I personally don’t subscribe to the notion that the mythical Jesus of Nazareth actually existed, but if he did, he was probably just one of many men of the time who were persecuted, prosecuted, and executed for crimes against the state. The only difference is years after his death Jesus (or some unknown he was based on) was martyred, from whence sprung the seeds of Christianity as we know it.
How many messiah myths, from how many different cultures, were there before the Story of Jesus? Had the story of Jesus as messiah not taken root, my suspicion is another would have. The details of the origin of the alternate messiah would have been different, but the web woven from it by the men of the day would probably have been the same, with exactly the same outcome.
Wiccans and Druids would rule the world. Pot would be legal, gay marriage would be a non-issue, but we’d probably still have 19th century technology.
As Druid-King, I would be benevolent, and schedule orgies in the grove thrice weekly. Hey, we gotta do something, since there ain’t gonna be any SEC football…
I’m not convinced anything would have taken its place. I imagine we’d have the same pagan mishmash the rest of the world has.
Christianity (and Islam, which Christianity surely influenced) are the only evangelical exclusive religions in the world. All other religions acknowledge that there is a place and possible salvation for people of other faiths. Only Christianity and Islam subscribe to the idea that their religion is true for everyone and the only options are to believe or go to hell. And thus they are the only religions that are all that motivated to seek out converts- hence their popularity.
It seems like this idea only happened once, and if it hadn’t have happened maybe Europe’s old pagan gods would have evolved much like modern Hinduism.
Underline mine. Not the Catholic church. Promise. That lasted for several centuries but it was actually a political issue and has been recognized as such; it has never been dogma.
I believe we would just say “Zeus” instead of “God” and “Apolo” instead of “Jesus”. People would defend the truth of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” as being inspired by Zeus himself and whoever didn’t believe that would go to Hades.
Greek mythology has been the second most popular religious narrative in the western world after Christianity for ages, and it’s all just replacing a bearded guy for another.
The temple destruction (meaning the first Jewish revolt) didn’t wipe out Christianity (it put the original Jerusalem-based group into a deep hole it never recovered from). It also didn’t wipe out Judaism so badly. Remember that there were more Jews (mostly converts) in Alexandria than in Jerusalem. What really put Judaism behind was the conversion of Jews into Christians. If anything, the various Jewish revolts ensured that some Jewish splinter* group would dominate over mainstream Judaism.
Oh, I think one of the other middle eastern sects would have become (more) popular among the Roman lower class, and I suspect Rome was on the decline anyway; perhaps wouldn’t affect the Islam moment, and lacking a more-or-less unified front in Western Europe, Islam-- the next wildly popular world religion to spring up-- might have spread much more widely in Europe in the 8th and 9th centuries and people in England would be reciting Arabic a few times a day.
I suspect the courses history and Christianity have taken are the results of Skald’s previous threads
Skald A: “Say I use my way-back machine to ensure that Jesus is killed by the Romans at a young age instead of living to be the ancient sage we know from our bible”.
Skald B: “What if Saul didn’t die of dysentery? Would the Jesus cult have spread to the gentiles? Say I use the way-back machine to take him antibiotics and gatorade”
Skald C: “Say I use my way-back machine to destroy the temple during the jewish revolts, denying resurgent Judaism a focal point for their 5th century renaissance. What would take its place?”
Hey, I said I was being EARLY edda Loki, before the flyting at…um…wherever it was that he pissed off Thor for the last time. Anyway, no mass murder for this exercise.
Kim the Rhymer loves footbal. Consequently, any reality-screwing I do will have to make sure football still exists, as she cannot be made to be unhappy. I have taken the precaution of plucking certain persons from alternate timelines and…
My guess; Roman Mithraism mixes with the cult of Sol Invictus and various other pagan influneces. End result pretty much the same, festival on the 25th of December and some sort of rebirth festival sometime in spring, only thing that changes are the details.
The more I think about it, the more I’d like to see the cult of Dionysus go intercontinental. I wonder which historical personages, and how many, I’ll have to [del]shoot in the back of the head[/del] distract with shiny baubles and holoharlots to make that happen?
Heh. Well, you may be right. If Zeus & Apollo are real, it seems clear that they took on the masks of God the Father & God the Son, suddenly Jewish (“No really!”) & survived in that way.
Not sure about Artemis, she who was dissed in Acts.