How come Zoroastrianism Survived and Greco-Roman Paganism Didn't?

So, I'm about to make an oversimplification, but it's interesting to point out some of very broad parallels between Zoroastrianism and Greco-Roman paganism. The former had been the state religion of the various incarnations of the Persian Empire for a very long time, until the proselytizing Abrahamic religion of Islam gained power and the original faith lost currency. The latter had been the state religion of the Roman Empire for a very long time, until the proselytizing Abrahamic religion of Christianity gained power and the original faith lost currency.

Now obviously there are myriad differences between both Zoroastrianism and Greco-Roman paganism as well as between the Islamization of Persia and the Christianization of the various parts of the Roman Empire. However, I want to focus on one difference in particular. You see, in Rome, after Christianity firmly took root in the Mediterranean world, Greco-Roman paganism withered away soon after. Indeed, all the evidence suggests that the religion did not survive in Greece, Italy, or anywhere else for very long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. Zoroastrianism, however, has survived to the present day. Yes, its adherents number well under a million, and a great deal of them live outside Iran, but for much of the Persian history after the Islamic conquest their numbers remained robust, to the point where I've seen it posited here that, given the right conditions, a Zoroastrian restoration could have conceivably happened in Persia well until the Middle Ages.

So my question is this: why did Greco-Roman paganism essentially die out and Zoroastrianism survive?
 
So my question is this: why did Greco-Roman paganism essentially die out and Zoroastrianism survive?
Zoroastrianism was a somewhat more organized and codified religion than Greco-Roman paganism, but the most fundamental answer is likely that Islam tolerated Zoroastrians far more than Christianity tolerated pagans.
 
Zoroastrianism was a somewhat more organized and codified religion than Greco-Roman paganism, but the most fundamental answer is likely that Islam tolerated Zoroastrians far more than Christianity tolerated pagans.

Might it also be in part because the Christianization of the Roman Empire was, at least at the beginning, a bottom-up process, whereas the Islamization of Persia was more top-down?
 
Zoroastrianism isn't really the same thing as early Iranic paganism (the religion of the Achaemenids and those before). The difference between Zoroastrianism and traditional paganism is that the former is tied down to proper State and religious structures while traditional Iranic paganism didn't have particular religious structures (Achaemenid magi seemed to perform duties for all religions in the Empire). And Zoroastrianism was universalist and (mostly) monotheistic, especially in the Sassanid period - and there was a religious structure created during the Arsacid period that strictly enforced this.

So when the Iranian state collapsed and was replaced by Muslim governments, there was a power structure that still upheld Zoroastrianism, while when the Roman Empire became Christian, all power structures were basically rooted out and destroyed and what remained was pockets of isolated tradition.
 
Zoroastrianism was a somewhat more organized and codified religion than Greco-Roman paganism, but the most fundamental answer is likely that Islam tolerated Zoroastrians far more than Christianity tolerated pagans.

I doubt this. The main reason it remained to a small degree was that it was intensely rural and hidden away in difficult terrain. These villages and rural Zoroastrian communities were also divorced from the state religion Zoroastrianism of the Sassanid period, which had every piece of it stomped by the Islamic conquest and rule.
 
Might it also be in part because the Christianization of the Roman Empire was, at least at the beginning, a bottom-up process, whereas the Islamization of Persia was more top-down?

Except Christianization only got anywhere serious until Constantine pushed it from the top down. It was around 5%-10% of the population and probably would have died out. But when Constantine supported it maybe 30% of the population would take a look at it. If the Empire prospered, another 30% would take notice and pay attention.

This kind of thinking is very alien to us today.
 
Zoroastrianism was on some level native resistance to nasty foreign domination, whereas Christianization was done by people who had some legitimacy and kinship to those people who were forced to convert. Basically, the Romans did all the nastiness to themselves, which is how the late Roman state structure is so well preserved in the various Churches.
 
Except Christianization only got anywhere serious until Constantine pushed it from the top down. It was around 5%-10% of the population and probably would have died out. But when Constantine supported it maybe 30% of the population would take a look at it. If the Empire prospered, another 30% would take notice and pay attention.

This kind of thinking is very alien to us today.

Died out? Manichaeism only barely died out by our time in otl with persecution from nearly every authority on earth. If Manichaeism can survive that, Christianity can survive in communities in the Empire until policy regarding them shifts.
 
The Christianization of Rome was a top-down process for the vast majority of the population.

Except Christianization only got anywhere serious until Constantine pushed it from the top down. It was around 5%-10% of the population and probably would have died out. But when Constantine supported it maybe 30% of the population would take a look at it. If the Empire prospered, another 30% would take notice and pay attention.

This kind of thinking is very alien to us today.

Okay, fair point. At the same time, my understanding the top-down conversion process was very different for Rome and Persia. While Christianity is a religion that started on the periphery of the empire, the person who began the Christianization process was a Roman Empire - a native ruler. On the other hand, Islam was, at least at the very beginning, brought to Persia by a foreign invading force. Is that a significant difference in this context?

EDIT: Njnja'd.
 
I think the more interesting question to ask is- why did Zoroastrianism survive while Maghrebi Christianity didn't? I think that could invite some more direct comparisons in how conversion was handled.
 
I think the more interesting question to ask is- why did Zoroastrianism survive while Maghrebi Christianity didn't? I think that could invite some more direct comparisons in how conversion was handled.

Wasn't Christianity less established in the hinterlands of that region? Now, Egypt and the Levant were pretty thoroughly Christianized before the Muslim conquest, and they remained majority Christian for centuries afterwards, and obviously have large Christian populations today.
 
I think the more interesting question to ask is- why did Zoroastrianism survive while Maghrebi Christianity didn't? I think that could invite some more direct comparisons in how conversion was handled.
Christianity was already severely weakened by the eleventh century (just as it had been reduced to a small minority in Egypt by that time), but unlike in Egypt, where rulers let Coptic Christianity survive and sometimes even thrive, the Almohads and the Hilialians annihilated the Christians of Ifriqiya.
 
Except Christianization only got anywhere serious until Constantine pushed it from the top down. It was around 5%-10% of the population and probably would have died out.

To become about 10% of the population of a vast traditionally latin-hellenistic empire with a persecuted religion that came from Judaism isn't such a small thing, I think.

And it was already the state religion in Armenia, so you could at most say it wouldn't caught on in the West.
 
Christianity was already severely weakened by the eleventh century (just as it had been reduced to a small minority in Egypt by that time), but unlike in Egypt, where rulers let Coptic Christianity survive and sometimes even thrive, the Almohads and the Hilialians annihilated the Christians of Ifriqiya.

IIRC there was a small-scale evacuation of Christians from Ifriqiya when Norman Africa fizzled out, which probably expedited Maghrebi Christianity’s decline.

EDIT: as in a teeny tiny remnant, not some great population movement. It explains why the lingering traces faded earlier than other places, at least
 
The Christianization of Rome was a top-down process for the vast majority of the population.

Wasn't the same true for Graeco-Roman Paganism outside Greece and (some of) Italy?

Indeed how far did it ever go? Did the average Gaulish peasant take to worshipping Mars and Jupiter, or just go on sacrificing at the sacred spring or whatever where he and his ancestors had been worshipping for centuries before the Roman conquest?

Ditto for Christianity. From what I've read, Irish missionaries and others were still finding lots of Heathens to convert in former Roman territory, long after the Empire had vanished.
 

Teejay

Gone Fishin'
Wasn't the same true for Graeco-Roman Paganism outside Greece and (some of) Italy?

Indeed how far did it ever go? Did the average Gaulish peasant take to worshipping Mars and Jupiter, or just go on sacrificing at the sacred spring or whatever where he and his ancestors had been worshipping for centuries before the Roman conquest?

Ditto for Christianity. From what I've read, Irish missionaries and others were still finding lots of Heathens to convert in former Roman territory, long after the Empire had vanished.

I agree with you that even in the areas which were part of the Roman Empire Christianity took a quite a while after it was made the official religion of the Empire to become the religion of the great bulk of the people. It is not surprising that the Anglo-Saxon and Slavic migrations made Christianity effectively extinct for centuries in those former provinces of the Roman Empire. It was likely because Christianity had not really penetrated much into those societies apart from the cities and towns, by the time these migrations had occurred,

However I want to ask a question here, were not these Irish missionaries working in territories which had experienced such extensive Germanic migrations to the extend that the language spoken in these areas changed?
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
I agree with you that even in the areas which were part of the Roman Empire Christianity took a quite a while after it was made the official religion of the Empire to become the religion of the great bulk of the people. It is not surprising that the Anglo-Saxon and Slavic migrations made Christianity effectively extinct for centuries in those former provinces of the Roman Empire. It was likely because Christianity had not really penetrated much into those societies apart from the cities and towns, by the time these migrations had occurred,

However I want to ask a question here, were not these Irish missionaries working in territories which had experienced such extensive Germanic migrations to the extend that the language spoken in these areas changed?

Just a note on England, the AS conquest probably didn't wipe out Christianity. There were Christians in Kent when the Gregorian mission arrived. And native Christianity almost certainly continued in many other places, given the continuity of christianised Celtic spring cults, dedications to St Helen and eccles (L. Ecclesia) place names. There was also the continuity of a Roman Church use in AS Lincoln, that ended when the nobility was converted to Christianity, resulting in the rebuilding of the church as an AS building. It seems that in many places the "conversion" of the English actually represented an Anglo-Saxon take over of the British church and the replacement of Celtic rite Christianity with the Roman form.
 
However I want to ask a question here, were not these Irish missionaries working in territories which had experienced such extensive Germanic migrations to the extend that the language spoken in these areas changed?

The ones in Northumbria were, and the same may have been true in areas like the Rhineland and between the Alps and Danube; but I've never heard any suggestion that Gaul as a whole, let alone Italy or Spain, ever became generally German speaking.
 
Except Christianization only got anywhere serious until Constantine pushed it from the top down. It was around 5%-10% of the population and probably would have died out. But when Constantine supported it maybe 30% of the population would take a look at it. If the Empire prospered, another 30% would take notice and pay attention.

This kind of thinking is very alien to us today.

Yeah, that's false. If you go by this or perhaps by this it was 10~% as a floor in 300 AD after having grown roughly 40% per decade starting from 250 AD (when it was 2%). By the time it was legalized it was a rapidly growing religion that had ingrainted itself in both the commons and the Roman aristocracy, particularly the women. Christianity was a rising tide that demanded the Empire's attention, and Constantine went full bore in giving it.

I would agree with Intransigent Southerner's assertion that for most people, following that point, it was more or less top-down, though I'm not convinced it was for a majority considering the overt efforts of the state didn't begin until Constantius when state-and-popular persecutions began. Cultural incentives and legalized, state-supported missionary efforts are powerful things themselves without the threat of coercion, after all.

Wasn't the same true for Graeco-Roman Paganism outside Greece and (some of) Italy?

Indeed how far did it ever go? Did the average Gaulish peasant take to worshipping Mars and Jupiter, or just go on sacrificing at the sacred spring or whatever where he and his ancestors had been worshipping for centuries before the Roman conquest?

Ditto for Christianity. From what I've read, Irish missionaries and others were still finding lots of Heathens to convert in former Roman territory, long after the Empire had vanished.

The big problem from the period immediately after Christianization up until the 1200s (when the "great Catholic spiritual awakening" more or less took place) was general non-compliance, although it took the form of a kind of nearly-rabid superstition. Some of the old gods were in the mix but was moreso a kind of naturalistic suspicion of things. This kind of peasant superstition also, unfortunately, played some semblance of a role of the popular uprisings against the Jews.

Zoroastrianism was a somewhat more organized and codified religion than Greco-Roman paganism, but the most fundamental answer is likely that Islam tolerated Zoroastrians far more than Christianity tolerated pagans.

This functionally is the answer - Greco-Roman paganism wasn't extremely well organized with a canon and orthodoxy and was already in popular decline what with the various eastern mystery cults, mithraism, gnosticism, Sol Invictus, etc.
 
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