AHC- which religious figure had the biggest impact? And what happens without them?
- Thread starter SunDeep
- Start date
Buddhism had substantial clear direct effect not only on the majority of humans post it's founding, but it also had major influences on Hellenic philosophy and early Christian thinking.
SunDeep
Banned
The thing with Jesus is that there were plenty of other people all claiming to be the Christ at the same time. In an ATL where Jesus is never born, what's to stop one of the others simply taking his place as the supposed Messiah? Zoroaster, Buddha, and Mohammed to a lesser extent, all spread their own words. With Jesus, the word was spread primarily by his disciples after his crucifixion. In an ATL without him, who's to say that they wouldn't have just become disciples of one of the other claimants in his absence, and spread their version of 'Christianity' instead?
And I did mull over including either Moses or Abraham in the poll, but the thing is that, despite a great deal of effort to obtain the evidence required from archaeologists, they still don't have enough for them to be deemed as credible historical figures by scholars. Can't butterfly them away if you can't prove that they ever existed...
Probably didn't exist, or at least not even close to as described in scripture.
On topic, I'd say it's hard to quantify this... Remove one early figure and all the later ones don't happen, remove one later one and the world is still incomprehensibly different.
(Overall, though, I'd say Buddha)
There not be any evidences about Moses and with my knowlege not even evidences that Hebreans would have ever live in Egypt.
I think that about Jesus is more evidences than Moses altough there not be clear evidences about Jesus.
SunDeep
Banned
Modern scholars have already come to the consensus than there is enough evidence to prove that Jesus did exist historically. How closely he resembled the biblical figure, on the other hand, is still very much up for debate...
I regard Jesus as historical in a lukewarm sort of way - seems more likely he was real than not. Obviously he comes with the standard "Figures in Scripture are more Mythologized than they Appear" disclaimer.
Because those Messianic claimants had a very different idea of what being the Messiah meant. They tried to rally popular support for a rebellion against Rome and restore an independent kingdom of Israel, with themselves as its king. Admittedly, this was also what most Jews thought the Messiah was supposed to be.
But according to the Gospels, Jesus never harbored such earthly ambitions and apparently rejected the idea on several occasions. Divinity aside, Jesus was a sage and a healer, not a political leader. The other Messianic claimants had two outcomes: succeed and become a secular king, or fail and be crucified. But unlike Jesus' crucifixion, their deaths wouldn't give birth to new religions because they never taught anything different than standard Judaism.
I wouldn't be surprised if a few other folks followed a similar path to Jesus, but were simply out done on the press front or whatever.
SunDeep
Banned
If they fail and get crucified in the same manner as Jesus did, and they have some of the same disciples which would have been Jesus's Apostles IOTL, what's to stop the disciples from carrying early Christianity in the same general direction? Would Paul have still written the Book of Revelations if he'd been following a different Messiah, in an ATL without Jesus? Maybe not, but it's still plausible that he would have. And if they're written by the same people with the same motives, the Gospels themselves will probably make the same claims regarding the Messiah's supposed virtues and any other claimants' alleged vices, regardless of who their Messiah is.
Obviously Muhammad. He started a political state building movement that became the nucleus of a world spanning empire in less then a century, on the expense of two of the greatest empires of the era. An empire that connected east and west in the scale never seen before, and a religion that unites everything from Morocco to Mollucas into a broad religio-cultural continuum. And eventually, it was the muslim world that influenced as well as provoked the progress and expansionism of western Christendom. You can't just dismiss them all.
I'm sure there were other sages and healers roaming Israel, but the core idea of Christianity—that the Messiah is a son of God who must die as a human sacrifice and then rise from the dead for the forgiveness of sins—seems so radical when compared to what we know about first century Judaism that I can't imagine that anybody else at the time had the same idea.
Some might say that the teachings of resurrection and salvation were invented after Jesus' death by the Disciples to rationalize their teacher's death. But even if that was the case, I doubt the followers of any other Messianic claimants thought up such a radical justification after their leaders' respective deaths, which is why I think Christianity was a very unique phenomena.
Because Messianic claimants back then were like political candidates today. You get behind one and support him, but if he fails, you move on to a different candidate. You don't stick with a loser. And execution is the ultimate form of failure, which is why I don't see any other followers doing what Jesus' disciples did.
Even if the Gospels aren't an accurate historical account of Jesus' teachings, he must've been preaching something quite different than standard Judaism to inspire such enduring loyalty and devotion after his crucifixion.