Christ dies as a child falling down a well or run over by horses and the effect would be? Yes, I concede the point that he was protected by God but what would be more human?

Alt:
When Christ is rounded up, they get all the disciples and their friends too. (Aside: I always thought it strange they did not do this). All are crucified. No disciples, effect?

Rise of Mithraism/Sol Invictis instead of Christianity? Some of the other mystery cults more easily accepted like Cult of Isis?

Would we still have a monotheistic set of religions? Was the march towards a monotheistic religious view inevitable?

Alt Question:
What if Christ had been a loner? Meaning, no disciples. Would it mean he would not have had as big a bang?

Thanks,
Bill

The effects would be so broad I don't think you could accurately model the outcome in anything resembling a sensible matter. For example the early U.S school system was established by Christianity. (Up to and including the University level.) Reading and Writing would likely be limited for example, because of the drive to spread "the Word", in a very specific sense that helped spread reading and writing to more people. (albeit it later became more common only in Church's/societies higher echelons.)


A lot of knowledge would have been lost during the Black Plague (albeit we might not have had as severe a Black Plague if it weren't for Christianity.)

It's a huge change that doesn't trickle down through history but literally changes the course of civilization as we know it. (That isn't even being overly dramatic.)

I don't think Mithraism would have flourished for sure simply because it was a very insular cult (met in secret, had certain requirements for membership) and so on--at least for what little we know on it that survived as more than rumor and myth. Christianity didn't have strict requirements (At least in the early years of its foundation) anyone of any class, culture etc could be accepted by Paul's spreading of his beliefs.

Science may take a big hit, or might excel madly (Since many of the innovations came from the Middle East and were brought back to Western Civilization by various pilgrims, crusades, and so on.)

With no Christianity, there is a strong likelihood of there being no Islam. That changes the face of the world as well.

No missionaries spreading disease, and culture (regardless of whether it was wanted or not), no spreading of knowledge of agriculture/water to poor natives (but no subjugations in the name of faith.)

It may very well look like a world of competing primitive tribal cultures with a few small pockets of vastly superior technology/knowledge. (Depending on the given cultures imperative to spread itself to everyone or not.)

Most likely you'd have an advanced China, Advanced Middle East, primitive, Africa, Advanced Central/South America surrounded by more privative nations. (And the level of Advancement could be anywhere from horse and cart and iron, on up to space travel, its just too hard to predict how much the drive to spread faith and protect faith in early Christians really shaped so much of the outcome fo history.)

Christianity divide mankind, but it also create a drive for many centuries of a mono-culture aspect--that is "Christians" as a group may have bickered, warred and fought, but they due to faith, created a more common front against non-Christian cultures.

It is roughly on par a change with saying "What if racoons evolved instead of humans apelike ancestor?"


(Note you probably could get a much equivalent change of culture by changing a singular Roman Emperors, Constantine I's,  faith.)

bill, you've been reading my mind :tinfoil:  that's part of the experiment i'd like to run.  take the premise that christianity doesn't take off; who are the "powers" of the time?  who would likely step in to a power vacuum as rome declines?  

the history major in me wants to do so much research on the time.  i don't think i'd ever get around to running anything with it.  maybe a side project?

If it helps, maybe we could restrict the time frame to the Fall of the Roman Empire. Obviously, Christianity had a big effect there. What would be the effect of a Rome with no Catholic Church to preserve it?

Does that help some?

Bill

Quote from: HinterWeltAlt Question:
What if Christ had been a loner? Meaning, no disciples. Would it mean he would not have had as big a bang?

Tell you what.  Let's leave the mere existence of Jesus out of the question.  Let's just fast-forward to the year 312, and when Constantine looks up to the sky at Saxa Rubra and sees the message "In this sign conquer," it's something other than a cross (or any other Christian symbol).  I think that was the real make-or-break point for Christianity, and without the support of the to-be emperor himself, it may well have died out as a forgotten fringe cult of Judaism.

!i!

So many variables to consider, but I think the clearest change, which Silverlion alluded to above, would be that Western civilization would have a markedly different relationship toward the Near East specifically [edit: I meant to type "generally"] and toward Jerusalem specifically...unless Constantine had converted to Judaism. As well, Western Europe itself would probably have been much more markedly split between North & South, due to the lack of Rome as a religious center for the entire region. In short I think the cultures of Greeks, Latins, and Celto-Germans which had been brought together under the Roman Empire would have gone their own ways much more radically than they did, whether or not Islam had come onto the scene to interrupt the Mediterranean lines of communication.

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaTell you what.  Let's leave the mere existence of Jesus out of the question.  Let's just fast-forward to the year 312, and when Constantine looks up to the sky at Saxa Rubra and sees the message "In this sign conquer," it's something other than a cross (or any other Christian symbol).  I think that was the real make-or-break point for Christianity, and without the support of the to-be emperor himself, it may well have died out as a forgotten fringe cult of Judaism.

!i!

i guess we'd have to assume that he sees something, right?  or that could be another turning point.  but i get what you mean.  what other "thing" could he interpret it to be?  meaning, what were the other religious beliefs of the period?  was there any eastern influence to speak of?

Quote from: HinterWeltIf it helps, maybe we could restrict the time frame to the Fall of the Roman Empire. Obviously, Christianity had a big effect there. What would be the effect of a Rome with no Catholic Church to preserve it?

On the other hand, Christianity had a negative effect on the ability of the Empire to preserve itself politically, basically due to the accident (at least I can't find a good reason other than bad luck) of all the big German tribes converting to Arianism, which inhibited their assimilation with Roman society. Since the military depended on "frontier people" and "barbarians" to fill its ranks, and since government was increasingly dominated by soldiers, the Arian/Orthodox split exacerbated a split between military and civilian, and between formal authority and actual power...leading ultimately to the sequence of Stilicho/Ricimer/Odoacer: all powers behind the throne who could never ascend to "respectable" power within the Roman system because of their religion and ethnicity.

Quote from: Elliot WilenOn the other hand, Christianity had a negative effect on the ability of the Empire to preserve itself politically, basically due to the accident (at least I can't find a good reason other than bad luck) of all the big German tribes converting to Arianism, which inhibited their assimilation with Roman society. Since the military depended on "frontier people" and "barbarians" to fill its ranks, and since government was increasingly dominated by soldiers, the Arian/Orthodox split exacerbated a split between military and civilian, and between formal authority and actual power...leading ultimately to the sequence of Stilicho/Ricimer/Odoacer: all powers behind the throne who could never ascend to "respectable" power within the Roman system because of their religion and ethnicity.

that's a twist.  so if the emperor saw an Arian symbol?  maybe a conversion that would be more inclusive to the germanic tribes?

Well, it still would have been a cross...

Edit: wait what was I thinking? Arianism postdates the Battle of the Milvian bridge, and the symbol IIRC was a Chi Rho...

Anyway, yes, if Arius had won out in the Council of...whichever council it was, then things might have been different. Even if the Empire fell apart anyway, the difficulties between the Arian rulers and Orthodox subjects in many of the post-Roman kingdoms helped make them very "brittle" which probably contributed to their defeat at the hands of the Franks and Justinian's armies.

but would those difficulties have been as severe, if there was no "orthodoxy" to compete with the arians?  maybe the arians would become the dominant force of the region, a unifying force, or at least something to provide some kind of mutual cultural identity, possibly preventing such a defeat vs the franks?

There would have been no Arianism without Christianity, Arianism was simply one branch of Christianity (a majoritarian one, at one point).

In any case, this is a question that scholars of Early Christianity spend their entire careers debating.

Personally, I think there's a few important things to consider:

1. The real issue is not Jesus. Jesus didn't do very much, he wasn't much of a success in his own lifetime.
Jesus could still have lived and died exactly as he did historically and Christianity could still have been nothing more than one of countless short-lived minor jewish sects, if only it was PAUL who fell into a well as a young boy.

2. PAUL, and not Jesus, is the singlemost important figure in the development of "global" christianity.  It was Paul who turned Christianity into something more than an obscure Jewish cult.  At the time Paul came along, the remaining disciples were living in Jerusalem, led by James (Jesus' brother), and had no interest in doing anything with the gentiles. Their belief was that you had to be jewish to follow Jesus, and required circumcision.  Paul's idea, that Jesus was meant for the gentiles as much as the jews and that you didn't need circumcision to be a christian; along with his eloquent and very broad amount of writing, is what led to the creation of Christianity as an empire-wide phenomenon.  Without him, the Christian sect would have been a minor jewish group that would almost certainly have died out after the destruction of the Temple in 69 AD.

So, let's assume for a moment that Jesus is never around, doesn't become a teacher, etc etc. No Christ.

If Paul is still around, its likely he would still have had the stroke or the midlife crisis or whatever the fuck hit him on that road to damascus, and he would have ended up creating something similar to Christianity but with some other teacher.  Who would that teacher have been? That's very hard to know.

Paul was a classic "disciple come lately", ie. someone who takes an already-dead religious teacher and completely reinterprets his teachings to create his own charismatic sect around that now-dead authority figure. Sort of like a cult leader who doesn't have enough personal confidence or charisma, or for whatever reason would rather be "High Priest" than be the gib man himself.

Paul at the time that he was "converted" had been obsessing with persecuting the Christians, and then did a full 180º into following them, having "seen the light".. This is also a very common conversion experience; its far more common for someone who is an obsessed critic of a religious leader or movement to be turned into a disciple than for someone who is just blase.  So in all likelihood, Paul would have found some other minor group to persecute, and have created a similar but slightly different religion out of that. Instead of Jesus Christ, it might have ended up being Jacob Christ or Levi Christ or Barrabas Christ or Matthew Christ or whatever.

Given how little of Jesus' actual teaching really mattered to Paul, its entirely possible that the differences between the historical Christianity and whatever would replace it would be anything more than just aesthetic. It was Paul who put almost all the emphasis on the idea of resurrection instead of teaching; Paul felt that the idea of a God on earth who was born, died, and raised from the dead was what was important, not the things Jesus actually said or taught; and he frequently said things that if you read them you'd think would probably end up being a bit at odds with the things we think Jesus actually said (based on the gospels and related sources).

3. Now, what if both Jesus AND Paul hadn't existed? This would cause a number of issues of divergence.

First, who would Nero blame the fire of Rome on? The Jews might have been a good choice, they were very hated in the Roman empire; Nero probably picked the Christians only because they were a very recent and little-understood new "jewish cult" that a lot of gentiles were also getting into, and we know that Christianity wasn't the only one of those kinds. There was a whole fad for a while in the 1st century of "hebraized gentiles"; Greeks and Romans who would go to the Synagogues, and practice under Jewish teachers (indeed, a few decades later there would be a big scandal when one of the Emperor Domitian's cousins would end up becoming a "Judaic Gentile" under the Rabbi Akiva).  

Second, there is the question of whether or not one of the other "eastern mystery cults" would have managed to take the place of Christianity in western history. I'm not sure if this would have happened or not; what might have come about is that something like Sol Invictus or Mithraism might have changed enough, become universal enough, that it could have.  Both of these religions suffered from some serious limitations that made them less successful than Christianity; without Christianity around they might have adapted to become more universal, then again they might not have.

The other possibility is that Plotinus' philosophy (Neoplatonism), which was largely created as an effort to "reform" Roman paganism to make it more popular against the incursions of eastern religions (Christianity as well as the other cults), might have been more succesful and evolve into a full-blown philosophical-religion in the style of buddhism.  In our own history, Plotinus' teachings failed to gain many inroads against Christianity, which had a warmer human message that was more appealing; but if Christianity was out of the running, Neoplatonism might have been more succesful than either Sol Invictus (which was appealingly familiar to Romans but suffered from some of the same problems that old Paganism suffered from, that is, not sophisticated enough and not offering enough to the common man) or Mithraism (that was far too limited, secretive, and restrictive to be acceptable to the masses, it was closer to the Roman version of Freemasonry than an actual full-blown religion).  If Neoplatonism had developed its concept of the Oneness and the quest for happiness into a kind of "universal enlightenment" it might have had enough popular appeal to become the new "Great Religion".

In terms of the Collapse of the Roman Empire, its likely that if any of those three religions I mentioned had been dominant in the 3rd and 4th centuries instead of Christianity, it might have strengthened Rome's fortitude in the face of its difficulties. On the whole, Christianity served to hasten the collapse of the western Roman empire.  Rome would have collapsed anyways, but it might have done so somewhat later, and the dark age that followed might not have been as long or as devastating to Europe as it was.

In the longer term it becomes harder and harder to figure out the course of history without Christianity.  For example, what would Mohammed's religion have looked like without Christianity to act as one of its major influences?
What would medieval Europe have looked like if it didn't have a force like the Catholic Church serving to both unify it on the one hand, and to keep it stagnant on the other?  Its very hard to guess.

RPGPundit

PS: you'll note I don't even consider Gnosticism as a contender.  Gnosticism predated Christianity, so it would still have existed, but it would never have replaced Christianity for the same reasons that Gnostic Christianity failed against Pauline Christianity. Its concepts made it pretty inevitably the perennial "also ran" of the great religious conflicts of the end of the classical world.

Quote from: RPGPunditIn any case, this is a question that scholars of Early Christianity spend their entire careers debating.

(snip awesomeness)

Dude, I love when you make posts like this instead Swine bullshit. You have helped me come around with some ideas for a game We'll see.

check out

http://www.alternatehistory.net/

They have a go at answering this and many similar questions.

Quote from: RPGPunditPS: you'll note I don't even consider Gnosticism as a contender.  Gnosticism predated Christianity, so it would still have existed, but it would never have replaced Christianity for the same reasons that Gnostic Christianity failed against Pauline Christianity. Its concepts made it pretty inevitably the perennial "also ran" of the great religious conflicts of the end of the classical world.

You've piqued my curiosity.  Care to expound on this?