Challenge: No Abraham Religions

Aten existed before Akhenaton, I hear somewhere... an atribute of the sun god, more abstract, I think.

It was maybe more complex and ambiguous than pure monotheism... Maybe Aten Supreme, ABOVE all Gods, who are just g-gods..

No, it wasn't. In the ninth year of his reign Aten was declared the only God of Egypt.
 
4004 bc
Adam a metal worker in Eden, Assyria, DOES NOT learn the secrect of Iron Working.
The Assyrian Military Does Not send Soldiers to wipe out the Village [They took Military Secerts seriously back then].
Adam, Does Not take His Wife Eve, & Family & Freinds and flee west.
Cain does not kill Abel. Abraham is never Begat.

What is this I don't even know.
 
Aten existed before Akhenaton, I hear somewhere... an atribute of the sun god, more abstract, I think.
He did exist before Akhenaton created Atenism, but Aten was only a different form/name of Ra.
It was maybe more complex and ambiguous than pure monotheism... Maybe Aten Supreme, ABOVE all Gods, who are just g-gods..
In the beginning Akhenaten's rule Atenism was monolatric, but as soon as Akhenaten started to persecute all other cults Atenism had become monotheistic.
 
The Assyrians manage to sack Jerusalem in 701 BC.

Done.

The Assyrians had no intention of wasting resources on a minor client state monarch, when the prize of Egypt lay ahead.
Their bad luck they got the shits while stopping to eat the Judain crops. Jewish historians later wrote it was Gods punishment. Sort of a prequel to Montezuma's revenge.
 
The Assyrians had no intention of wasting resources on a minor client state monarch, when the prize of Egypt lay ahead.
Their bad luck they got the shits while stopping to eat the Judain crops. Jewish historians later wrote it was Gods punishment. Sort of a prequel to Montezuma's revenge.
My class notes indicate that nobody's quite certain what happened because the biblical account and the Assyrian accounts don't really square. In any case, the Assyrians had bigger fish to fry and seem more than happy to leave the Judeans alone given sufficient tribute.
 
The Assyrians did actually attack Jerusalem. We know they failed, because Sennacherib had a relief depicting the siege of Lachish, a provincial capital. Surely if he had taken Jerusalem he wouldn't have shown such an insignificant event, when it is overshadowed by Jerusalem's capture?
 

Hnau

Banned
You know what would be interesting? A cooperative timeline starting from the Assyrian sack of Jerusalem with realistic events, butterflies, all the way to modern day. That'd be impressive.
 
You know what would be interesting? A cooperative timeline starting from the Assyrian sack of Jerusalem with realistic events, butterflies, all the way to modern day. That'd be impressive.

How would you figure out what kind of impact the butterflies would have? I mean, even if you go by the "things become different from the start", different how?

I might read such a timeline, but I don't have the nerve or knowledge to even attempt to suggest anything for such a project.
 
Ignoring the theological argument that took over the last four pages, when developing this TL, you should keep in mind our historical relativism.

The Judeans/Israelites were a tiny tribe in a world where there were hundreds of tribes. I have to agree with the posters who say there were MANY groups that could be defined as Monotheistic. However, that world is itself an invention by a culture that is primarily Monostheistic. Hinduism (go speak with a Hindu yogi, I attended a teaching by Swami Mukundananda) can be defined as Monotheistic, Polytheistic, or Pantheistic, depending on where you are in your spiritual journey. That's exactly what makes it such a stable religion: it allows different paths to the Brahman.

With that in mind, you can take ANY of the tribes that existed (for arguments sake, we'll use the Hellenics) and just watch as the lesser gods fall to the side and the primary god is worshipped above all else. For example, say Alexander's empire stays together. The Hellenics could promote their religion, but adopt other pagan deities as wives, sons, or brothers of Zeus. Theory goes that YHWH followed a similar path, as a war god among many, who became primary above the other Israelite gods as the Israelites conquered more and gave more credibility to their war god. Pros: You get your monotheistic religion that allows homosexuality as surely known homosexual Alexander III would be a prophet of Zeusism. Cons: Zeusism would just be the biggest butterfly in the swarm resulting from a surviving Alexandrian Empire.

I'm actually surprised this thread is so focused on Monotheism. In the timeline I'm working on (but haven't released), the biggest religions are Buddhism and Shintoism. Buddhism, spreads to the Near East rather than the Far East and spreads via trade from Europe* to India/China. Shinto spreads as Japan becomes the primary colonizer of the New World. I love Shintoism because it's so much more than a simple polytheistic belief. The Kami of Shintoism, as in Hinduism, can be worshiped as anything from many individual and simple spirits, to full a full embodying reality. It all depends on the worshiper.

That's my 2cents: when it comes to religious PODs. It's easy to get caught up in our own definitions of religion and religious philosophy, especially when we don't belong to that religion (I'm looking at you, non-Zoroastrians, non-Hindus, and non-Native Americans), but try considering religious history from the point of view of the worshiper.

(On that matter, here's an interesting OTL from the Hindu POV)
 

Hnau

Banned
Elfwine said:
How would you figure out what kind of impact the butterflies would have? I mean, even if you go by the "things become different from the start", different how?

Well, no one knows how butterflies in divergent timelines would really work. In my timelines, I like to acknowledge that most events have historical momentum behind them. There is a reason that WWI started in the Balkans rather than in the European colonies in Africa... there is a reason that Nazism was established in Germany rather than anarcho-syndicalism. What I change after the POD are events that are completely chance-based. People who are conceived after the POD have biological variations though they might have been raised in a similar way to their equivalents in other timelines. Assassins still try to kill their targets (if they are still running around and still motivated by the same things) but their success varies. Accidental deaths may not happen to some important historical figures, or they may happen to others that in OTL died naturally. I focus on butterflying events that were very prone to change.

Of course, after a couple of generations, even your small butterflies would have such a huge effect on everything else that huge changes are possible. Starting with a POD from the 8th century BCE means the task of timeline-creation would be Herculean, a project of such a scale that has never been attempted on this forum.
 
Sorry to disappoint you, but:
- Zoroastrianism has several deities (Ahura Mazda, Anahita, Mithra).
- If Herodotus is to be believed was Zalmoxis a con man who used the philosophy of Pythagoras (whose slave he once was) cheap tricks to appear immortal to the Getae.
- I doubt that Mystery Cults (Cybele, Mithras etc.) can been seen as monotheistic because they worship one deity of a pantheon.
- Marduk is one deity of the Mesopotamian pantheon and the god of City of Babylon.
- Atenism was 'created' by Akhenaten.
And monotheism did only appear in one region: the near/middle east.

Well truthfully of these only Atenism had a beginning policy of ABSOLUTELY ONLY THIS GOD, YOU WORSHIP ANY OTHER GOD WE KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Though somehow Akhenaten's region would of have to be prosperous, which it wasnt because it was plagued by revolt, war, and the first introduction of the flu in the world.
391392_302194163124025_100000003310333_1340750_295057698_n.jpg
 
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Who decided that the Assyrians were monotheistic? That's absolutely absurd.

Apologies, this picture is quite large, so i'm going to link to it rather than actually have it as in the post.

[url]http://n4trb.com/ArtHistory/images/Assyrian_J424.JPG[/url]

You see those symbols in the top left corner of this stele? Those 5 symbols are all symbols of Assyrian gods. The one on the far right is Assur, the head of the Assyrian pantheon. The next one is the Sun god (I will use god as a unisex term here), the one in the middle is the Moon god (All Near-Eastern imagery has the crescent moon laid on its back), the second from the left is the Storm or Sky god, and the one on the far left is the Morning-Star god. In fact the morning-star god is interesting, because it had both a female and a male aspect. I can't remember which of these aspects is which gender, but the Morning Star at dusk was the God of Love, and seen at dawn it was God of War.

Also, the amulets around the neck are representative of Gods as well. The Storm and Morning-Star Gods we've seen before, the middle one (the one shaped like a cross) is symbol of both the Crown-Prince of Assyria and the symbol of the God of a specific royal city. The reason why it's those three Gods is because this King was based primarily at that city (the name escapes me), and because he founded temples specifically to those other two gods.

Also, to whoever put Assyrians in 4000 BC, what. The Assyrian culture was originally solely based around the merchant-city of Assur, which came to prominence in the fall of the Mitanni state (a powerful regional state at the time) around the 15th/14th century BC. You're projecting a culture back in 4000BC that didn't even exist yet.
 
Looking through the replies it seems it was done by a person calling himself ImmortalImpi in reply #18.

a person who calls himself Immortalimpi said:
Not true. There was a general movement towards Monalatrist and even Monotheist beliefs in most areas during the Axial age(700 BC to 200 BC). Zoroaster, Zalmoxis in Dacia, the Cult of Cybele, the cult of Marduk, Atenism(though that was earlier) and so on. There was a general shift to a single deity, even if it was more bland and less extreme than the Jewish one

Where are the Assyrians mentioned, for those of us following along but unable to comment?
 
Who decided that the Assyrians were monotheistic? That's absolutely absurd.

Apologies, this picture is quite large, so i'm going to link to it rather than actually have it as in the post.

[url]http://n4trb.com/ArtHistory/images/Assyrian_J424.JPG[/url]

You see those symbols in the top left corner of this stele? Those 5 symbols are all symbols of Assyrian gods. The one on the far right is Assur, the head of the Assyrian pantheon. The next one is the Sun god (I will use god as a unisex term here), the one in the middle is the Moon god (All Near-Eastern imagery has the crescent moon laid on its back), the second from the left is the Storm or Sky god, and the one on the far left is the Morning-Star god. In fact the morning-star god is interesting, because it had both a female and a male aspect. I can't remember which of these aspects is which gender, but the Morning Star at dusk was the God of Love, and seen at dawn it was God of War.

Also, the amulets around the neck are representative of Gods as well. The Storm and Morning-Star Gods we've seen before, the middle one (the one shaped like a cross) is symbol of both the Crown-Prince of Assyria and the symbol of the God of a specific royal city. The reason why it's those three Gods is because this King was based primarily at that city (the name escapes me), and because he founded temples specifically to those other two gods.
[/QUOTE]
If this is in fact a stele to Assurnasirpal the city in question would be calah.
 
Roger,
I always figure to take a little of the Assyrian account, delete the obvious gloating. Then take out the Judean account and delete the hind sight over zealous stuff that was inserted later and somewhere in the middle the reality is found.
Jerusalem probably did have some Egyptian help, but as Sennacherib's Chamberlain said; King Hezekiah couldn't field 2000 men. If he could the Assyrians would give him horses for each one on a bet. Once the Assyrians got dysentery to save face Sennacherib made the bird in a cage comment to his troops and moved on towards Egypt and healthier a climate.
 
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