I was lurking on the No Jesus thread and thought I'd start my own timeline about a world with no Christianity. Instead of getting into the messy issue of Jesus dying in infancy, the PoD here is that Jesus is never born. Whetever the circumstances of his birth whether the Gospels were right about him coming from a virgin or if the second century pagan Celsus was right about him being an illegitimate child, it just doesn't happen. I know I am opening an epic can of worms here in that this subject of history is perhaps the most controversial ever given what is at stake for people, Christians, atheists, etc. Heck, my namesake, Athanasius wrote a book arguing that Jesus was the Incarnation of God in history which is the traditional Christian belief all the way to our own day. I'm going to avoid all the theological issues that will get everyone upset and just focus this TL on the secular bits of history, wars, the rise of empires, technology, etc.
3 or 4 B.C.E. - It is a quiet night in Bethleham. The wise men traveling from the East find that they were mistaken in interpreting the message of the stars. They go home depressed. The most skeptical of the three berates the other two for their foolishness in traveling so far for no real reason. Herod, paranoid as ever, still kills off the babies in one small town, just to be sure the men from the East weren't lying as they did to him in OTL. Unlike OTL this event isn't recorded by anyone since Herod was known for much greater atrocities.
1st century thru 2nd century C.E. - The would-be Jesus movement followersjoin either the Essenes who believe in isolating themselves from the surrounding world, the Pharisees, and the Zealots. As is standard occurrence, messianic pretenders arise challenging Roman (or sometimes Jewish scribe) authority (or both) and are killed. In first century Jewish belief the resurrection is seen as a general event at the end of history and so no one expects that a messianic pretender would physically rise from the dead. Since ther is no Jesus, no group of Jews would in all likelihood see (or at least claim to see) their leader resurrected. After it is known now just as it was back then that dead people stayed dead. Even if a group claimed this, a resurrection is easy to disprove if you know where the body is buried or entombed. Anyway, I don't want to get too far into the weeds here. The point is that without Jesus there is nothing like Christianity developing in the first century. Of course weird butterflies and acts of God can happen (assuming of course that God both exists and desires to intervene in history) but those are pretty impossible to guess.
64 C.E. - Nero still needs an enemy to blame his fire on. The Christians were convenient because they disrupted the peace by gaining converts from the Jews and pagans. In a world where cult and family ties were very strong this action amounted a grave disruption of society that upset a lot of people. In essence, Christians were the perfect scapegoats. Who would he blame, then? Probably some minority cultic group perhaps. Another weird eastern cult. I played around the with idea of having him blame the Jews but given that Rome wanted to keep the peace if possible I doubt this would happen. In any case, not much of consequence happens due to this.
65 to 67 C.E. - The First Jewish Roman War starts early as without Jesus there are more Jewish people liable to join up with the Zealots and generally be much more disagreeable to Roman authority. Infighting between the Jewish factions begin sooner and the Jews lose harder in this TL. Jerusalem is sacked.
Late First Century C.E. - Council of Jamnia occurs but instead of decrying the Septuagint and aiming fire at Jewish Christians, the Council focused more on keeping Jews Jewish in the face of pagan opposition from the Greco-Roman culture.
I admit this is tough. I hope to create some unique divergence as I develop this TL. Christianity get increasingly important in the second to third centuries. Any suggestions or thoughts would be much appreciated.