WI Herod's soldiers had caught the baby Jesus?

Except, of course, that the story of Herod targetting every firstborn son (or whatever it was), would be pure stupidity for any ruler, especially one as otherwise well regarded as Herod.

Herod was certainly popular with Rome, but the Jewish populace was not very fond of him. He was seen as more Roman than Jewish and displaced the Hasmonean heir apparent. He also seems to have been a paranoiac, he killed his own sons and many rabbis.
 
Erm...that might be wee a bit 'christo-entric' friend. There was a number of phophets (including Jesus) that influenced Islam. Maybe more so. In Koranic references to Jesus, it warns that his divinity is false by saying,

"People of the book, do not trangrees the bounds of your religion. Speak nothing but the truth of God. The messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, was no more than God's apostle..."

I think they would have got along just fine without him. Sorry.

Johanus.

Mecca, up until the early 600's, was a city of the Quraysh tribal alliance, as well as an ancient holy site for other Arabic tribes, and the main overland commercial hub in all Arabia. It was also home to respectable numbers of Christian and Jewish converts in the area. Khadijah, Mohammed's first wife, may have been a Christian herself. And some Arabs that followed neither religion, called Hanifs, were monotheistic. But Christianity and Judaism both have scripture and doctrine, so its not disputible where the founder of Islam got most of his material from.


And for those of you whom think that the armies of Islam would just bulldoze their way through Europe if it weren't for Christianity; thats a load of crap. Islam's rapid military expansion was due in large part to the fact that both the Byzantine and Sassanids in the west and east were in economic meltdown, due to the wars in previous decades. Egypt, Palestine and Syria was a hotbed of different Christian heresies, which were difficult for the Orthodox Nicene Church to contain. And just as was the case in the Sassanid Empire, central authority was weakening, and the population was made impoverished by over-taxation.

It seems also that some of the natives of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, had initially thought of Islam as another kind of Christianity. In any case, the Arabs were tolerant of their faiths by necessity. Plus, the Caliphs needed the local upper-classes to recruit as bureaucrats and secretaries.

After that, the conquest of much of North Africa was helped by the logistics of ships from Syria and Egypt and the durable Arabic Dromedaries that supplied the Arabic forces fighting the Byzantine Exarchate of Carthage, and the disparate Berber tribes.

And the Visigothic Kingdom in Spain was unstable, due to being ruled by a small minority of Germanic-descendent nobility, the fact that they largely practiced different kinds of Christianity for so long, and because the wars of reconquest instigated by the Eastern Emperor Justinian was damaging to them as well.

In many ways, the fratricidal relations between different Christian ideologies was one recipe for internal division.
 
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There is no way there is going to be an Islam anything like OTL without Christianity.

Factually the Herod first-born story is just that, a story or at least, I've seen no evidence for that particular event. I think a lot of it depends on Paul who is almost surely still born here. He did a lot to transform Christianity into the "God-is-love" idea of today. Assuming he still sours on Judaism he'll probably go to another type of faith. I'd put my money on a modified Judeo-Isis religion as Isis had a major love-component IIRC. I for one think a dominant mother-Goddess type religion would be absolutely fascinating.
 
...it seems that without Christianity Buddhism, probably influenced by neo-platonic Gnosticism or Manichaeism might become the faith of the empire. It is possible that the pagan gods would be relegated to minor intercessory spirits, like Mithras was in Zarathustranism or the pagan Indian gods were in some forms of Buddhism...

(New guy posting here, I apologize if I break any forum conventions) This is actually very similar to a timeline I was playing around with. I'm no expert in early Christian history, so those who are, please let me know if I'm off-base on any of this.

As Syriac said, Buddhism seems to be more philosophical than Christianity. Since the link with Buddhism and the Western World would have come through Hellenistic contact with the east, the early adopters of Buddhism in Europe would probably have been the Greeks -- very possibly some of the same Greek areas that were early adopters of Christianity, such as Antioch.

Now, assuming Buddhist contact in Antioch was early enough, and if Jesus did not exist, suppose the same atmosphere which supported the work of Paul instead chose to support an enclave of Buddhism there. Perhaps even to the point of establishing a Buddhist monastery. And from there, monasteries begin to be built throughout the Eastern Empire. Even though the religion itself is more philosophical, these monasteries might be practicing their philosophies of charity among the poor and downtrodden, which certainly would attract such individuals to the philosophy, even if they don't entirely 'get' it.

Meanwhile, across the Mediterranean, this philosophy spreads via merchants to Massallia and into Gaul. Here, where the mysticism of Druidism is still a recent memory, the people may take up the philosophy naturally as a replacement.

The Romans although mistrustful of this new movement, do not persecute these groups to anywhere near the extent they did the Christians. In fact, this system of monasteries providing food and shelter to the poor becomes a sort of a welfare infrastructure, which becomes important to the lifeline of the Empire.

And so, come to the fourth century, and a Constantine-analogue appears, searching for something to unite the Empire in the wake of civil war and with the threat of Barbarians taking over. Facing the Maxentius-analogue along the Tiber, he despairs of the futility of it all and calls for a council with the enemy. Walking across the plain, with no armor, nor advisors, and there, in the sight of the Roman soldiers, strips his clothes off, proclaims the tenets of Greek-Buddhism, and proceeds to immolate himself to show the futility of it all.

As Maxentius-analogue proves to be a rather weak ruler, the Western Empire falls precipitously from there. The Germans sack Rome a full century earlier, the Sassanids march right through to the Mediterranean coast and take over Anatolia. The Greek-Celtic-Buddhist monks of the West find themselves taken on as advisors to the new German rulers in controlling their subjects, and the cultural damage is relatively well-contained. The Eastern Empire still survives for some time, something like a Byzantine Empire without the Ikons.


 

JSmith

Banned
And killed him and his parents? What happens next? Does paganism continue or does some other religion take over? And what replaces Christmas?


I would think this wouldnt be possible. Surely we would see the militant Jesus that appears in Revelation- lightning bolts from his ass and so forth.
 
It seems to me that the centralization of power in the imperial religion is going to show up regardless of the actual faith. It seems to be more a Roman thing than a solely Christian one. So you are likely to see some sort of "high priest" arise in Rome or Constantinople, maybe both. There will most likely be a religious hierarchy paralleling the political hierarchy of the empire with the clergy of "lesser" provinces being dependent on the approval of their superiors.

Although, this may be somewhat unlikely, it most certainly is an interesting hypothesis. Afterall, the first initiatives in the centralization and institutionalization of an imperial state religion encompassing all the traditional Roman, Hellenic, and Oriental pagan cults occured in 250 AD, with the Emperor Traianus Decius' edict calling for Empire-wide sacrifices before local magistrates to ensure "the safety of the empire". This coupled with a trend dating back to the 2nd centry of identifying the traditional pagan deities as manifestations of single supreme god, could have potentially led to an institutionalized, Empire-wide paganism, similar to what Julian the Apostate may have attempted to create.
 
There is no way there is going to be an Islam anything like OTL without Christianity.

Factually the Herod first-born story is just that, a story or at least, I've seen no evidence for that particular event. I think a lot of it depends on Paul who is almost surely still born here. He did a lot to transform Christianity into the "God-is-love" idea of today. Assuming he still sours on Judaism he'll probably go to another type of faith. I'd put my money on a modified Judeo-Isis religion as Isis had a major love-component IIRC. I for one think a dominant mother-Goddess type religion would be absolutely fascinating.

Yes, Paul did an excellent job of syncreticising Hellenistic ideas with Judaism making it acceptable to Gentiles and so forth (for example the view of life as a contest- 'I have fought the good fight', an image totally alien to Judaism but very much rooted in Hellenistic culture) but the man was pretty mysogynistic- I can't see him doing quite the same for a mother goddess sect.
 
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I remember a short story titled something like "Jupiter Laughs" in an AH collection I read when much younger - it extrapolated to a 20th century world dominated by Rome (I know, cliche'). The POD was the death of the Holy Family during the flight to Egypt.
 
Yes, Paul did an excellent job of syncreticising Hellenistic ideas with Judaism making it acceptable to Gentiles and so forth (for example the view of life as a contest- 'I have fought the good fight', an image totally alien to Judaism but very much rooted in Hellenistic culture) but the man was pretty mysogynistic- I can't see him doing quite the same for a mother goddess sect.
Good point. I hate to use Mithraism, it just seems so cliche. Maybe as a male counter-part to Isis? So a paternalistic Father-Mother dichotomy?
 
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