WI: A World of Prophets

In the OTL, there have been a few people who claimed to be prophets or messiahs of God and who managed to have major religions formed around them. Christ and Muhammad and Joseph Smith, and so on. My question is what if that went even further?

Back in Christ's time, for example, there were multitudes of people claiming to be a prophet or the Jewish Messiah. So what if people claiming to be prophets or the messiah got more prominent, and the world was balkanized even further among religions, with someone in France worshipping a different prophet or messiah than the people in Italy, and Italy and France worshipping a different guy than Germany, and so on?
 

PhilippeO

Banned
isn't this already happen during Pagan Europe ? and India also have regular Guru / Prophet appear.


on the religion that survive death of their prophet, they convert each other, either by peaceful means or by sword, eventually their number will be reduced too. religion that more successful in organizing themselves (establish standard hierarchy and ceremony), supported by an empire, philosophically satisfying, adept at syncretizing culture and missionary aggressive will gain an edge over the other. the end result will still be fewer religion than number of prophet.
 
Trouble is, only the Abrahamic religions are dogmatic and, since they teach One Almighty God who gave his divine commandments to Abraham, by their nature cannot coexist with other belief traditions. You can be Buddhist and also openly believe in your local folk deities. You can't be a Christian and still (openly, at least) worship anything other than the Messiah.

And of the Abrahamic religions, only two have been expansionary and evangelical (Buddhism also spread through evangelical zeal, but it doesn't demand a monopoly on worship). So unless the concept of One Almighty God with His divine laws crops up independently around the world at around the same time it's hard to see how multiple gods become divisive objects.
 

Hnau

Banned
@EternalCynic

That really makes me wonder what Earth would look like if Judaism had been destroyed by the Assyrians. It has affected world history in such a huge way.
 
It depends on what you actually mean by "prophet", on a scale from "religion founder" to somebody who claims to have the ultimate authority for specific statements in concrete situations.


If we stay rather with the latter end of this range, this has happened IOTL in early Christianity.
One would have to imagine that consequently, all communities, later all bishoprics would have diverging traditions and opinions.

Much more chaotic is what went on in Gnostic communities. This led to the description
"Everyday everyone of them invents something new."

It is funny that Christian orthodoxy, with all its unifying consequences such as ecclesiastic discipline, mainly was ignited by the need to separate from Gnosis.
So in a way, it led to abandoning a common feature ...
 
Back in Christ's time, for example, there were multitudes of people claiming to be a prophet or the Jewish Messiah.
I can think of Bar Kochba, but who else?
Today, everybody and his mother can start his own little cult if he feels bored, but back then, this was "serious business", so I doubt many people would dare to try.
 
You have plenty of this going on in India right now, and there have been multiple people claiming to be Christ's second coming even in the West.

What you are wanting is not more people claiming to be messiah, but more people being successful at it. However, I would imagine this would mean religions replacing each other rather than each nation having it's own one.
 
@EternalCynic

That really makes me wonder what Earth would look like if Judaism had been destroyed by the Assyrians. It has affected world history in such a huge way.

This actually came up just recently in another thread, but check out In the House of Sorrows by Poul Anderson, set in just such a world...
 
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