As many of you students of Antiquity may know, the Jewish community around 100 BCE to 150 CE was full of complex sectarian tensions between conventional groups such as the Sadducees and Pharisees (the latter ultimately won out and became the mainstream rabbinic faction) and more extreme factions such as the ascetic Essenes and the violently nationalist Zealots. The Zealot influence helped spark the war of 66-70 that led to Jerusalem's destruction, the 115-117 Kitos War, and the 132-135 Bar Kokhba revolt, and ultimately Rome forcibly scattered many Jews remaining in Judea and Egypt (though not all), leading to the current diaspora situation.
Let's say for whatever reason, better messaging by Pharisees, less heavy-handed Roman treatment of refusal to honor the imperial cult, etc., the revolts are staved off and the Jews of the Roman Empire quietly fade into the Empire like most of the other citizens, eventually becoming quite Romanized. What is the ultimate fate of the Jews as a people as Rome falls (if it does in this scenario the same way)?
Are the Mediterranean Jews ultimately Christianized? Does the underlying POD preclude Christianity forming in the first place? Ditto for Islam? If Islam does form as in OTL, does the larger number of Jews left in Palestine and Egypt convert to Islam due to a less deeply felt sense of "separateness" within the Roman system (I assume Byzantine persecution would be less acute in this TL, especially if many convert or practice syncretic Judaeo-Christian faith)? Or does Judaism remain something akin to native spiritualities like Chinese folk religion (as in pre Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, etc.), Shinto, or native American and African beliefs, coexisting with an overlay of evangelizing global religions as more of a secular tradition than a worshipped faith?
In any event, were Judaism to be absorbed and most Jews converted as I envision in such scenarios, I still think there would be a population of groups outside the Roman sphere, perhaps in China or India for instance, that would be similar to the OTL Parsi community (Zoroastrians) of India in their continuing adherence to the Jewish faith, just not the interconnected community that exists today.
Let's say for whatever reason, better messaging by Pharisees, less heavy-handed Roman treatment of refusal to honor the imperial cult, etc., the revolts are staved off and the Jews of the Roman Empire quietly fade into the Empire like most of the other citizens, eventually becoming quite Romanized. What is the ultimate fate of the Jews as a people as Rome falls (if it does in this scenario the same way)?
Are the Mediterranean Jews ultimately Christianized? Does the underlying POD preclude Christianity forming in the first place? Ditto for Islam? If Islam does form as in OTL, does the larger number of Jews left in Palestine and Egypt convert to Islam due to a less deeply felt sense of "separateness" within the Roman system (I assume Byzantine persecution would be less acute in this TL, especially if many convert or practice syncretic Judaeo-Christian faith)? Or does Judaism remain something akin to native spiritualities like Chinese folk religion (as in pre Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, etc.), Shinto, or native American and African beliefs, coexisting with an overlay of evangelizing global religions as more of a secular tradition than a worshipped faith?
In any event, were Judaism to be absorbed and most Jews converted as I envision in such scenarios, I still think there would be a population of groups outside the Roman sphere, perhaps in China or India for instance, that would be similar to the OTL Parsi community (Zoroastrians) of India in their continuing adherence to the Jewish faith, just not the interconnected community that exists today.