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.......................but instead many Gods?:D

I got to thinking about this after learning about religion in the time of Jesus. Instead of having 'religions' like we know them today, with specific orthodoxy and hierarchy, religion to many around the Mediterranean was a matter of choosing which Gods to worship. People were mostly polytheistic, and worshiped many different Gods. If they were crossing the ocean, they'd worship Poseidon, and if they were looking for a lover, they'd worship Aphrodite. There were family Gods, regional Gods, etc. Furthermore, the polytheism was very adaptable--if the Greeks got to a new land, they'd say 'Hey, that god you worship looks like that god we worship! They're the same god!" or sometimes "We don't have a god like that. Add him to the list!". This is all apart of the Hellenism that the Greeks spread throughout the Mediterranean world, and was adopted by the Romans. However, it was eventually replaced by monotheism, in the form of Christianity.

So my question is, what if Jesus is never born, and monotheism doesn't rise to prominence? The polytheistic system around before Christ was pretty adaptable, so how long could it have lasted? How would the Roman Empire fare without the rise of Christianity? Human history would be very different without the rise of monotheism--on the political side, we wouldn't have things like the crusades or Mohammad's wars of conquest and other wars fought in the name of religion. Also, people's lives would be drastically different without the introduction of Christian, and later Muslim, orthodoxy. On the other hand, would monotheism rise to prominence anyway? All it takes, as history has shown, is one prophet.
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