The Sin of Slaughter

In 41 AD, Simon Peter, an early member of the Christian church, was resting upon the roof of a house in the city of Joppa, when he was suddenly overcome by a vision. In OTL, he awoke and claimed that God sent him a vision that stated that the flesh of all animals was now clean to eat, meaning that the traditional Jewish dietary laws no longer applied, and by extension it was permissible for the Christian gospel to be preached to Gentiles. However, in this timeline, Peter wakes up and claims to have seen something different: he claims that God has told him to "consume the flesh of none of these beasts, for the flesh of all can only be gained by slaughter, and it is sin to kill". Although this still gives Peter the impression that the old Jewish distinction between clean and unclean meat is obsolete, and thus there is no reason to distinguish between Jews and Gentiles when preaching, it also reinforces Peter's already existent vegetarianism, creating a new, even stricter dietary restriction for Christians. Peter would begin to convert peoples of all ancestry to Christianity, including a strict prohibition against killing for meat.

Ten years later, the Council of Jerusalem was held as in OTL, to debate the matter of circumcision and other old Jewish laws applying to Christians. Three camps existed in the Christian community: the Jewish Christians, who wanted to keep all of the Jewish laws intact, the Pauline Christians, who did not support keeping the Jewish laws intact, as well as the new group of Christians, motivated by Peter, who had adopted a restriction against all meat and was divided on the circumcision issue. Although Paul disapproved of Christian vegetarianism, his opposition to forcing Gentile converts to be circumcised was greater, so he decided that he would be willing to back the prohibition against killing for food if it meant the mandate on circumcision would be removed. This compromise was the decision of the Council, and following its end the Christian community would adopt stricter prohibitions against slaughter of animals and people, with a doctrine of non-violence comparable to the Jains of India.

source of Peter's vegetarianism: http://www.all-creatures.org/discuss/didjesuseatfish-20090917-jv.html

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So, Christianity has now become a vegetarian religion. As the prohibition against killing has now been extended to even animals, the prohibition against killing people will be even more severe, leading to far greater Christian pacifism, which will become a permanent feature of Christianity.

Now, with the Christians being such pacifists and vegetarians, it seems unlikely that they will find the levels of converts that they did in real life. Will a smaller Christianity be crushed by the Romans, or will it survive despite persecution? Could Roman leaders even see it as a non-threat and end much official persecution? And, assuming Christianity has failed in becoming the dominant religion of Rome, what religion(s) will take its place?
 
In this scenario I would imagine christianity to not appeal to the masses and perhaps something like the Cult of Sol Invictus would take it's OTL place. Certainly no Roman Emperor would consent to a life of Vegitarianism. I would however expect the persecutions to continue, the reason that christians were persecuted has nothing to do with them being a threat but everything to do with them being pacifists who do not worship the Emperor. It was a distinctly un-roman thing to do to not serve in the legions as well as not venerate the emperor. The jews could get away with it because their tradition was ancient, the christians however were just some upstart sect that didn't have ancient roots and thus should be persecuted as "other". Persecution has everything to do with being a Roman and nothing to do with threat levels.
 
In this scenario I would imagine christianity to not appeal to the masses and perhaps something like the Cult of Sol Invictus would take it's OTL place. Certainly no Roman Emperor would consent to a life of Vegitarianism. I would however expect the persecutions to continue, the reason that christians were persecuted has nothing to do with them being a threat but everything to do with them being pacifists who do not worship the Emperor. It was a distinctly un-roman thing to do to not serve in the legions as well as not venerate the emperor. The jews could get away with it because their tradition was ancient, the christians however were just some upstart sect that didn't have ancient roots and thus should be persecuted as "other". Persecution has everything to do with being a Roman and nothing to do with threat levels.
Would it be able to survive if it did not appeal to the masses, or would the smaller size make it more vulnerable to persecution?
 
It's hard to say. The trend in the early empire was certainly towards some form of monotheism, although with vegetarian christianity I would say that something else would become the dominant religion. As to persecution, OTL it had a tendency to make martyrs out of those christians persecuted, however martyrs don't really mean much when your religion is inaccessible to the masses. With christianity being so vehemntly pacifist and vegetarian, I don't see them making many converts. I could see christians being permenently resettled across the empire so as to make them the smallest minority in any region they are in. They would stay that way without being able to appeal to the masses and by the time they get around to repealing the vegetarian pacifist dogma, then Sol Invictus or some other vaguely monotheistic ideology would have already supplanted christianity as the "hot new thing" in the Empire. The fact is without mass appeal, christianity has no way of winning converts, and without converts christianity eventually peters out in popularity.
 
I agree about Christianity not really expanding. The masses would not want to consent to a life of not eating any meat, and extreme pacifism. Christianity would be easier to persecute as well, as there would be more reasons to get the masses behind persecuting them.
 
So it appears that Christianity would be comparable to Jainism not only in values, but also in size compared to Rome(less than half a percent of the population).
 
Could this effect the survival of the Roman Empire? By that I mean, could it help in preserving its survival for much longer, and perhaps indefinitely? Would there ever be a dark ages?
 
I'm not sure it could preserve the survival of the Western Empire all that much. The reason Rome fell had more to do with Instability in the System of Governance combined with mismanagement combined with overeliance on "Barbarian" Feoderati to secure rome's borders than with the fact that the church was trying to set up a state within a state. That said, when Rome does fall, I would expect a lot less of the rivarly between Church and State that seemed to characterize the middle ages. I would of course caution that just because you butterfly away christianity does not mean that something else won't take it's place, because it will. Who knows, perhaps the Church of Sol Invictus or even an Islam analogue could take it's place. It all depends on whether or not the religion that takes it's place is Inclusive or Exclusive. An Inclusive religion would not bother with the rigidly dogmatic structure that the church set up, wherby they couldn't even tolerate a regional interpretation of their teachings in the Languadoc because it didn't require oversight by an ordained priest. An exclusive religion might wind up more or less the same as christianity did though.
 
Not neccesarily, in fact I would contend that Islam was mostly the result of one former merchant trying to unite the arabian peninsula than any religious movement, at least at first. The fact that Axum a Roman Ally attacked Mecca, where Mohommad was from helped coalesce the ideology. Although I'd hardly call myself an expert on Islam, so perhaps someone more familiar with it could reply better than I
 
It appears that the Roman cults were primarily henotheist, those who followed Serapis never denied the existence of Sol Invictus, Isis, Jupiter, and the others. One of the main causes for Christianity's persecution was because they denied the existence of gods other than the one they worshiped. Thus it seems likely it would be inclusive.

Not neccesarily, in fact I would contend that Islam was mostly the result of one former merchant trying to unite the arabian peninsula than any religious movement, at least at first. The fact that Axum a Roman Ally attacked Mecca, where Mohommad was from helped coalesce the ideology. Although I'd hardly call myself an expert on Islam, so perhaps someone more familiar with it could reply better than I
Having a unified Arab religion arise due to some Arab conqueror is certainly plausible, but without Christianity the theology of said religion would be very different.
 
In this scenario I would imagine christianity to not appeal to the masses and perhaps something like the Cult of Sol Invictus would take it's OTL place. Certainly no Roman Emperor would consent to a life of Vegitarianism. I would however expect the persecutions to continue, the reason that christians were persecuted has nothing to do with them being a threat but everything to do with them being pacifists who do not worship the Emperor. It was a distinctly un-roman thing to do to not serve in the legions as well as not venerate the emperor. The jews could get away with it because their tradition was ancient, the christians however were just some upstart sect that didn't have ancient roots and thus should be persecuted as "other". Persecution has everything to do with being a Roman and nothing to do with threat levels.

Admittedly, I don't think the toiling masses ate much meat, so it might be possible to convert some of them. Does fish count as meat to Peter? (as it doesnt' for Meatless Fridays OTL)
 
Fifty years had passed since the Christians had held their council, and their success had been greatly limited. They had been faced with great discrimination from the Roman government for refusing to participate in public rituals and the military. Their numbers had barely grown in fifty years, and they were widely considered to be a bizarre superstition by most Romans.

Judaism, the parent religion of Christianity, had been greatly damaged by the Roman empire as well. The Jews had risen up in revolt against the Romans in 70 AD, and had been crushed by Roman soldiers. Many had fled into Parthia to escape persecution. The Romans had grown tired of strange Judaic religions that restricted peoples' diets and denied their many gods.

The Roman religion was polytheist, like the similar religion of the Greeks, but the idea of monotheism had been drifting around the Mediterranean world since the days of Plato. Already, for many Romans the religion was less the worship of many gods, and more like the henotheist worship of one god among many. The cult of the emperor was also prominent, and it was sometimes associated with individual gods. Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Mars, and the others remained popular among the Romans

Not all of the gods were native Roman, however. Many of the Roman gods had been Hellenized, and many pure Greek gods had entered the Roman religion. The cults of Egyptian gods had become popular among many Romans as well. Isis and Serapis had become a popular duo of gods throughout the Roman world, with many joining the double cult which, having been popular at all levels of society in its native Egypt, appealed to people of all levels of society in Rome as well. Isis was equated with many other female goddesses such as Ceres, adding to her popularity. Meanwhile, the sun god Elagabalus of Syria was slowly gaining followers other than the Syrians as well.
 
Not neccesarily, in fact I would contend that Islam was mostly the result of one former merchant trying to unite the arabian peninsula than any religious movement, at least at first. The fact that Axum a Roman Ally attacked Mecca, where Mohommad was from helped coalesce the ideology. Although I'd hardly call myself an expert on Islam, so perhaps someone more familiar with it could reply better than I
This seems remarkably doubtful. Especially since A)Islamic theology and the Qu'ran is extensively influenced by Christianity, especially the eschatological trends that developed in it and Judaism(c.f. the compostion, B) the toppling of the Himayrite Kingdom happened a hell of a long time before Muhammed was even born(unless you're thinking of something else), and C) The consolidation of pan-Arabian power and the nucleus of the Islamic state really happens during and after the Ridda Wars under Abu Bakr*, suggesting that there was an ideology pushing the movement beyond Muhammed's death. It is true that the very history of Islam is not very well understood largely owing to minimal archaeological excavation of the period in Saudi Arabia, few surviving period sources, and the fact that textual study of the Qu'ran is not well developed, but that suggestion is speculative at best.
 
1) Peter wasnt vegetarian, for crying out loud. He was a fisherman who lived off what he caught!
2) did you actually read that link? It's ... not very objective, shall we say.
3) whether you eat meat any other time of the year, you MUST eat lamb at Pesach. Yes, there are modern reform jews that do a vegetarian version, but i strongly suspect thats 20th century.
4) remember that the big four, peter, andrew, james and john were all fishermen. For Peter to denounce fish eating would cause an actual schism in the early days, not just the loud debates of otl.

Ya. If that was the vision he remembered, christianity would not get very far, at least among the wealthy. The boor, who maybe never had meat, sure.



Oh, and before anyone else mentions it "Thou shalt not kill." In hebrew is clearly talking about murder rather than 'killing'. Look at the number of times God tells the Israelite army to kill.
 
Despite the religious occurrences of the Roman Empire being different from OTL, the general politics of the empire remained fairly the same for a while. The madman tyrant Caligula was assassinated in 41 AD and replaced by his uncle Claudius. After Claudius came Nero, whose reign was initially successful, but later became tainted by minor defeats in border provinces and some slight economic decline. Like both Caligula and Claudius, Nero created anti-Christian propaganda, primarily calling the Christians unpatriotic and disloyal cowards. This worked against him when Rome caught fire in 63, only one year before OTL. Initially, many people tried to blame the emperor for setting the fire, and Nero fell under great suspicion. He attempted to divert blame on the Christians, but his own propaganda, one piece of which claimed that the Christians did not eat meat because they feared the fire needed to cook it as flame was created by the gods, worked against him. The rumors of Nero having a hand in the fire grew, possibly supported by agents of his enemies such as Galba, already ambitious for the throne in Rome. Eventually a popular uprising occurred in Rome, and Nero, knowing his reign was at an end, killed himself.

Understandably, a civil war began following Galba's attempt to seize power. Galba, old and feeble like OTL, was unable to win the wars of succession, and he was soon toppled. Vespasian, however, was unable to rally support around himself as in OTL, as the Great Jewish Revolt had not yet occurred when the civil war break out, so he was not a war hero. Instead, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, the hero of the Parthian wars, would rally support and become the emperor of Rome. Corbulo brought peace and stability to Rome, and he reigned from 69 to his death in 75 at age sixty-eight.
 
1) Peter wasnt vegetarian, for crying out loud. He was a fisherman who lived off what he caught!
2) did you actually read that link? It's ... not very objective, shall we say.
3) whether you eat meat any other time of the year, you MUST eat lamb at Pesach. Yes, there are modern reform jews that do a vegetarian version, but i strongly suspect thats 20th century.
4) remember that the big four, peter, andrew, james and john were all fishermen. For Peter to denounce fish eating would cause an actual schism in the early days, not just the loud debates of otl.
1. Peter was no longer a fisherman at this time, he was a missionary. People have done stranger things than change what they eat when they change religions.
2. Considering our only source on this matter is a translation of a translation of a translation (the Bible), I imagine that any interpretation of those words is fairly valid. Any counter argument would just be reinterpreting the ancient translation a different way.
3. Jewish traditions and customs have mostly been abandoned since the Council of Jerusalem.
4. Denouncing circumcision was an equally big, if not bigger schism, that was at least partially resolved.

Ya. If that was the vision he remembered, christianity would not get very far, at least among the wealthy. The boor, who maybe never had meat, sure.
We already have mostly established that Christianity will remain a tiny religion. I had this planned from the beginning.


Oh, and before anyone else mentions it "Thou shalt not kill." In hebrew is clearly talking about murder rather than 'killing'. Look at the number of times God tells the Israelite army to kill.
Christian pacifism existed in those early days, as did Christian vegetarianism. They were two existing factions of Christianity in those days that I simply had become the dominant ones.
 
It probably would'nt be to long until you saw a split in early Christianity with the original group going on to become like the Jains, a small highly pacifistic religion while the other group would be more moderate and pragmatic.

Said group would probably be somewhere between OTL Hinduism and Buddhism, preaching that people should eat little meat as possible and that Vegetarianism is an ultimate goal, but not an absolute requirement.

This would likely lead to a small list of animals that could be eaten, most likely Seafood, Galliformes, Cows and a few others, though I would'nt be surprised if Pork remained forbidden.

I'd also imagine that Monks and Nuns would have to take Vows of Vegetarianism as well.
 
It probably would'nt be to long until you saw a split in early Christianity with the original group going on to become like the Jains, a small highly pacifistic religion while the other group would be more moderate and pragmatic.

Said group would probably be somewhere between OTL Hinduism and Buddhism, preaching that people should eat little meat as possible and that Vegetarianism is an ultimate goal, but not an absolute requirement.

This would likely lead to a small list of animals that could be eaten, most likely Seafood, Galliformes, Cows and a few others, though I would'nt be surprised if Pork remained forbidden.

I'd also imagine that Monks and Nuns would have to take Vows of Vegetarianism as well.
A generation or two after Peter's death, I suppose it is possible for them to become more moderate. I might implement something similar to this.
 
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