WI- No Jews

Why would polytheism survive in East and South Eurasia but not in Western Eurasia outside of the Persian Empire?

Sorry it was a bit unclear. I meant religions like Hinduism, Taoism etc... might spread further without Christianity or Islam.
 
Well, the abandoning of polytheism was more about human advancement of philosophy and science. But Monotheism is not likely to be strong without Jews... Philoshophical, mistical or Bitheism (one good god, one bad god) would flourish.
 
Well, the abandoning of polytheism was more about human advancement of philosophy and science. But Monotheism is not likely to be strong without Jews... Philoshophical, mistical or Bitheism (one good god, one bad god) would flourish.

Qualify this, because I think it's utter crap.
 
Well, the abandoning of polytheism was more about human advancement of philosophy and science. But Monotheism is not likely to be strong without Jews... Philoshophical, mistical or Bitheism (one good god, one bad god) would flourish.

Yes I agree. If anything, it is more logical to have multiple gods than just one, especially if you have a god who is not omnipotent, because of the sheer number of forces of nature you could assign with gods.
 
There's a lot of the 'Stars in the Sky fallacy' (as I have just coined it) in this thread. Please note, everyone, that the big, important religions we see today, like Islam, Christianity, Taoism and Hinduism are not inherently predestined to conquer or convert pagan/indigenous beliefs.
 
Yes I agree. If anything, it is more logical to have multiple gods than just one, especially if you have a god who is not omnipotent, because of the sheer number of forces of nature you could assign with gods.

Actually, one of the reasons Christianity was developing so fast was, next to the promise of eternal salvation and all that metaphysical stuff, the fact there was only one God to pray to. No more twenty sheeps to twenty different gods on each holiday.
 
Hinduism and Buddhism would play a much larger role in religion, with the distinct possibility of Hinduism spreading to Africa through trade routes and such.
 
Christianity's rise to authority had more to do with it's church's organizational nature and its appeal to Constantine and his heirs than it did to any spiritual or philosophical appeal. At the very least, there is nothing creditable about replacing one sort of superstition (polytheism) with another (monotheism). Trinitarian Christianity would have been nothing without the imperial patronage of the Roman Empire.
 
In OTL, it has been said that the Helenized Jews changed Judiac actions so strongly that most Jews nowadays, culturally, are the purest reflection of what Greeks were (education, inquisitiveness, etc.) since those Greeks under the Ottomans followed Church directives of submission and previous anti antiquity thinking.

In fact, Jesus has been described as a stoic of Greek traditions, albeit a bad one since he claimed to represent truth itself and other deviations. Yet he was practically a non stop retorical question, a very stoical methodology.

So if Jews went all the way, we might see a variety of changes. I doubt they would give up their religion any more than others tend to give up religions. The snap back from Greek ways was about 150 BC I recall, but it was partial only.
 
Top