AHC- which religious figure had the biggest impact? And what happens without them?

Which religious figure's absence would have the greatest impact on history?

  • Zoroaster

    Votes: 7 7.4%
  • Buddha

    Votes: 10 10.5%
  • Jesus Christ

    Votes: 61 64.2%
  • Mohammed

    Votes: 14 14.7%
  • Other

    Votes: 3 3.2%

  • Total voters
    95
Actually, now that I think about it, the truly most important figure is St. Paul, who helped transform Christianity from just another messianic cult into a true, Gentile-proselytizing religion.
 
ABRAHAM, is there any question about this? Without him both Jesus and Muhammed are butterflied both physically and philosophically. Buddha is butterflied physically, but another like him might easily arise on the Indian subcontinent.

If that Abraham ever wasn't even exist.
 
Didn't Christianity not decide to try converting non-Jews until after Christ's death? Buddhism was universalising from the start.
No, that was a core element from the start according to scripture. Jesus' healing the Centurion's servant (Romans), the excorcising of the Canaanite woman's daughter(Phoenicians), and his interactions with the Samaritans (syncretic mix of Judaism and Paganism) should make that abundantly clear.

That, and I think the differences between modern Christianity and Ancient Christianity are often exaggerated. By the first council of Nicaea we can clearly see a religion that strongly resembles modern Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and likely has resembled them for some time.
 
Of the choices, I'd go with Jesus, but perhaps Moses or Saint Paul would be more appropriate.



Moses!!!

My thinking is this: Eliminate the divine (ASB) influences on Mohammed, then history clearly shows that he was aware of and infuenced by Judaism and Christianity in the creation of the Quran. Eliminate the divine (ASB)attributions to Jesus, then he and the movement founded on his life and teaching was a simple offshoot of Judaism. Without Judaism as it developed in the Torah, there would be no Christianity and no Islam. So, although Moses may not even be a real historical figure, his critical importance in the creation of monothesitic Judaism as acknowledged by both Christians and Moslems cant be ignored.

If one wants to chose an absolutely known historical figure, I'd go with the Apostle Paul. I absolutely believe Jesus was a real figure but it was Paul that was critical in spreading and codifying Christianity...and without Christianity there would probably be no Islam unless we accept the divine inspiration of Mohammed as a fact.
 
If you are looking for the known historical figures most responsible for the shape of the Old Testament, Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Ellott Friedman proposes that the individual who edited/wrote the majority of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) and the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy again, plus Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles) was none other than Jeremiah (who was also responsible for the book of Jeremiah), who was active when all the pre-existing components (i.e. J, E and P) were already available, but not a few years later when the fundamental narrative no longer fit the situation on the ground (Judah being destroyed), and that it was edited into basically its modern state by Ezra, who had been installed as supreme religious authority by Cyrus the Great, and who is recorded as having introduced a new improved Torah at that time.

So these two people, especially Jeremiah, were as responsible as anybody for all subsequent Abrahamic religions.
 
Of the choices, I'd go with Jesus, but perhaps Moses or Saint Paul would be more appropriate.



Moses!!!

My thinking is this: Eliminate the divine (ASB) influences on Mohammed, then history clearly shows that he was aware of and infuenced by Judaism and Christianity in the creation of the Quran. Eliminate the divine (ASB)attributions to Jesus, then he and the movement founded on his life and teaching was a simple offshoot of Judaism. Without Judaism as it developed in the Torah, there would be no Christianity and no Islam. So, although Moses may not even be a real historical figure, his critical importance in the creation of monothesitic Judaism as acknowledged by both Christians and Moslems cant be ignored.

You know, I was shocked when I got to know how much was Judaism influenced by Zoroastrianism. It was a HUGE influence, close to Mohammed impacted by Judaism and Christianity.
So if you go down the line you will find Zoroaster in the very beginning, I guess. If you dig deeper, I mean. Something like this:
Zoroastrianism - Judaism - Christianity - Islam

And Zoroastrianism influenced Christianity as well, so it was a prolonged influence, not only in the roots of it.
And Zoroastrianism influenced Islam in the very beginning in Arabia and of course after the conquest of Iran. So with every step we have even bigger Zoroastrian influence.

So accepting your logic I'd vote for Zoroaster.
* acknowledging the fact that he in his turn built on the local beliefs of his time, but he is the first more or less historical figure in this ladder.
 
Because hardly anyone is daring to, I think Muhammad's absence would have the greatest impact. Why? Who started the process of unifying the Arab people that eventually spanned to Iberia to the border of Persia? Whose religious followers preserved the Greek writings of antiquity? What faith made Bahgdad a bustling center of science and discovery?
 
ABRAHAM, is there any question about this? Without him both Jesus and Muhammed are butterflied both physically and philosophically. Buddha is butterflied physically, but another like him might easily arise on the Indian subcontinent.

Abraham probably didn't exist (usual caveat: if he did, it certainly wasn't in a way most would find familiar).

Moses!!!

My thinking is this: Eliminate the divine (ASB) influences on Mohammed, then history clearly shows that he was aware of and infuenced by Judaism and Christianity in the creation of the Quran. Eliminate the divine (ASB)attributions to Jesus, then he and the movement founded on his life and teaching was a simple offshoot of Judaism. Without Judaism as it developed in the Torah, there would be no Christianity and no Islam. So, although Moses may not even be a real historical figure, his critical importance in the creation of monothesitic Judaism as acknowledged by both Christians and Moslems cant be ignored.

If Moses did exist (again, this is highly dubious), he probably didn't have much to do with introducing monotheism. That transformation took place hundreds of years later after Moses is said to have lived, and process took generations.
 
Because hardly anyone is daring to, I think Muhammad's absence would have the greatest impact. Why? Who started the process of unifying the Arab people that eventually spanned to Iberia to the border of Persia? Whose religious followers preserved the Greek writings of antiquity? What faith made Bahgdad a bustling center of science and discovery?
Greek writings were also preserved in Byzantium, which is the civilization they spent most of their energy in destroying. Also, what scientific advancements came out of Bagdad? Islam definitely had a period of greater scientific awareness than medieval Europe, but did they make any legitimate advancements in that period (actual curiosity)?
 

Bonnie Prince Charlie

Actually, now that I think about it, the truly most important figure is St. Paul, who helped transform Christianity from just another messianic cult into a true, Gentile-proselytizing religion.

I think there is a quite strong argument to be made that without Paul, Christianity might not have made the jump from Jewish sect to a religion with universalist ambition. And I know there is a debate among historians of early Christianity about just how much Christianity's theology depends on Paul's ideas rather than Jesus', so I'd say he is a solid choice.
 
Greek writings were also preserved in Byzantium, which is the civilization they spent most of their energy in destroying. Also, what scientific advancements came out of Bagdad? Islam definitely had a period of greater scientific awareness than medieval Europe, but did they make any legitimate advancements in that period (actual curiosity)?
I'm no expert on the subject, but I know that Islamic mathematicians played a huge role in the development of algebra; scholars like al-Khwarizmi (whose name is the source of the word "algorithm", and whose most famous book is the source of the word "algebra") made massive advances in that field.

But once again, I'd point to Jesus, simply because without Jesus there is no Muhammad, and of course Christianity had its own massive influence (not just in Europe, but throughout Asia and even places like Ethiopia) from early on. In contrast, it's hard to associate Judaism with any one individual, and Zoroaster is such a shadowy figure that we basically know nothing about him other than what is in the Avesta (unlike Jesus, where we at least know something about the cultural background of early 1st century Roman Judea, we don't even know which millennium Zoroaster lived in).
 

Alkahest

Banned
Boring, technically correct answer: Zoroaster, because he's the oldest one and no-one else on the list would exist if he farted differently any given Tuesday.

Answer based on who personally achieved the most: Muhammad, without a doubt.

Answer based on whose name is invoked the most: Jesus, duh. He was, as far as we know, a rather religiously conservative, parochial thinker, but boy oh boy is there a lot of people who think he's hot shit.

Answer based on who had the most revolutionary ideas: Buddha. No cultural figure operates in a memetic vacuum, but his thoughts show the greatest divergence from his social environment.
 
Top