What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

[Stray Cat]

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

 

The heroes find a book that states that the Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesue was still alive in the library of the team's mage. He explains that the book, a world history text, was given to him by a friend in an alternate reality.

The question for our learned panel is this. Assuming that this world's history was identical to the CU's before this event, how is this world different from the CU?

 

A lot of the differences could depend on what caused the fall of the empire. Or are you saying that the causes for the fall occurred sooner. Because then I still have to ask what caused the causes to occur sooner....

 

Cat

[Lightray]

I just hope the history buffs come to a consensus' date=' so that when I get my time machine finished, I know what I need to do to keep Christianity and Islam from ever developing.[/quote']

Why not just get Constantine to choose Mithraism instead of Christianity? Since the Mithraic religion appealed to a limited group of the populace (men, mostly soldiers), there would be other sub-religions or cults around for everyone else. Likely they'd be derived from Zoroastrianism or one of the eastern mystery cults, but I wouldn't think that would be a drawback.

[Mark Rand]

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

 

A lot of the differences could depend on what caused the fall of the empire. Or are you saying that the causes for the fall occurred sooner. Because then I still have to ask what caused the causes to occur sooner....

 

Cat

The Roman Empire collapsed due to too much expansion to soon and corrupt officials. Jesus had nothing to do with it and continued being a rabbi until his death of natural causes. I'm guessing that Islam replaces Christianity as the dominant religion and, in some countries, Islamic garb is worn by women of many faiths.

[gojira]

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

 

Well, here's some other guesses:

 

1. Jesus get killed by the Pharisees a lot earlier than he did.

 

2. Jesus as "messiah" was looked at to literally overthrow Rome and free individual populations from Rome's control--one of the reasons for it's early (<300 AD) success.

 

3. With no strong Roman Empire to rail against, St. Paul is not successful at converting masses to Christianity. Christianity is either still born or much much smaller than it is today. Probably local religions (paganism) remain intact.

 

4. Mohanmed and Islam never happen (one of his inspirations was the intellectual and bookish Christianity.)

 

5. Arab conquerers convert people to their brand of paganism in the 8th century.

 

6. Gengis Khan (and his decendants) are much more influental, Europe and the world become more oriental in their outlook.

 

7. Orientalism retards the growth of the enlightenment in Europe. Large states in Europe never form due to the lack of a strong unifiying Christian faith and orientalism's general influence.

 

8. Western explorers do not explore as far and a factionalized Europe with smaller states cannot exploit newly discovered lands. Russian gains a much larger foothold in North America as a result.

 

9. China is not exploited much by western powers and grows apace. Inspired by the Russians they begin to explore and expand wester North America also.

 

10. Americas become divided more or less equally between Russia, China, and western powers.

 

11. USA forms but cannot expand into Russian or Chinese settlements. USA is much smaller, possibly reaching only as far as the Mississippi.

 

12. WWI and esp. WWII never happen. Europe instead is constantly embroiled in a serries of small wars.

 

13. 20th century sees an expanding Russia and China using the Americas as a power and resource base. First one to get the atomic bomb wins, but this probably doesn't happen until much later, maybe as late as the 21st century, 2005 or so....

[Lightray]

8. Western explorers do not explore as far and a factionalized Europe with smaller states cannot exploit newly discovered lands. Russian gains a much larger foothold in North America as a result.

 

9. China is not exploited much by western powers and grows apace. Inspired by the Russians they begin to explore and expand wester North America also.

 

10. Americas become divided more or less equally between Russia, China, and western powers.

 

11. USA forms but cannot expand into Russian or Chinese settlements. USA is much smaller, possibly reaching only as far as the Mississippi.

 

13. 20th century sees an expanding Russia and China using the Americas as a power and resource base. First one to get the atomic bomb wins, but this probably doesn't happen until much later, maybe as late as the 21st century, 2005 or so....

Without Christianity, Russia is going to look a lot different. All those barbarians the czars were holding off would have probably conquered the Russians. And I think Russia's bootstrapping itself into a major nation relied on its Church, as well. Russia might never have reached the point of development where it was a player in global exploration and colonization, leaving China as the big monkey in the Americas.

[Koshka]

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

 

Actually' date='I think that the Papacy could still have come about. The Christians stole everything from someone else,and the idea of an Emperor was hardly unique to the Romans. Now the college of Cardinals and down the line might look a little different, but even then, arguments could be made for keeping a similar structure(aside from utilitarian evolution, they could have stolen the ideas from another culture like the Germans who used a system for selecting a king not unlike the college of cardinals, where the King was really the most powerful duke, but who had to have the approval of the other dukes to assume control.)[/quote']

A "first among equals" arrangement would give us a less powerful papacy -- the Bishop of Rome might have prestige out the wazoo, but he couldn't dictate church policy and beliefs on his own.

 

"What If? 2" has an essay on "what if Jesus wasn't crucified"; while Rome is still around in this alternate there might be something usable here.

[Mentor]

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

 

Christianity became a Europe-spanning (and eventually global) faith via the Roman empire: first via its trade networks (where it was only marginally effective) and then after its adoption by the Empire, by active evangelism. If Rome had collapsed (really collapsed) around the time Jesus is supposed to have lived, its enemies would have moved into the gaps and the dissemination of the faith would either have never happened or happened much, much more slowly (to take an example, the area which is now French was "christianised" by official policy in only a few generations: north of the empire, however, the process still wasn't complete 800 years later)

 

There would have *been* no Byzantine empire - at that point, Byzantium was a sleepy, no-account minor port and the Roman empire had no split officialy into Eastern and Western. The relatively peaceful Roman Asia Minor where Paul went to preach and build up his folowing would almost have certainly been plunged into war as the Persians swallowed it up and the local Armenian and Hellenised lords tried to prevent that. Not fertile ground for sowing the gospel of the prince of peace...

 

Egypt would almost have certainly regained the freedom it had only recently lost, while the Germanic tribes would have moved south a few generations earlier. Europe had been pagan for 3000 years - it's likely that it would have stayed that way for a while longer.

 

Forget about whether there would be a papacy or not - a very likely outcome is that Christianity would either have not survived or become one of many minor mystery cults. After all, the early church fathers travelled to Egypt, to Persia and even to India to spread their faith as well as staying in Judea, but those churches all perished. Only Paul's church got a lasting foothold, and that was in Roman territories and especially in Rome. The Egyptian coptic church is an offshoot of Paul's original founding in Asia Minor, not a survivor of the original founding, while James' foundings in Persia and India have vanished from history. The Ethiopian church is also an offshoot from Paul's founding, via a hellenistic convertee.

 

And if Christianity had not become a continent-spanning religion, there's a good chance that Islam would not have arisen. If Mohammed was born at all, he may have copied Ahrimanism instead, or whatever was most successful at the time.

 

It's really hard to imagine what the world would have looked like - the only safe bet is that it would not look much like what we have now.

 

Cheers, Mark

Very true.

 

It is possible to apply the "temporal elastic theory" sometimes used in time travel fiction. Without the destruction of the Jerusalem temple authorities at the hands of Rome, the internal struggles for a new identity within Judaism, including the Jesus movement, might well have been spread to a different Byzantine structure with a more Eastern flavor from the direction of Antioch and Damacus rather than Rome resulting in todays world being essentially identical anyway after Constantine.

[gojira]

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

 

Without Christianity' date=' Russia is going to look a lot different. All those barbarians the czars were holding off would have probably conquered the Russians. And I think Russia's bootstrapping itself into a major nation relied on its Church, as well. Russia might never have reached the point of development where it was a player in global exploration and colonization, leaving China as the big monkey in the Americas.[/quote']

Russia was conquered by the Mongols and Moscow paid tribute to Bejing for something like 200 years. Around 25% of the Russian nobility had Mongol blood, and many traditional institutions and rights, like local councils, rights of local lords, and many religious rights (seperate courts, for example) were completely outlawed. The Mongols take a lot of the blame for the culture that created a peasentry that persisted even after the Mongols were tossed out, and lasted until 1917 in name, and much later in fact.

 

You're right though that the church had a big influence on Russia after the Mongols. It was one of the few institutions that wasn't completely destroyed. I just assumed that the Russians would have some other national rallying concept besides the church to build on, and they'd move ahead.

 

*shrug* It's all fantasy anyway...

[Black Rose]

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

 

Well, here's some other guesses:

 

1. Jesus get killed by the Pharisees a lot earlier than he did.

 

2. Jesus as "messiah" was looked at to literally overthrow Rome and free individual populations from Rome's control--one of the reasons for it's early (<300 AD) success.

 

Since Jesus was looked at to bring about the destruction of the Roman Empire.... what if he did? Granted, I'm going somewhat more grim than I usually choose, but what if his crucifixion brought about the fall of the Empire? The final step in a horrific sympathetic necromantic ritual. The ending of a life releases great energies, an intelligent life even more so. What kind of power is unleashed when you sacrifice the Son of God? Enough to bring about the death of an empire?

 

3. With no strong Roman Empire to rail against, St. Paul is not successful at converting masses to Christianity. Christianity is either still born or much much smaller than it is today. Probably local religions (paganism) remain intact.

 

If you could convince a group of pagans, possibly already inclined to accept the notion of a king sacrificing himself to bring prosperity back to his land, that Jesus was the King of this World, and gave his life to purge the Roman plague....

 

4. Mohanmed and Islam never happen (one of his inspirations was the intellectual and bookish Christianity.)

 

5. Arab conquerers convert people to their brand of paganism in the 8th century.

 

6. Gengis Khan (and his decendants) are much more influental, Europe and the world become more oriental in their outlook.

 

7. Orientalism retards the growth of the enlightenment in Europe. Large states in Europe never form due to the lack of a strong unifiying Christian faith and orientalism's general influence.

 

8. Western explorers do not explore as far and a factionalized Europe with smaller states cannot exploit newly discovered lands. Russian gains a much larger foothold in North America as a result.

 

9. China is not exploited much by western powers and grows apace. Inspired by the Russians they begin to explore and expand wester North America also.

 

10. Americas become divided more or less equally between Russia, China, and western powers.

 

11. USA forms but cannot expand into Russian or Chinese settlements. USA is much smaller, possibly reaching only as far as the Mississippi.

 

12. WWI and esp. WWII never happen. Europe instead is constantly embroiled in a serries of small wars.

 

13. 20th century sees an expanding Russia and China using the Americas as a power and resource base. First one to get the atomic bomb wins, but this probably doesn't happen until much later, maybe as late as the 21st century, 2005 or so....

 

Don't have much to say about these. I'm afraid you're probably right about "orientalism" leading to a more static culture. You need dynamism (i.e., chaos) for growth.

[Mark Rand]

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

 

Since Jesus was looked at to bring about the destruction of the Roman Empire.... what if he did? Granted, I'm going somewhat more grim than I usually choose, but what if his crucifixion brought about the fall of the Empire? The final step in a horrific sympathetic necromantic ritual. The ending of a life releases great energies, an intelligent life even more so. What kind of power is unleashed when you sacrifice the Son of God? Enough to bring about the death of an empire?

 

 

 

If you could convince a group of pagans, possibly already inclined to accept the notion of a king sacrificing himself to bring prosperity back to his land, that Jesus was the King of this World, and gave his life to purge the Roman plague....

 

 

 

Don't have much to say about these. I'm afraid you're probably right about "orientalism" leading to a more static culture. You need dynamism (i.e., chaos) for growth.

Could any of this have let Islam take the place of Christianity?

[Black Rose]

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

 

Could any of this have let Islam take the place of Christianity?

 

I really don't see it. Perhaps some of the qualities of Islam (submission to God, the Five Pillars, etc.) might become the regional "flavor" of Christianity, but Islam (in my limited understanding) is such a child of Judaism and Christianity that the idea of it supplanting it's parents seems strange to me. Now, if it suddenly was providing the answers that people needed, and Christianity wasn't, it could begin to move into the spiritual void left behind.

 

Thing is, I totally could see a situation where people could see Islam as fulfilling their needs and Christianity not; I mean, Islam does get converts. I just don't know how that would work in an historical setting without violence. Then again, maybe you want the violence, I dunno.

[Vondy]

Re: What??!! The Roman Empire fell to pieces while Jesus was still alive??!!

 

A common what-if that could seguay into this topic is: what if Julius Caeser had not been assassinated? Its clear he had plans for serious and needed internal reform in the Republic and another Parthian campaign, which based on some of the prophecies in Rome, required he be declared king. Indeed, they came up with a weird work around where he was to be declared king of a subject area of Rome, but not the entire Republic. This declaration was contentious and was among the concerns of those who assassinated him. They feared, with the title, and a successful Parthian campaign, his being declared king over all of Rome was inevitable. What if Caeser received the title, had a successful Parthian campaign, but found the Republic arrayed against him upon its completion (a replay of the civil war and his march on rome, but with a prepared opponent this time). He had a massive personality cult, especially among the legions, that would have torn the army apart (as evidenced by many legion's refusal to fight octavian, the heir of caeser, at a later time). And his wife, family, and mistress (cleopatra) would have still been in (or near) Rome? What if the senators ordered them executed as a punative measure? Might Caesar himself burned rome to the ground in revenge? And even if he succeeded, perhaps the Republics holdings would fracture and never come completely under its control again. Perhaps there would have been break into East, West, and North African empires. The schism could even be more localized than that. What if groups of neighboring governors asserted their independance. The entire Republic could be a fractured mass of interdependant, but independent entities by 30 BCE.