"No Islam" time lines :: a comment

"No Islam" time lines have come up before, likely. It seems to me that the opportunity for something like Islam to arise, needs literacy and a monotheistic religion around, and would end when ATL all of Arabia goes Christian.
 
Anthony Appleyard said:
and would end when ATL all of Arabia goes Christian.


Well maybe not- there's always the possibility of a schismatic sect of Christianity springing up and altering the orthodox beliefs into a de facto different religion.

IIRC OTL the monophysite heretics were steadfast converts to Islam mainly because of the persecution they recieved from the Byzantine Emperor.
 

Xen

Banned
Perhaps Arabia becomes part of the Coptic Church which dominates Africa and the Middle East.

The church is divided into three main branches Catholic in the west, Orthodox in the east, and Coptic in the South.

Crusades are still possible, they were had as much if not more to do with the Silk Road than they did with holy sites so instead of them conquering land they can be used against Persia to convert the "heathens".
 
A thing I'm interested in at the moment is a new religion sprining up in other parts of the world then Arabia (the TL I'm thinking about at the moment).

I think this Coptic church would really be part of the orthodox church- a very independant part of it though still under it.
 
Leej,

The Copts are Monophysites, while the Eastern Orthodox Church is Athanasian (spelling). That's a bigger doctrinal issue than what ultimately split the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
 
Matt Quinn said:
Leej,

The Copts are Monophysites, while the Eastern Orthodox Church is Athanasian (spelling). That's a bigger doctrinal issue than what ultimately split the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

To us laymen who don't know Christian theology that well, what is the difference between Monophysites and Althanasian?
 
athanasians are pretty much roman catholics if i remember correctly, and monophysites are well kinda confusing...

The central issues revolved around the nature(s) of Christ, Although both sides of the controversy accepted the formulation of the Nicene Creed, they fought over the way in which divinity and humanity are joined in Christ Jesus. The problem arose when they began to think about the fact that God (and therefore the divine nature of Christ) was unchangeable, immutable and eternal, while human nature is changeable and temporal.

•Antiochian theologians tended to stress Christ’s human nature, because they believed that Christ needed to be fully and truly human if he were to be the saviour of human beings.

• The Alexandrians tended to stress Christ’s divinity and his role as teacher of divine truth.

i think the alexandrians are the monophysites
 
Anthony Appleyard said:
"No Islam" time lines have come up before, likely. It seems to me that the opportunity for something like Islam to arise, needs literacy and a monotheistic religion around, and would end when ATL all of Arabia goes Christian.
Ah, but what branch? Turtledove aside, I seriously doubt any flavor of Chalcedonian (proto-Orthodox/Catholic) Christianity would gain any influence... and the Nestorian Church (mainly centered in Persian Mesopotamia) is a considerable theological odds with the Monophystite underground in Armenia, the Levant, and Egypt.

More to the point, it was far from inevitable that all the variaous Arab tribes would unite and establish a single empire. No, we are more likely looking at a... what is Arabic for Volkswanderung? In any case the sort of disunited migration that hit the Roman Empire in the West.

HTG
 
The Athanasians (sp?) believed Jesus was God Incarnated in a human body with both a "human nature" and a "divine nature." The Monophysites believed that He was God Incarnated into a human body, but did not have a human "nature" per se.

The reason that many Athanasians objected to Monophysitism (see www.carm.org 's "heresy" page for some info) is that if Christ did not have a "human nature," He would be incapable of being tempted to sin and thus would not be a proper sacrifice for sin (a perfect human life--something like the Passover Lamb).

The Athanasians said that Jesus was both God and human, but the two natures existed separately in Him. According to that Assyrian link I posted (http://www.aina.org/books/bftc/bftc.htm), the Nestorians themselves might have had basically Athanasian beliefs but due to translation errors (the Nestorians spoke Syriac and the Eastern languages and the Athanasians were primarily Latinate--they don't translate well), the Athanasians thought they believed that the two natures were separate.

www.carm.org 's page on Nestorianism says that the Nestorian creed "threatens the atonement" by implying that perhaps God the Son did not die on the cross. I suppose that's the main Athanasian objection.
 
cow defender said:
athanasians are pretty much roman catholics if i remember correctly, and monophysites are well kinda confusing...

The central issues revolved around the nature(s) of Christ, Although both sides of the controversy accepted the formulation of the Nicene Creed, they fought over the way in which divinity and humanity are joined in Christ Jesus. The problem arose when they began to think about the fact that God (and therefore the divine nature of Christ) was unchangeable, immutable and eternal, while human nature is changeable and temporal.

•Antiochian theologians tended to stress Christ’s human nature, because they believed that Christ needed to be fully and truly human if he were to be the saviour of human beings.

• The Alexandrians tended to stress Christ’s divinity and his role as teacher of divine truth.

i think the alexandrians are the monophysites

Which shows you what idiotic things humans have had wars over. It was a very fine distinction with no way of knowing if either was correct not talking about which one.
 
i think it may be what happens when one tries to institutionalize things like we do in the west, blame it on the effin romans man. did china or eastern nations ever go to war over religion?
 
"did china or eastern nations ever go to war over religion?"

Tamerlane comes to mind. The initial Arab explosion out of Arabia that carried them to eastern China, central India, and across Africa into Spain and southern France strikes me as a religious war (or series of wars) as well.

The Seljuks conquered much of Anatolia, not by overt military action, but by allowing their violent young men to set themselves up as ghazis and go expand the frontiers of Islam.

The Persians went to war with Armenia to exterminate Christianity and re-impose Zoroastrianism. If Rafi's ever around, ask him about it...the battle where the Armenians, though ultimately defeated, inflicted enough casualties on the Persians to make them back off, is a "great day in Armenian history."
 
actually i still consider that the west, maybe not tamerlane but all the rest of it. by east i was refering to the FAR east, china japan etc. didn't the japanese at least persecute the xns at one point?
 
cow defender said:
actually i still consider that the west, maybe not tamerlane but all the rest of it. by east i was refering to the FAR east, china japan etc. didn't the japanese at least persecute the xns at one point?

Who wouldn't? :p

But seriously, the main difference seems to lie in the western (well, middle eastern, actually) invention of the monotheistic religion that claims absolute truth. If you believe that your faith is the only one true way to salvation, then you will automatically object to anyone altering, disagreeing with or ignoring it. Taken to extremes, it can lead to people being conivinced that crossing yourself with two rather than three fingers consigns you to hell - and that all children should be taught to cross themselves with three fingers. In fact, everybody be *forced* to. They'll thank us when they get to heaven... Of course, they believe being forced to use three finbgers rather than two will damn them to hell :D

There were religious persecutions in non-monotheistic religions (China, Japan, Rome and Hellenistic Greece), but they tended to follow different patterns. Rather than the dominant faith feeling either called upon to convert the heathen or threatened by their attempts to drag souls down to hell, the trigger factor here is usually social or economic - Christians refusing to pledge their allegiance to the Genius of the Deified Emperor, Buddhists evading their responsibilities to the Son of Heaven, or Christians threatening to become the entry gate into Japan for foreign powers. Many of these confrontations could eventually be resolved peacefully (the cult of Dionysios in Rome, Christianity in China, Judaism in Hellenistic Greece or Buddhism in China and Japan). Not always, though.
 
"didn't the japanese at least persecute the xns at one point?"

The Shogunate nearly exterminated the fairly large Catholic population of Japan; when the Meiji Restoration occurred, 40,000 or so came out of hiding (the "Hidden Christians"). However, most of the post-Meiji Christian population of Japan lived near Nagasaki, and the nuke that was supposed to destroy the shipyards instead hit the big Cathedral there, killing off most of the Christians (who lived near the Cathedral).

The Nestorian Christians arrived in Japan 1000+ years before the Catholic Christians did, and they did have some adherents there (including one of the Empresses). However, I'm not entirely sure what happened to them. Perhaps their presence wasn't very large...most history books (incl. my 10th grade World History one) say that Christianity arrived in Japan in the 1600s.

In China, one of the Emperors decided for some reason to annihilate Buddhism and the Nestorian Church supposedly resembled a branch of Buddhism, so he went after them too. Though there was a small revival afterwards, Christianity in China went into a near-terminal decline until the European sailors arrived w/ Catholicism and Protestantism.

This link here (I think it might be an online book...it's pretty darn long) has a lot on the Nestorian Church's missions in the Far East...

http://www.aina.org/books/bftc/bftc.htm
 
NO Islam...a comment

Maybe I missed this but (MATT Quinn) did anybody mention the story"Departures"(title) by Turtledove. This may have been a story in which Muhammed became a priest or monk. The author spins out what happens I believe. :(
 
Ed,

"Agent of Byzantium" by Harry Turtledove is set in a world where Mohammed becomes a Christian and becomes the "apostle to the Arabs." As a result, Byzantium is still a Mediterranean-spanning colossus in the 1400s.

I'm not entirely sure if there's just one book, or there's a whole series. I've never read it.
 
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