Christianity fails in Rome, succeeds somewhere else?

Or some sort of pan-European synthesis emerges, which absorbs Germanic (and perhaps also Baltic and Slavic) paganisms into Greco-Roman and other Mediterranean ones.

Greco Roman religion torward late Roman times was in some ways a Museum piece, which everyone (in Rome) paid lip service to but few took seriously. Meanwhile, Norse paganism went down kicking and screaming and quite literally at swordpoint (at least in Norway and Sweden) and with quite a few martyrs and in some cases massacres.

So, I think it would be more likely that certain aspects of Mediterranean paganism was absorbed into a Germanic dominant synthesis rather than the other way around.
 
Greco Roman religion torward late Roman times was in some ways a Museum piece, which everyone (in Rome) paid lip service to but few took seriously. Meanwhile, Norse paganism went down kicking and screaming and quite literally at swordpoint (at least in Norway and Sweden) and with quite a few martyrs and in some cases massacres.

So, I think it would be more likely that certain aspects of Mediterranean paganism was absorbed into a Germanic dominant synthesis rather than the other way around.

"In Rome" I feel is an important factor here. Surviving writings are mostly from the viewpoint of the educated urbanites or landlords. That the Pope was still decrying Pagans centuries after Constantine shows that the Religio Romana had staying power among the rural masses.
 
Greco Roman religion torward late Roman times was in some ways a Museum piece, which everyone (in Rome) paid lip service to but few took seriously. Meanwhile, Norse paganism went down kicking and screaming and quite literally at swordpoint (at least in Norway and Sweden) and with quite a few martyrs and in some cases massacres.

So, I think it would be more likely that certain aspects of Mediterranean paganism was absorbed into a Germanic dominant synthesis rather than the other way around.

The Roman state religion may have been museal, just like statehood was decaying. But Roman private religion - the cult of the lares, di parentes etc. - was very much alive even in late Roman times.
 

fi11222

Banned
Is it possible that Christianity could not take hold in Rome, but still takes hold somewhere else and is successful there? Europe remains a mangled mess of different Pagan religions, while in another part of the world (the Middle East? Africa? Asia?) Christianity spreads like wildfire?
Why not ? Lots of things are possible.

But the POD should be quite early because what we call "Christianity" today is a religion that evolved within the Roman Empire and was therefore heavily influenced by its culture. From the 2nd Century onward, Greek and Roman gentiles were a majority within the churches and it is them who shaped what we recognize today as Christian: the Trinity, the liturgy, the sacraments, etc. After that had happened, Christianity had to succeed within the cultural sphere to which it had adapted, or die.

The other most likely place where such an adaptation might have taken place is Babylonia, where a sizeable Jewish community existed, and then the Persian Empire. But for that to happen, the POD really needs to be early. In particular, the major texts of alt-Christianity, like the Gospels and Epistles, should be written in Aramaic, not Greek.
 
The Roman state religion may have been museal, just like statehood was decaying. But Roman private religion - the cult of the lares, di parentes etc. - was very much alive even in late Roman times.
Seems like the very last pagans were only removed from the Roman Empire in the 800s, during the reign of the Byzantine Empire.
 
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