The World without Christ

There clearly is an interest in the historicity of Jesus. Would somebody be up for making a thread in chat? I would, but Christmas flu has left me pretty sure I'm dying.
 
All this is quite true, but the idea that every development happens in isolation is equally flawed. You're not arguing that, certainly, but saying "neoplatonism did not emerge before the 3rd century CE" does avoid the reality that Neoplatonism didn't emerge in a vacuum. The whole mess of Gnosticism, Platonic mysticism (merging with earlier mystical influences in Greek religion and mythology) et cetera was a product of the same bckground that also produced Christianity, various other Jewish sects, an upsurge in cultism in the Greco-Roman world...

All these things are going to take different shapes, but the background that brought them about is still there. Certain general tendencies and processes are still going to be there, Christ or no Christ. To name an example: this may be a world where (assuming his historicity for the sake of the example) the man who became the apostle Paul in OTL remains of a (proto?-)Gnostic mindset, and becomes a defender of such ideas. (And without Christianity, 'Gnosticism' will be different, sure, but at this point we may be quite certain that proto-Gnosticism was emerging in a Helleno-Jewish context before or concurrent with the emergence of Christianity. Lack of Christ means a different Gnosticism, but it doesn't mean no Gnosticism.)

It was not my intention to argue that nothing similar to neo-platonism would arise, but I believe that TTL's equivalent would certainly nort be exact the same as OTL. Compare that to a TTL there the Glorious Revolution failed. You would probably still see some form of *socialism arising, but Marxism as we know it would certainly be butterflied.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
It was not my intention to argue that nothing similar to neo-platonism would arise, but I believe that TTL's equivalent would certainly nort be exact the same as OTL. Compare that to a TTL there the Glorious Revolution failed. You would probably still see some form of *socialism arising, but Marxism as we know it would certainly be butterflied.

We are in complete agreement.
 
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