic Judaism was in a very early stage – neither Talmud had yet been compiled by 312, though the work had begun. Judaism after the Temple turned very much inward.
I suspect that if Christianity had remained one sect amongst many, ‘Jewish Christian’ groups would have had a much longer lifetime, however.
Highly doubtful. It’s not an evangelical religion.
In what sense? What information about Christianity was withheld from non-believers?
The eucharist was originally done after the catechumens had left. It’s not clear how much they were taught about what it was before then.
The Romans certainly saw the eucharistic ritual as suspect and ‘mysterious’. However, I’m not sure how far early Christianity can really be classified as a ‘mystery religion’ in the traditional sense – for one thing, the category was not one the Romans really had for themselves, but a later sociological classification.
Some of the earliest Christian writers used the word “mystery” in refernce to Christianity.
The word mysterion did not so much mean secret (though the rituals usually were), so much as it denoted rites of initiation and the reception of divine revelation. Christianity did not have “secret doctrines,” per se, but it followed the trappings of other mystery cults in that it used esoteric rituals of initiation and communion, and that it claimed to have divinely revealed information.
Early Christian writers used the word “mystery” to convey that their teachings had been hitherto hidden from all humanity and were now being revealed to all.
There were also Gnostic and other “heretical” sects, whose exact beliefs and rites were lost after the Orthox church persecuted them to extinction.
By the way, there are also hints in the Gospels that Jesus had some esoteric teachings reserved only for an inner circle.
‘mysterion’ also came to be ‘sacrament’. The sacramental rituals were certainly private, or secret, especially in light of the persecutions!
We do have a lot of Gnostic texts, now, Dio, thanks to the finds at Nag Hammadi. They make for a fascinating read. Many of them (see the ‘Gospel of Judas’ for example) defend the idea of a ‘secret teaching’ in addition to the basic principles.
The difficulty with saying Christianity claimed its teachings had been hidden lies in their linking themselves to the Hebrew Bible. They claimed to have the correct interpretation and new rituals to go with it, but they also developed their doctrine and praxis from, and in contradistinction to, Judaism, particularly the Judaism of the time of Jesus.
It’s not now, but it was in the ancient Roman world. In the first and second century, there were a lot of conversions to Judaism, and even more “god fearers”-monotheists who accepted a general system of Jewish ethics, but didn’t convert or follow all the Jewish laws. That’s why the Talmud talks about “ger toshav” lit. “resident strangers”, the Hebrew term for the same concept.
There was also a massive conversion effort in Arabia around the 2nd century, leading to the establishment of a bunch of Jewish tribes, who would go on to cause all sorts of trouble for Mohammed later when he was establishing Islam.
One of the parables: the parable of the sower maybe?
‘And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables? The sower soweth the word.’