Christianity Without Paul

I thought that when people talked about the depravities of institutional Christianity they're talking not only the Dark Ages but the entire Middle Ages, the era of medieval Europe.
 
Christianity will still develop, to an extent, in the East. In Kerala, for example, about a third of the population was and is Nazrani (i.e. "Nazarenes"). In OTL they came under the influence of Orthodoxy and later Catholicism and Anglicanism/Methodism, splitting into different sects each time. In TTL, however, without these influences, it would probably remain a very "Jewish" religion- there's a Syrian Christian group called the Knanayas in Kerala who still basically follow most of the Jewish Law despite belonging to either the Syrian Orthodox or Syrian Catholic sects.

Thus, Christianity will probably remain much like Judaism, a relatively small, generally endogamous separate cultural community, rooted mainly in India, Arabia and possibly the Levant.
 
I thought that when people talked about the depravities of institutional Christianity they're talking not only the Dark Ages but the entire Middle Ages, the era of medieval Europe.

Absolutely. From paul's death to the reformation, Christianity was one of the biggest ensurers of societal and technological stagnancy we've ever seen.
 
You forgot all of the violence the Reformation and the wars following it caused.

But Isaac Newton was a rabid fundie and an alchemist, so it evens out at some point.
 
You forgot all of the violence the Reformation and the wars following it caused.

But Isaac Newton was a rabid fundie and an alchemist, so it evens out at some point.

I'm saying that Erasmus and humanism began to make progress the eventually culminated in secular governments in America and to some degree the united kingdom by 1800. So fine I guess from 60 AD to 1800 AD Christianity was the driving force behind unreason, death and suffering. But then it was replaced by nationalism... So no escape there :p
 
Christianity was a driving force for a lot of things. It was both the religion of the persecuted and the persecutors. It was the religion of both Torquemada and Thomas Aquinas. And so on.

Surely there are plenty of things to be said about the what was done in the cause of Christianity throughout history, but I'm not much up for throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
 
Paul

It is hard to say. There is an interesting revisionist work on Paul: The Mythmaker: Paul and the invention of Christianity, which was published in London in 1986 by Hyam Maccoby.
 
Even without Paul, and Peter for that matter, wouldn't the various eastern Christian religions still exist well enough? The Latins may not have been converted, but large parts of Aisa and Africa would have been as IOTL?
 
Absolutely. From paul's death to the reformation, Christianity was one of the biggest ensurers of societal and technological stagnancy we've ever seen.
What?

The first scientists were monks, for goodness' sake! The scientific method was invented in large part due to Franciscan friars named Bacon and Ockham. Copernicus was a Roman Catholic cleric. The best example of Catholic persecution of a scientist (that of Galileo) occurred after the Middle Ages.
 
I would submit that the doctrine of Christianity was not influenced by Paul's ideas, rather by God Himself as the Holy Spirit moved the writers of the scriptures to write, or to preach, and by the teaching and life of Jesus.

Now I could go further and suggest that since it was God's will to use Paul, this scenario belongs in the ASB extreme fantasists' section, but one needs to examine the possibilities.

So we might assume Paul/Saul does not get used of God in the way he was*, and probably the best we'd see is a slightly different NT, but little doctrine changed overall if the Bible is read properly. There may, however, be different interpretations as a result as the years go on rising from different disputable parts of the text, and incorrect readings thereof.

I know a lot of people would have Paul written out of the NT, mainly either to his non-PC views on women or those who prefer to deny that faith alone is what saves (sola fide), etc. But I cannot subscribe to that POV.

*Not that I believe it possible...


I could just as easily make the argument that Christianity wasn't even shaped by the Apostle Paul so much as by the Councils and Constantine and Theodosius. Change the Christendom behind the sword, you easily change history.

Christianity developed from far more than merely one apostles' work, and its predominance in the West and even the East was never guaranteed. Sorry, but on an AH forum, whatever your personal opinions are of AH questions must go aside, as that's the nature of AH.
 
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