[Infinite Worlds] What if Jesus Christ never existed?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Grouchy Chris

The Romans were looking at all kinds of new religions in those days. Cult of Isis, Cult of Mithras, and so on.

Also (according to Paul Johnston's History of Christianity) perhaps as many as 10% of the population of the Empire were Noachites. That is, they believed in the God of Abraham without becoming members of the nation of Israel. Apparently they had a second-class status in Judaism, but they weren't bound by the Covenant between God and Moses (only by that between God and Noah, hence the name "Noachite"). If that is right, then perhaps the Empire was primed specifically for a Jewish breakaway cult.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I also think Buddhism is a plausible player. There certainly were contacts with lands with actively missionary strands of Buddhism. Other than some possible influences in Gnosticism it doesn't seem to have made an impact in the Mediterranean world, but in some ways that's harder to explain that a substantial presence would be.

Ooh! Interesting scenario!

Asoka the Great was sending out missionaries in when? The Third Century BC? I've heard that one mission reached Epirus looking for the heirs of Alexander, but can't confirm it.

When was Buddhism first successful in China? First Century AD?

[capnq]

Originally Posted by SuedodeuS

Finally, we have Constantine, the emperor who stopped persecution and helped raise up Christianity into being a major player. From what I've heard, he mostly did this as a way to help unite the empire, with the ultimate goal of a state religion. For a minor change, he might find some other similar religion (like the previously-mentioned Cult of Mithras) to give much the same treatment. Alternatively, he might find some religion that was a good deal different from Christianity and raise it up (either failing or leading to a much different world religion). Or, he may never bother with this unification (particularly if you believe he was working under divine inspiration), which could result in a very different Roman Empire.

One of Kite Hite's "Cleo's Nightmares" alternate history columns in Pyramid V.2 posited Constantine having a vision of the Yellow Sign rather than the Cross.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Brett

Ooh! Interesting scenario!

Asoka the Great was sending out missionaries in when? The Third Century BC? I've heard that one mission reached Epirus looking for the heirs of Alexander, but can't confirm it.

When was Buddhism first successful in China? First Century AD?

Asoka is 3rd century BC. The Mahayana form, which had a lot more popular appeal than the earlier monastic emphasis, evolved around the late 2nd or early 1st century BC. Buddhism *arrives* in China in the First century, but isn't really successful for until well into the Three Kingdoms period, say 4th century, and the last serious effort to root it out isn't until 845 (well, not counting the Cultural Revolution).

And undoubtably there were Buddhist contacts with the west, and more substantial ones than one mission. The Kushan kingdom (who by then had occupied the Greco-Bactrian states that were the eastern edge of Alexander's empire and become partially Hellenized) of Gandhara employed quite a lot of Greek sculptors and architects to produce temples and statues of Buddha in the first century AD.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by capnq

One of Kite Hite's "Cleo's Nightmares" alternate history columns in Pyramid V.2 posited Constantine having a vision of the Yellow Sign rather than the Cross.

While the kind of things that might serve under the Yellow Sign would admittedly be pretty helpful in winning battles, Constantine was pretty good at that himself. He probably needed the Christian grass roots adminstrative organization more.

Christianity is actually pretty unusual as world religions go in building hierarchical adminstrative structures covering large territories. In most faiths temples, and monastaries, and even many shrines are entirely independent, sharing no funding or staff. Christianity and Taoism were probably the only faiths that really aggregated tithes and moved people around on a career building cursus honorum.

[ammocase]

Yeah, like someone said, there were other messiahs. There was a sect of people that worshipped John the Baptists, and they like to point out that John baptized Jesus, and not the other way around. John had the following who went to HIM to baptize them to god, and its just a little odd to have the son of god get baptized by a mortal to be accepted by god, his father.

There were even messiahs that staged wars. In those times there were a dime a dozen.

It was really up to Constinapole (my memory might be fuzzy about this, and I might be mixing things up since its been a while, but I got this all from documentaries) who went with the consensus of the popular class of people, that he decided on Jesus (though some said it came from a dream).

[Mgellis]

Another possibility...

If Christianity never exists, and other messianic religions do not catch on (they exist, but they aren't as widespread as Christianity became, and they're not as big on proselytizing or organizing under a central hierarchy), then...

Rome still falls. And the 535 event (whatever it was) still causes plagues, droughts, migrations, etc. around the world. But the influence of the Latin world on northern Europe is much less. And Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic tribes never become Christian because there is no Christianity.

So what happens...over 2,000 years almost anything could happen, but here's one guess that I think don't think is too crazy...

Most of Europe is Germanic, with western Europe dominated by the pagan Franks and the pagan Norse centered on the Baltic and England. Ireland is partly Celtic and partly Norse in its culture. The Mediterranean world is a collection of small states, some of them wealthy from trade, and Israel; although the Eastern Empire (which is still around) was strong enough to keep out the Persians, it could not keep the Jews from returning, and Israel provides a nice buffer state between the two big powers. The Norse and the Franks colonized the New World, along with the Russians, who colonized Canada from the Western coast. Eventually, the Franks and some of the North African states colonized Latin America, but it is still mostly controlled by native tribes. China, India, and Japan are flourishing, and engage in trade with the Europeans, but run their own affairs and are respectable powers. The politics of the world are similar to the Great Powers era, with the main players being Egypt (which controls much of North Africa), the Eastern Empire, Persia, Frankland, Norseland, Russia, India, China, and Japan.

None of these countries are dominated by monotheistic religions. Most are fairly secular, as a result of a world that is increasingly industrialized and run with science, but with religious traditions (not dogma but traditions) and folk beliefs being fairly important in the daily lives of most people.

Anyway, that's my best guess for now. I hope this helps.

Mark

[Michael Thayne]

Someone mentioned Paul being the really important figure here. I think this is basically right. Pauline Christianity had bundle of important features that are pretty rare in world religious history. To wit:

(1) Prohibition of worshiping other Gods (like Judaism)
(2) Anyone can join, regardless of birth (unlike Judaism)
(3) Joining is mainly about believing, and guarantees salvation. Possibly all unbelievers are damned: Paul isn't as explicit about this as later writers are, but it ended up being the dominant view of the Church.
(4) Evangelism is emphasized in practice, and motivated by the above beliefs.
(5) In theory, all members are equal and have a duty to love each other.

Why do I call this Pauline Christianity? We know from his probably-authentic letter to the Galatians that he didn't get along well with Peter, who he attacked for shunning gentiles and elevating the law over faith. Paul portrays Peter as not faithful to his own principles on those points, and caving to pressure from others, but this may have reflected a sincerely held disagreement Peter had with Paul.

I lean towards thinking that at minimum, Peter was not as committed to (2) through (4) above, and without Paul, Christianity might not have ended up committed to those points. This would have tended to restrict Christianity to being a small Jewish sect. In contrast, Paul might have founded a religion with those features even if Jesus had never existed. Heck, since "Christ" is just Greek for "Messiah," it might even have been called "Christianity."

If that happened, though, the lack of Peter's group of Christians still might have been somewhat important. Perhaps Paul would have had trouble getting his mission off the ground without being able to use their support? Perhaps Christianity would have drifted even further in an anti-Jewish direction than it did (see the "heretical" doctrine of Marcion that the Christian God and the God of the Old Testament were different gods).

I think the really interesting question, though, is what would have happened without Paul. I really doubt a FAIAP equivalent to Pauline Christianity would have arisen without him. Paul had a brilliant recipe for growing a religious movement: evangelists highly motivated by their beliefs, who can use the double sales pitch of "a community of people to love you in this live, salvation in the next." Once Christians gained political power, the move to violently suppress beliefs that led to damnation was unsurprising. Is it really surprising that Christianity and it's close cousin, Islam, command the nominal allegiance of roughly half of humanity?

Now, who else would have come up with that? Islam is basically a streamlined version of the Christianity of Muhammad's day, suggesting Muhammad would not have come up with it on his own. It's fairly common for belief systems to name rewards for believers and punishments for nonbelievers (Hindu scriptures do it, believe it or not), but I know of no belief system other than Christianity and Islam that has the same commitment to doing this.

What's the long-term impact of all this? The fall of the Roman Empire would have almost certainly happened as it did. Politically, you don't have people throughout the former empire thinking of themselves as one big happy Christendom, though the power of memories of the empire would probably remain strong, and various people would claim the mantle of the empire from time to time. A really interesting possibility is that the lack of a need to share power with the Church would make a powerful pseudo-Roman empire possible.

The lack of an Islam would have interesting effects as well. Probably there would still be a southwest Asian golden age and Arab conquests of the surrounding region. Without Islam to give the conquered lands a lasting sense of shared identity, though, the ultimate impact would be more like that of Alexander the Great.

Without Christianity and Islam, the relationship between Europe and the Arab world wouldn't have to be necessarily any more antagonistic than that between different European states. Perhaps instead of the Crusades, during that period an ambitious European leader would conquer first the Byzantine empire (crusaders sacked Constantinople, after all), then the "Roman" empire would start fighting Arab states?

As fun as it is to speculate about revived Roman empire, after the rise of Britain the English Channel should make a unified Europe impossible. And the Americas are going to be colonized by whoever lives in Western Europe. (Plus Morocco? I tend to think not.) But how European imperialism plays out is major butterfly-effect territory.

On the intellectual front, once Europe began to truly recover from the fall of Rome c. 1200 AD, intellectual developments would go a bit smoother without the presence of an established belief system to be protected at all costs. (Sure philosophical dogmas can be tenacious, but most can't complete with Christianity's "believe or burn" approach). I wonder about the real impact of this, though: the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment went pretty smoothly in spite of Christianity. (And no, science didn't cause Christianity. That claim is just dumb.)

[Johnny Angel]

It's been a while since I've read about it, but I seem to recall The Bible having a pretty big part in how the English language evolved. In particular, a more standardized written form came about, and more people learned to read*. IIRC, one of the reasons why Chaucer's writings in English were such a success were partly due to him already being established as a writer in other languages.


*I realize that due to the church many people were intentional kept uneducated as a control measure, but it seems plausible (if I'm remembering correctly) that without a common form of literature for the population that there may be a slower evolution of English as a language.



edit: In an IW campaign, it's possible for a later religious leader to have been born earlier as a solution for the lack of Jesus. An earlier Paul Harrison might create Pantheism or time travelling Tom Cruise might introduce Scientology. Perhaps religion would be replaced and history would form a hardcore anti-religious Communist Roman Empire in which Constantine denounces all gods to be false before then trying to unite the empire by claiming that the only being people can believe in and count on is him. This leads to Crusades where atheist European nations clash with Islam with the intent to stamp out religion as a 'corruptive influence.'

[davidtmoore]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

It's been a while since I've read about it, but I seem to recall The Bible having a pretty big part in how the English language evolved. In particular, a more standardized written form came about, and more people learned to read*. IIRC, one of the reasons why Chaucer's writings in English were such a success were partly due to him already being established as a writer in other languages.


*I realize that due to the church many people were intentional kept uneducated as a control measure, but it seems plausible (if I'm remembering correctly) that without a common form of literature for the population that there may be a slower evolution of English as a language.

Yes and no. Remember than until Luther it was considered blasphemous to translate the Bible into any language other than Latin or Greek. Passages, yes; the whole book, no. Wycliffe's bible was burnt en masse and his followers persecuted.

Most standardisation in English was pretty accidental - an important figure (like Henry VI) creates a trend for spelling in his idiom, which leads to nobles and scholars accepting a particular form of English, which filters down; happened a couple of times - until the printing press, when Caxton and his contemporaries started actively pushing for standardised spellings to make their job easier.


In answer to OP:

I think Mithraism is your man, here, as has been said before. Possibly Adonis or Tammuz, who are also very similar figures. It would be pretty similar to Christianity, with a slightly different virgin-mother emphasis (all of them had virgin mothers, but they have slightly different roles in different faiths).

One thing that would be interestingly different would be sexual mores. You can safely assume any other dominant religion that arises in its place would promote marriage and condemn adultery and homosexuality, but the ban on contraception and masturbation would be pretty specifically Christian, as it's based on a slightly distorted take on a Jewish story.

May not sound like a massive difference, but especially in the modern day, some large areas of religious conflict have placed a lot of importance on both. And, of course, gender politics would have come a long way a lot sooner if people could choose when to have children more reliably.