Possibility of polytheistic Romans adopting Christ/YHWH as one of their many gods?

Something got me thinking,not trying to offend anyone,but would it have been possible at all that the Romans come to worship Christ/YHWH as one of their many gods(with the Christian Church evolving to become a cult,but one that's successful because it advocates charity),but see him as a jealous god who claims to be the only god?
 
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GdwnsnHo

Banned
I can perfectly see it. In fact, the similarities between YHWH/Christ and other faiths of the time suggest it is possible.

However, it'll be aggravated unless the faith accepted is Henotheistic - which Christianity and Judaism explicitly is not.

Make a Henotheistic branch of Christianity prominent, and you can achieve your goal in the long term, otherwise you'll just have social problems out the wazoo.
 
The Romans would have very little problem with that. Interpretatio Romana was a flexible thing, it could accommodate all manner of strange faiths and deities into the framework of civilised existence. In fact there are sources that indicate this happened at least to some level (references to Sabaoth/Zabaoth in magical writings, references in later sources).

The Christians would have a problem with it. The question is, will they be strong/credible/represented enough to do something about it? Or will they end like the Mandaeans, impotently watching another religion appropriate their founder figure?
 
I could definitely see Christ being viewed by most people as one of the many gods, with the people who think he's the only god as just a weird fringe group. Maybe in the form of a mystery religion like Mithras, Isis, etc. that has its own rites and such but still allows for worshiping all the other gods and participating in the mainstream religion?
 
I thought I heard the Romans tried. It was just that the Jewish and Christian populations weren't willing to give the Emperor his dues as a god.
 
It more or less happened IOTL : Severus was said to have a little shrine with a lot of deities, including Christ and Yahwe IIRC.

The main issue was it was a personal syncretism and would have trouble to expand : elites viewed Christianism as a religion of loonies or populace, Christians/Jews wouldn't accept it, and the mass of non-urban people were far more about their own local rites than practices about a foreign God that touched essentially big towns (at least, in the West).
 
It apparently also happened in Sassanian Persia, where inscriptions (prayers, magical invocations) mention "Jesus" or "Christ" alongside Zoroastrian / Mesopotamian gods.

Didn't know that, quite interesting. Was it localized to some regions?
 
It more or less happened IOTL : Severus was said to have a little shrine with a lot of deities, including Christ and Yahwe IIRC.

The main issue was it was a personal syncretism and would have trouble to expand : elites viewed Christianism as a religion of loonies or populace, Christians/Jews wouldn't accept it, and the mass of non-urban people were far more about their own local rites than practices about a foreign God that touched essentially big towns (at least, in the West).

Is it possible though for an emperor to create his own syncretic religion and build support around it much like Constantine did?
 
Is it possible though for an emperor to create his own syncretic religion and build support around it much like Constantine did?

It's not what Constantine really did : he took an already organised religion and set up himself at its official head; not too dissimilarly to the previous imperial cults, such as Sol Invictis, where the emperor was the center of the official worship.

The problem is the difference between an imperially-suported religion, and an imperially-created religion. The first have already an established base when the latter have still to have one.

And to be honest, a syncretism that covers Roman religion, mysterion, Mani, Buddha, Abraham, Mithra, Christs, etc. is too incoherent to really succeed IMO.
 
What about a break away sect much like the ones that led the Taiping rebellion,with YHWH worshipped along with other gods,and have the Christian features of charity?If an emperor gave it personal patronage,would it have been popularised?

As for coherency,wouldn't the religion 'evolve' over time to become coherent?I mean we had a crap load of gospel telling different things before the Church decides to limit it to a small number.
 
What about a break away sect much like the ones that led the Taiping rebellion,with YHWH worshipped along with other gods,and have the Christian features of charity?
Taping rebellion was fueled trough an anti-Manchu take : Roman society was too cosmopolitain to really build something like this on it.

Not that popular revolts didn't existed, but they were more fiscal than anything else and eventually crushed, and given social religious practices, wouldn't really have room for a religious part critically when, at the difference of Europeans and Christianism in late Qing China, such syncretic pantheon would hardly look as an ever-victorious entity.

If an emperor gave it personal patronage,would it have been popularised?
Strictly speaking? Not much. Even when Christianism recieved imperial patronage, it took centuries (and more religious driven Romano-Barbarians rulers) to have a Christian majority westwards.

As for coherency,wouldn't the religion 'evolve' over time to become coherent?I mean we had a crap load of gospel telling different things before the Church decides to limit it to a small number.
It could, but would barely have room to do so : Christianism would still continue to evolve independently, and would have more success than a patchwork-esque pantheon (assuming that imperial successors doesn't decide to switch back to less incoherent rites, as Mithra or Sol Invictus and that would be immediatly more useful politically).
 
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