In the Late Roman period, Christianity was a fast growing force, the rough number of Christian converts increasing at exponetial rates from its rough founding during the reign of Tiberius until Christians were the majority in or around 350 AD. At the same time, as has been well hashed out, here was great discord between the Christians and the various varieties of non-Christians who practiced a variety of mystery cults, henotheistic faiths, or the long established Helleno-Roman traditional religion. Persecutions of Christians and purges of converts from public offices became common, if disorganized, over the second half of the 3rd Century. Later on, Julian tried to resurrect the old Roman religion, but was almost certainly foredoomed to failure due to his inaccurate understanding of how Roman religion worked on an organizational level, (attempting to impose Christian-like order on the chaotic pagan religious scene), as well as the already nearly dominant social power of the Christians.As a result, the old Roman ways were either subsumed by the new Christian church as part of its ritual and hierarchic nature, or else vanished form society.
However, I wonder if sufficient Imperial meddling could not have resulted in a Christianity somewhat more in touch with Roman religion than we have today, and removed more from Judaism. Could an emperor with a philisophical bent, or looking for a unifying religious ideology, have welded aspects of Roman religion to Christanity? Whether the emperor in question is an alternate history emperor such as Commodus's dead twin Fulvus, or a figure like Aurelian or Constantine. In particular, the idea being that of tying the cult of Sol Invictus into it (though anything that increases the Romanization of Christianity would be good), and possibly elements such as genii, lares, and penates, sacrifices, and other such elements that would have made the transition to monotheism easier, and avoided the political persecutions altogether. I am not all that well versed in the philosophy and religious politics of Rome as I am in the economics or secular poltics, so I posit this query to the community.
However, I wonder if sufficient Imperial meddling could not have resulted in a Christianity somewhat more in touch with Roman religion than we have today, and removed more from Judaism. Could an emperor with a philisophical bent, or looking for a unifying religious ideology, have welded aspects of Roman religion to Christanity? Whether the emperor in question is an alternate history emperor such as Commodus's dead twin Fulvus, or a figure like Aurelian or Constantine. In particular, the idea being that of tying the cult of Sol Invictus into it (though anything that increases the Romanization of Christianity would be good), and possibly elements such as genii, lares, and penates, sacrifices, and other such elements that would have made the transition to monotheism easier, and avoided the political persecutions altogether. I am not all that well versed in the philosophy and religious politics of Rome as I am in the economics or secular poltics, so I posit this query to the community.