AHC: Judaism as the Official Roman Religion

Title says it all get Judaism to be the Roman religion and it has to be after the Jewesh Rebellions and beginning of Christianity.

The cheap way to go about this is to have the Romans designate Christianity officially as a variant of Judaism. The Christians accept this designation because it gives them some legal protection and prevents outright persecution. Things proceed apace, Romans convert, voila!

Other than that, it's pretty much impossible. Judaism is non-evangelical and the Romans never liked the Jews much anyway.

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
The cheap way to go about this is to have the Romans designate Christianity officially as a variant of Judaism. The Christians accept this designation because it gives them some legal protection and prevents outright persecution. Things proceed apace, Romans convert, voila!

Other than that, it's pretty much impossible. Judaism is non-evangelical and the Romans never liked the Jews much anyway.

Cheers,
Ganesha

Actually, this is not entirely true. Judaism was evangelical in that it accepted converts, and it in fact attracted a number of women to the faith. Judaism was given a pass that Christians were not because the Romans saw the Jewish faith as old, and therefore something to be respected.

It was the rise of the Christian Emperors that really put a kybosh on Jewish conversion, since a lot of laws were passed to that effect (such as Jews not being allowed to circumcise their male gentile slaves, or being able to have gentile slaves at all).

That all being said, having Judaism succesfully take over the Roman Empire after the Jewish revolts just isn't that plausible. To the Roman eyes, the Jewish god was that of a defeated people; if he really was that great, they would not have lost.

Even your cheat is hard to achieve. It wasn't only the Christian religious leaders who wanted to differentiate themselves (there was actually quite a bit of overlap in the first two centuries of Christianity and Judaism among the common people of the near east), it was the Jewish religious leaders as well. Both leadership groups wanted to make clearer boundaries over their groups in order to solidify control. The early Rabbis and synagogue leaders would still have been pretty vocal about them being different.
 
Judaism was indeed an evangelizing religion before Constantine. Circumcision and the ban on pork limited its appeal among Greek and Italian men (as Dreadnought Jenkins notes, most converts that we know of were unmarried or widowed women). If the impediments of circumcision and the ban on pork are removed, then it could indeed prove very successful, esp. in comparison to Christianity. I think that a 'Reform' Judaism in antiquity is very unlikely, though.
 
We could just have Constantine see a giant Star of David instead of a cross in his dream..
Jewish mystics were more apt to see angels or Moses. That said, if he had a rabbi instead of a Spanish bishop hanging around in court to talk to about his weird dreams and existential angst...
The problem is converting everyone else.
 

Delvestius

Banned
Jewish mystics were more apt to see angels or Moses. That said, if he had a rabbi instead of a Spanish bishop hanging around in court to talk to about his weird dreams and existential angst...
The problem is converting everyone else.

I definitely think it would be harder, but I believe it would still be doable with the same or similar conditions. Maybe it won't spread as far or as fast, but perhaps we could at least have a Jewish Byzantium.
 
1) Judaism was a tribal religion. It could make converts indeed (as the "Jews of the door", but wasn't universalist or transcendental to states.

You could, without Christianism, end with a romanised judaism appearing in the Diaspora, and using the Septante as main book. But it wouldn't be anymore OTL Judaism and would look suspiciously to OTL Christianism

2)For the whole story of Constantinus.
At your opinion, what had the most importance?

Having Christianism being practiced by an important number of roman elites, having it particularly present in urban aeras and even in country side in the east, having a tool allowing uniting all social strate beyond one belief and, as romans didn't practiced too much the separation of church and state, possibly the emperor?

Or Constantinius checking the clouds instead of preparing to the battle and finding a cross and changing his religion because "hey, that look like a cross. The cloud must be right!"
 

Esopo

Banned
Judaism needed to transform into something like christianity to become the official roman religion.
 
Judaism needed to transform into something like christianity to become the official roman religion.

Yes. If you relax the dietary laws and circumcision, that makes you more Christian-like, and then you need to put something in their place to build your religion around, and that something will probably be more Christian-like too. Probably a Christianity without Christ, where the sacrament isn't a recreation of a messianic sacrifice but an actual sacrifice of some animal for sin, something like that.
 

ingemann

Banned
1) Judaism was a tribal religion. It could make converts indeed (as the "Jews of the door", but wasn't universalist or transcendental to states.

The tribalist non-missioning was something which developed after the Romans adopted Christianity, where being non-tribal would result in the Jews being assimilated and missioning would result in thembeing dead.

But I do in fact think a Roman conversion to Judaism is impossible, through the Romans could convert to Rabbinism, but in such a world we wouldn't see Rabbinism as Judaism, Christianity would likely be seen as Judaism and it would be as clannish and tribal as Rabbinism became in our history.
 
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