Christianity in eastern, instead of western world?

Basically I want Christianity to expand to Asia and Africa instead of Europe, I know that I will need to have no spread to Rome for one, and somehow have to replace that with a spread to Africa and the Middle East. How, and what would happen.
 

katchen

Banned
God tells Abraham to go to the land of Oman instead of Canaan. Joseph gets sold by his brothers into the land of Havilah (India) The Jews are slaves unto Maharajah in Havila.
Actually, it could work. Work topsy turvy. But it could work.And work not ASB unless God is an ASB.
 
God tells Abraham to go to the land of Oman instead of Canaan. Joseph gets sold by his brothers into the land of Havilah (India) The Jews are slaves unto Maharajah in Havila.
Actually, it could work. Work topsy turvy. But it could work.And work not ASB unless God is an ASB.

No it wouldn't be ASB, but it isn't what was asked of for this (where he specifically says Christianity).
 
I'm not completely sure if I understand correctly - if your point is a Pagan (Western) Europe and a Christian Middle East, that's actually quite likely from a late ancient perspective. You don't have to prevent Christians in Rome - which would be hard anyway, the Roman Empire worked as a pipette that transported cultural flow in now time to any place. Moreover, early Christianity basically settled everywhere in the Empire where there were a) Jews and b) a lot of Pagans in lose connection with the Jewish communities. So Rome is definitely in. But you can easily work from a later point in time.

Even after Constantine, the old Senate elite despised Christianity, and the way this conflict was conducted had a massive effect on the disintegration of the Western Empire.
So the flow away from Christianity was there.
Ideas: Julian Apostata could be more successful, or some alternate copy of his.
The Empire could be overrun earlier, before the Germanic tribes convert to Christianity, or at least before their dynasties commit deeply enough.
Note, however, that you can thus get a Western Europe with few Christians (or, in the long run, none at all), but there will be clear Christian traces in the culture of this *Europe. It won't be the Pagan religiosity of 100 BC, the main sources of philosophy would be Neoplatonism, Stoa, and Christianity.


So what about the East?
The whole Middle East was a very lively Christian region - Christians are only in a minority since the Muslim conquest. So basically you need some way to keep these communities in place. No Islam? No Muslim conquest North of Arabia? Or at least a standstill of conquest, perhaps by eliminating the military that came from the Mongols? This is a lot harder than the first (Western) part, but there are some possibilities there.


As to Africa:
There is already the Christian North coast and a spread to Ethiopia IOTL. Further advances might be possible, especially if not rivalled by Islam. However, I don't know enough to make statements here.


If you are talking about Christianity going a lot stonger in Persia and India than IOTL though, this is a completely different question.
 
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My guess would be to make a stronger christian presence in Antioch. Have a stronger Rhomania defeat the Persians and convert them to orthodox. Now you might still have the heresies like the Copts and nestorian Christianity to contend with.
 
Is there another empire that could carry christianity to farther east in asia or to africa? I would think that to get rid of any problem with muslims would to just have islam with a larger christian influence and become part of christianity.
 
your best pod would be from acts chapter 16 where Paul is forbidden by God to preach in Asia and is instead sent to Macedonia. So if you send him east instead of west you get what you want.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
This is quite difficult. Most of what we know as "Christianity" is derived from Platonism; you could have eastern followers of Christ's teachings, but when it comes down to matters like the trinitarian formula and such, they would likely be radically different from Christians today.
 
your best pod would be from acts chapter 16 where Paul is forbidden by God to preach in Asia and is instead sent to Macedonia. So if you send him east instead of west you get what you want.

Asia here meaning the Roman province of Asia (essentially Turkey) yes?
Anyway you could just have Rome not conquer Judeah and have the Selecuids or Parthians there instead. Then Christianity spreads through Persia rather than Rome.
 
smother Christianity in West (by constanstine selecting Sol Invictus or Isis as his religion of choice instead of Christianity ... won't kill Western Christianity, but it wouldn't be more than a minority religion then), and make Thomas the Apostle (who traveled to India) and his followers succeed beyond OTL ... job done ... strong Mesopotamian/far east church ... weak western church
 
smother Christianity in West (by constanstine selecting Sol Invictus or Isis as his religion of choice instead of Christianity ... won't kill Western Christianity, but it wouldn't be more than a minority religion then), and make Thomas the Apostle (who traveled to India) and his followers succeed beyond OTL ... job done ... strong Mesopotamian/far east church ... weak western church
Good idea, I think that would work well.

This is quite difficult. Most of what we know as "Christianity" is derived from Platonism; you could have eastern followers of Christ's teachings, but when it comes down to matters like the trinitarian formula and such, they would likely be radically different from Christians today.

This was what I was going for, I would like to see the teachings of christ, and what judaism travels with them, being interpreted through the eastern eye. Perhaps Jesus is seen as an avatar of God? Perhaps it replaces heaven with Nirvana, and hell with a forgivable place of reform?
 
If Christianity pushed hard east, and very little west, then a interesting thing would be how it would interact with Manichaeism (Zoroastrian heresy high in late 3rd century) ... might end up merging with this into a heavily Gnostic religion that are spiritual successors to both Zoroastrian and Christianity ... also borrowing the notion of Avatars from Hinduism with Jesus and Mani as the latest avatars of god.
 
Is there anything to prevent a Persian Empire from converting to Christianity and supporting it in the same way Constantine did?
 
I wonder if the Druids had formed a centralized hierarchy due to a Celtic state if they could have withheld against Rome.

I mean if a Gaulish state had been able to form and withstand Roman advances.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
Asia here meaning the Roman province of Asia (essentially Turkey) yes?
Anyway you could just have Rome not conquer Judeah and have the Selecuids or Parthians there instead. Then Christianity spreads through Persia rather than Rome.

Judea was already a (very new) Roman province at the time of Jesus Christ, and Rome more or less at the height of its territorial extent. I think weakening them could help, but I'm not sure how to do it sufficiently. Maybe a period of prolonged civil war ala the crisis of the third century, combined with a stronger Iranian state (whether Parthia or someone else) able to take advantage of the situation?

Another possible PoD could be Rome not adopting Christianity. If it doesn't, then Christians in Persia aren't seen as in the service of a foreign power and would have an easier time winning converts there, although it still wouldn't be easy to make the regime abandon Zoroastrianism. Or perhaps an Arabic leader could unite the peninsula ala Mohammed under Christianity instead of Islam (and there were quite a few Christians in pre-Islamic Arabia, even in the parts under Persian influence) and go empire-building.
 
. Or perhaps an Arabic leader could unite the peninsula ala Mohammed under Christianity instead of Islam (and there were quite a few Christians in pre-Islamic Arabia, even in the parts under Persian influence) and go empire-building.

Over the last couple weeks, I've been thinking that some Arab power would acquire lots of territory in the 7th and 8th centuries even if there is no Islam. I'm not an expert, so does anyone else on this thread know if that's the likely chain of events?
 

birdboy2000

Banned
Over the last couple weeks, I've been thinking that some Arab power would acquire lots of territory in the 7th and 8th centuries even if there is no Islam. I'm not an expert, so does anyone else on this thread know if that's the likely chain of events?

The Arabs did benefit from Byzantium and Persia being exhausted from a remarkably lengthy war with one another, and there's an unfortunate tendency for alternate historians to perceive inevitability based on historical events.

That said, usually when an empire is able to undergo the remarkable expansion the Muslims pulled off - conquering not only Persia and half of Byzantium, but cementing their rule on lands like Spain which their predecessors could not subjugate - there's either demographic pressure or technological supremacy or some other expansionist-friendly factor involved. After all, the Arabs weren't the *only* neighbors of Byzantium or Persia.
 
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