I am indeed critical at a first glance, I havent read it as I am orthodox and study orthodox books, but the description doesnt bode well.
Interesting Ancient Judaism PODs?
- Thread starter Mort the Reaper
- Start date
If Jesus is embraced by the majority of Jews, then Christianity as we know it probably never exists. Christianity is simply Messianic Judaism. There could be an evangelical campaign, but it would be tied to Jewish law and tradition, severely limiting its spread. This will have major consequences, but those will be most noteworthy down the line, when Roman paganism goes into decline.
Then we get to the Jewish Revolt. Thing is, ITTL Jesus is probably still alive at this point, and acting as the acknowledged spiritual leader of Judaism. He would probably try to put a hold on violence and negotiate an end to the tensions. So we might not have a Jewish Revolt in 66 CE. Or, if I were to write this as a story, the revolt begins despite Jesus' denunciations, but when Vespasian arrives, Jesus surrenders Jerusalem, then offers Jewish support for Vespasian in return for the religious autonomy they were aiming for all along.
I see two possible legacies for Jesus, mostly dependent on whether or not he ever has children. If he doesn't, then he will probably be viewed as the Messiah, and his death presented as him ascending to heaven (a la Elijah), so he will eventually return. This ultimately has little impact on history (aside from the absence of Christianity), with Judaism looking mostly like its OTL self, aside from maybe not losing the Temple.
If Jesus does have children, then I think his legacy will be something like a Jewish Mohammed. His heirs will displace the Herodian dynasty as the rulers of Judea, claiming both spiritual and temporal power. If they can avoid getting crushed by Rome for another century and change, then they'll be well-placed to take advantage of Roman instability, especially if they keep up the evangelizing, at which point Judaism starts to look more like Islam.
In Hellenic terms she sort of fuses Aphrodite, Athena and Hera all in one. She doesn't really correspond directly to any of these therefore.
And naturally over many thousands of years, dispersed through the entire Fertile Crescent and perhaps into Arabia and beyond, the exact nature of each society's cult will diverge a lot.
I was wondering if, at this late date some 36 years after initial publication, the work was famous or infamous enough for you to recognize it readily. For that matter I don't know the state of current general scholarship outside of specifically sectarian circles. I suspect a Catholic Bible scholar would have their own protests too, and don't know if it is forgotten or foundational in secular scholarship nowadays.
Instead of the Babylonian captivity, there is a second Egyptian captivity. While the timeline would flow back into ours due to both Egypt and Babylon falling to the Persians, we would have a philosophy of circular rather than linear time - history repeating itself with cycles of Egyptian captivity and liberation.
The Holy Family's flight to Egypt would fit in with the precursors so Christianity would also view time as circular.
The Holy Family's flight to Egypt would fit in with the precursors so Christianity would also view time as circular.
I sincerely doubt that Jesus would be accepted after he died, and even if so, the Babylonian, Arabian, and Ethiopian jews wouldn’t Accept him leading to a split. Which would be interesting.
My other favorite Biblical POD is also a change in the fall of Judea. Instead of Jehoahaz disappearing from history, a diaspora community survives in Egypt. Zedekiah accepts being a Babylonian tributary. So instead of the Maccabee rebellion, you have a civil war among the houses of Josiah's three sons for control of Jerusalem.
What if emperor Hadrian was more friendly towards Jews? So say that circumcision is not banned and Jews are allowed to rebuild Temple. Would Jewish revolt be avoided? Would Temple Judaism be restored?
The revolt would most likely be avoided as it was because of the harsh decrees that a revolt happened.
Well, seeing as OTL he had a statue of himself placed on the Temple Mount to commemorate the destruction of the Temple, banned circumcision, and did a great deal to try and force Jews to integrate with the pagan Roman population, which they fought against very severely. His anti-Jewish assimilationist policies ultimately angering the Jewish community enough to kick off the Bar Kokhba Revolt, a monstrously large and violent uprising, one that killed so many Romans Hadrian's official report to the Senate left out the traditional phrase, "If you and your children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health."
Then when Hadrian took Beitar, ending the rebellion, he forbade the Jews from burying their dead. After the war, he renamed Jerusalem, calling it "Aelia Capitolina," and forbade Jews from entering it. He also renamed the Judea province "Syria Palestina." He also did some other truly sadistic and awful things afterwards, like... The Ten Martyrs.
So I imagine if Hadrian isn't a fucking dick about it he's remembered far more fondly by later Jewish writers. Instead of being the only person to receive the epitaph "May his bones be crushed". For how much the Jews hated him. Among a number of other knock-on effects I'm not qualified to answer.
Every rabbi of the period was married, and uh, I don't think Judaism allows contraceptives, so children are pretty much a given (unless the wife, i.e. the usual suspect [Mary Magdalene] is barren).
My freinds and I have a theory that Jesus did indeed have children, they just got lost in history and their decendents are ironically orthodox right now.
Well yeah, I find the "Mary Magdalene took the Grail and the kids and went to X" theories silly, but the likelihood she was his wife and that they had offspring is almost 100%. Unless the line completely died out, this means their descendants are still around (if you go far enough back, you share ancestors with pretty much everyone around, cf. for instance https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19331938 & https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/all-europeans-are-related-if-you-go-back-just-1-6C9826523 - scientific sources in the articles)
