WI: No Jesus.

Since there's been umpteen dozen No Muhammad threads, let's presume that Joshua BenMiryam is miscarried on the journey to Bethlehem due to a fall from a donkey.

Hence, no Rabbi Joshua, no Christianity.

Discuss.

Disclaimer-I am an agnostically apatheistic Christian. I don't have a grudge against Christianity.
 
One of the other mystery religions (Mithraism, for example), might have sprung up to take the place of Christianity.

Or we could have that one alternate Earth like in Star Trek... the one in which the Roman Empire never fell and gladiator matches were broadcast on television. :D
 
As Sergio said: Probably another religion would have taken Christianity's place.
I actually doubt Mithraism as a replacement for Christianity. Even though there also was a eucharistie, maybe even a taurobolia ("christening" with a bull's blood), and Mithras was a kind of messiah. But it was also a secret society, not admitting women and slaves to their cult. Thus, Mithraism's sociological basis was too small to be a state religion.
Geza Alföldy emphasized that the most important factor for the spreading of Christianity was the mutual help members gave provided for each other.

I think, in the Roman Empire time was ready for a monotheistic cult. I can imagine a gnostic-neoplatonic Sun cult. Even Pontius Pilate swore by the Sun, Jesus was innocent (according to the aprocryph gospel of Nicodemus). Elagabal, Aurelian, Constantin and Julian worshipped the Sun (maybe remnants of Egyptian cults?).

If the solar cult would have succeeded, the connection between the middle ages and antiquity would have been even more stronger than in OTL. Medieval cities wouldn't have been build around cathedrals but around sun temples and capitols. We would not read the Bible but Homer, Vergil and - maybe - kind of Edda. Maybe no inquisition, but also no social welfare and no hospitals.

I forgot: Without Christianity, no Islam as we know it. And because of that maybe Persia and Inner Asia would stay to the cult of Mani.
 
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Keenir

Banned
As Sergio said: Probably another religion would have taken Christianity's place.
I actually doubt Mithraism as a replacement for Christianity. Even though there also was a eucharistie, maybe even a taurobolia ("christening" with a bull's blood), and Mithras was a kind of messiah. But it was also a secret society, not admitting women and slaves to their cult. Thus, Mithraism's sociological basis was too small to be a state religion.
Geza Alföldy emphasized that the most important factor for the spreading of Christianity was the mutual help members gave provided for each other.

yeah, and all religions give mutual help to other members of their religion.


Maybe no inquisition, but also no social welfare and no hospitals.

the Romans had hospitals and the concept of (and ability to) care for the poor and needy.
 
Jesus

According to many recent studies, Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Many of the early Christians believed in a Christ in a spiritual sense. They did not believe in an actual human redeemer. There are many reasons why Christianity still developed without there having to be real human Jesus.
 
According to many recent studies, Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Many of the early Christians believed in a Christ in a spiritual sense. They did not believe in an actual human redeemer. There are many reasons why Christianity still developed without there having to be real human Jesus.
That's why I think a better 'no Christianity' POD (for ending Christianity, I mean) would be no Paulus. Kill him off before he switched sides, or just after, and Christianity is likely to just be a Jewish sect.
 
(This is assuming Christ exist, and Christianity isn't the result of Paul fabricating him)

There were several 'Messiah's hovering around Palestine at the same time as Jesus was, and several of them were rather similar, before they were assimilated/annexed by Christianity. However, most of them were Jewish Revolutionary-type groups, which would have trouble (obviously) becoming Gentile groups.

But wait! Christianity kept competing with other groups for power in later centuries. I'm not so sure that Mithraism couldn't become the dominant religion. After all, OTL it kept women and slaves out, but it could easily have mutated - it already had before in order to become the religion of Sol Invictus. Actually, that suddenly put to my mind some religious war between Orthodox Mithraists and Protestant Mithraists. Cool.

But I digress. The most likely thing to be seen would probably be some sort of Neo-Platonist religion coming out of Rome, assuming that butterflies didn't cause it to adopt something we've never heard of or the Viking religion.

Probably outcome? The Roman Empire lasts another, say, century or so, and the Dark Ages are nowhere near as bad as they were in our timeline, since the transition would probably be smoother with the cult followed being a Roman cult rather than a foreign one. That's not to say that for peasants at the bottom it wouldn't probably be more difficult and violent than OTL. Impossible to say, with such a far-back PoD.
 
Roses are reddish, violets are bluish.
If it wasn't for Jesus we'd all be Jewish.

I think, in the Roman Empire time was ready for a monotheistic cult. I can imagine a gnostic-neoplatonic Sun cult. Even Pontius Pilate swore by the Sun, Jesus was innocent (according to the aprocryph gospel of Nicodemus). Elagabal, Aurelian, Constantin and Julian worshipped the Sun (maybe remnants of Egyptian cults?).

Elagabal was actually a hereditary temple-priest of a Syrian temple-state, and that's probably how you should look at his actions.

I agree Sun worship was becoming more mportant, but I think it's morehenotheistic than monotheistic. That is to say that Sol Invictus is a mighty god, but not the only one.

If the solar cult would have succeeded, the connection between the middle ages and antiquity would have been even more stronger than in OTL. Medieval cities wouldn't have been build around cathedrals but around sun temples and capitols. We would not read the Bible but Homer, Vergil and - maybe - kind of Edda. Maybe no inquisition, but also no social welfare and no hospitals.[/quot]

I dunno. OTL Christianity became the State Religion; the Pope's title is decsended from Roman ones, and the Holy Roman Empire existed until 200 years ago. Byzantium, a Christian Roman State, survived for centuries.

Perhaps without the monks of Jesus writing down ancient manuscripts, we lose even more of our classical heritage.
 
Perhaps without the monks of Jesus writing down ancient manuscripts, we lose even more of our classical heritage.

But then again, how many thousands of works were destroyed by soldiers of Jesus since they weren't religious works? I suspect that a Roman cult, particularly a Roman Transcendental Neo-Platonist cult would in fact do just the opposite towards classical works. I really can't see that type of religion being as fiery and overpowering as Christianity was, and still is, in some parts.
 
But then again, how many thousands of works were destroyed by soldiers of Jesus since they weren't religious works? I suspect that a Roman cult, particularly a Roman Transcendental Neo-Platonist cult would in fact do just the opposite towards classical works. I really can't see that type of religion being as fiery and overpowering as Christianity was, and still is, in some parts.

OTL's response to Christians suggests that Roman religion did have an intolerat streak at times.

Im not aware of any non-Christian heretical works banned by the Church because they ween't religious.
 
According to many recent studies, Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Many of the early Christians believed in a Christ in a spiritual sense. They did not believe in an actual human redeemer.

Sources? It seems rather hard to dispute the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, seeing as there is more historical evidence for him than Julius Caesar, in terms of numbers and ages of manuscripts relating to them. Whether he was divine or a madman is another question, but one that some people have a hard time separating from his actual existence as a human being in Palestine in the first century AD.
 
According to many recent studies, Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Many of the early Christians believed in a Christ in a spiritual sense. They did not believe in an actual human redeemer. There are many reasons why Christianity still developed without there having to be real human Jesus.

I don't consider him a real person, but a myth. Refer to studies by George Wells "The Jesus Myth" and Early Doherty "Jesus Puzzle". There is also the controversial passage in the historian Josephus' passage and other studies.

Where are you getting your information from, other than these two books that are known to be very biased in the research?
 
According to many recent studies, Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Many of the early Christians believed in a Christ in a spiritual sense. They did not believe in an actual human redeemer. There are many reasons why Christianity still developed without there having to be real human Jesus.

When you make these kind of claims and people dispute them, like I did, please don't PM them(me) telling them(me) you don't want to have a discussion about the topic.
 
Jesus

Religious topics are always controversial. They tend to spark alot of emotion, hard feelings, and even rage. I generally enjoy this discussion group. Since I was a history major in college, it has been a good way to learn about areas of the world that I'm interested in. I do agree that religious topics may come up, but only in an historical context. I tend to think of this group as dealing more with political and social history. I don't feel qualified to discuss any theological topic. I initially responded to this thread about Jesus because I don't think that it can be assumed that everyone even believes that he was an actual person.
 
Actually, this discussion (as well as the parallel ones currently going on about Jesus) has been neither heated nor remotely close to a flame war. However, whatever one thinks of the religion founded in his name, most people - even atheists - tend to accept that a "Jesus" of some sort did exist. From a strictly empirical perspective it is easier to accept the written evidence that some troublesome Jewish prophet was actually crucified and a cult established on this basis than believe the very existence of Jesus is entirely fictional. As has been said elsewhere, there is about as much literary evidence for the existence of Jesus as many figures of antiquity and even later (Socrates, Shakespeare, anyone?).
 
I hope everyone appreciates the irony that there is a discussion going on about the existence of Jesus in a thread dedicated to a timeline where he was never born.

Wouldn't it be easier just to say that a man was born (or in this timeline wasn't) who was either
(A) The son of God
(B) A radical rabbi believed divine by his followers or
(C) Someone who cooked up the story about a man named Jesus, and since we can't know who for certain we will just nickname HIM Jesus

In other words it doesn't matter to this timeline, the out come would be the same. The point is the ramafications of the absence of Christianity.
 
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