Jesus Christ is never born, or simply never becomes a prophet...

>muh ebin Buddhism and peace XDDDD
There's just as much blood spilled from Buddhism as there is from religions

>The entire shift from chieftains and warlords into more or less proper kings, kingdoms and nobility was part of an integral package along with Christianity
That's not even remotely true

It wasn't peaceful,sure, but it did have less religiously motivated wars than Christianity or Islam.

If you want to make an idealistic setting where glorious eastern philosophy makes every happy and get along sure.

It's not a realistic scenario, but you probably already know that. Cults of Salvation were not new in the West, the main religion was destined to be a Cult of Salvation.

Christianity was a relatively smooth transition from a lot of prominent philosophies in Rome at the time; Gnostics were a thing before Christians.

It's an interesting alternate history, and it would be compelling read someone's musing into how norse and greco-roman mythology would grow together.

It's not realistic to think it'd be more peaceful though. Europe would still be steeped in war eternally, and they'd still be skeptical of the middle east.

If you want to make an idealistic alternate history, go for it, if you want a realistic setting, you'd have to study history and how religion spreads more thoroughly, because it would actually happen as you described.

I'm just wondering if there would end up being an islamic analogue. Assuming the romans adopt buddhism in roughly the same way they adopted christianity and fall like they did in the real world, the conditions that lead to the foundation of islam could be considered to be similar to the ones the post-roman buddhist middle east would be in. Would a prophet turn up with his own version of buddhism that ulitmately causes similar deep cultural divides and ultimately wars?

>memes confusedly

What about alternate history where Roman Mithraism becomes the dominant faith instead of Christianity?

>fictional character
>born

kek

Islam began as an Abrahamic puritan movement that turned into an effort to put an end to the mutually devastating tribal wars that were waged nonstop and unite the tribes and transform them into a more urban entity, you could probably argue that Muhammad never intended to start a new religion much in the same way Jesus didn't, but the movement was too big after him that it took a life of its own and then you just had a bunch of different philosophies and traditions and attributes and values superimposed on the ideal Muhammad and his vision

I dont think OP is going for a idealistic depiction though.

You know what, OP? This is exactly what I needed for my setting, so I'm gonna steal it and you can't have it anymore. It's mine now.

I could easily see the head priests of the main Buddhist temples in Rome and Constantinople having the exact same power struggles that their Christian counterparts had, leading to a Buddhist Church in Europe very similar to the Catholic Church.
Sooner or later, those Roman believers are going to want to have a big Council to decide exactly what they believe in (especially if there's an Emperor counting on this religion as one of the cornerstones of his rule).

>Disagreeing with the concept that Jesus had any form of existence.

>thinly veiled Dark Souls thread

seriously if you think about it the mythology of Dark Souls is just "what if buddhism and gnosis had a really edgy baby"

>Pretending that Jesus had any form of existence.

>Look at how much fucks I don't give!LOOK AT THEM!!!

This post is so wrong I'm just going to call you a faggot.

more like "this post is so correct I'm mad *I* didn't think of it"

some really insightful posts by well informed people with all the right opinions in this thread

That's the entire point:you need to stop thinking in order to be as plebeian as you.

That brings to mind an interesting question though, what about the Jews? I suppose you could have them die out, but they have always kind of been around, and ignoring them would be incredibly lazy.

They would be pushed even further outside in a culture that isn't even Abrahamic. I'd imagine to them a goy is a goy, but I'm really not sure what nordic or bhuddist views on Judaism would be. I think the Greeks were relatively tolerant, but it definitely needs more contemplating.

Also, what about Eastern Europe? What about Russia specifically? They weren't precisely Nordic, They're kind of a blend of mongols, middle easterners, and salvs already, so how'd they look when slavic and middle eastern culture is no longer abrahamic?

duuuude

i read this guy neet che

god isnt real

all is mind

dude

Jews would be doing fine most likely, they always do when they're not being directly and systemically murderized, and EEU would probably still be on that pagan shit way into the 12th century and beyond (Lithuania actually did this IRL so it's not too far fetched an idea)

Also the Jews were apparently pretty successful at converting people back then.

So Islam could still be a thing and christianity as an offshoot of judaism minus the bad American habit could very well happen too.

>implying buddhist couldn't crusade

Instead of saying Deus Vult you'd be saying Amitahbah

Quite the contrary. Buddishm has all the defects you might find, but as any other "oriental" religion, it's not really exclusive as christianity was. Some guys worship a god? Eh. Not a big deal, really. Especially if there are rituals for said god and for Buddha.

I MIGHT think that a jew buddishm could make sense but I'm not that sure.

I see in this alternate Europe a whole deal of "gnostic" religions. Especially if they can somehow make their message more appealing to poorer people.

And of course, with buddihsm old roman gods would never die. Heck, in Egypt there would a straight line from the Old Kingdom to us regarding gods, which is pretty cool if you ask me.

>but it did have less religiously motivated wars

user, it was the state religion of an ancient empire. The Empire's propaganda was pretty open about the fact that anyone who doesn't follow the Dharma basically needs to be killed because they're absolutely, disgustingly wrong.

Not to mention WW2 Japanese. A good number of their officiers followed a wierdass version of Zen.

Afaik they were still a fairly large people in the pre-christian roman occupied Judea, they were real cunts about it though and rebelled all the time, it wasn't that they were even oppressed or anything, just that they resented being a subject people to a foreign power in their own ancestral land
So they rebelled one time too many and Rome killed and kicked out as many they could and renamed the province Palestine in reference to the Philistines
Make of that what you will
That's my very shallow understanding of it anyway

You can couch anything into a religious reason if you try hard enough.

You crusade for the holy land but it just happens to help that you can steal a bunch of treasure along the way to help keep the people you owe money to off your back if they are too busy Deus Vulting

>Implying islam would exist without christianity.

Bushido=/=zen, friendo.

There WERE armed religious conflict in Japan, mind you, but still, this idea is stupid. It's like thinking the nazis were crusader because "gott mit uns", heck, it's probably an even worse idea.

Also, the Dharma is hindu.

The real question is: if OP wants a crusade, who is supposed to be the infidels?

>rebelled one time too many
That's a diplomatic way of saying the jews comitted ethnic cleansing and depopulated pretty much a whole province.

>Bushido=/=zen, friendo.

You're talking with somebody who read the Hagakure, thanks.

The folks I was talking about are officers who trained with Zen bonzen and who used the argument of the no-mind sword to conciliate mass-murder and Buddhism.

>It's like thinking the nazis were crusader because "gott mit uns", heck, it's probably an even worse idea.
Honstly? Nazism would have had a lot less trajection in Germany if the Protestant heresy would've been cut at the root during the 30 Year's War. A number of well-known german Protestant preachers paved the way for the ideology.

>Also, the Dharma is hindu.
You can't be serious. It's an indian philosophical-religious term that's used in all old indian religions and in philosophy from India to Japan. They pronounce it "Do" and "Tao" in those countries, respectively, and use it in a similar way.

The Persian Empire and Zoroastrianism are probably still a thing, so they may also be relevant. Plus, without Islam Zoroastrianism could spread more to Cental Asia

>So they rebelled one time too many and Rome killed and kicked out as many they could and renamed the province Palestine in reference to the Philistines

They mostly did because the Jews were mountain niggers who got pasted by every Empire that had dealings in the region. The folks that mattered historically and politically all lived along the coast and were not jewish.

>somebody who read the Hagakure
wow you read a translated book
someone give this man a diploma

Yeah, but the problem is that basically no one in the army (or the navy for that matter) had a real "spiritual training". It was cool to read some samurai books, more or less, and militarism grew on that.

Meh, I generally think the Dao/Do as something pretty separate from the Dharma. Isn't in buddhism something more akin to buddha's teaching? It's not really what I think when I read Dao (I'm immediatly drawn to Taoism).

THAT is interesting, and I'm not sure how I skipped that. How about an Europe divided? Some worship Ahura Mazda, some buddha, and possibly many... both? Would that be thinkable?

>as someone who misunderstood the Hagakure

ftfy

Yeah, I like the idea of Zoroastrianism having a larger role in the world, so a Zoroastrain minority in Europe is interesting. It can be more common in Eastern Europe, due to geographical proximity

That's the point. Without Christianity and Islam, the only people who would consider Israel the Holy Land is a small tribe that kinda got stomped by the Romans. No one would care about Jerusalem.

>Yeah, but the problem is that basically no one in the army (or the navy for that matter) had a real "spiritual training".

Frankly, it was impossible to get away from state shinto and the imperial cult, so saying that people at large hadn't recieved religious instructions is hilarious. Gets even more hilarious when you keep in mind that soldiers only started to publish their memories after the Emperor was dead and buried. Indoctrination went real deep.
But yeah, Zen and Zen instructions was limited to officers of former samurai-families, more or less and they generally got it on their own, in spite of state-interferences.

>Meh, I generally think the Dao/Do as something pretty separate from the Dharma. Isn't in buddhism something more akin to buddha's teaching? It's not really what I think when I read Dao (I'm immediatly drawn to Taoism).

Buddha's teachings in their totality are called the "Dharma". It's a super-generic term that got transfered to China along with a bunch of indian religious artifacts, scholars and teachings.

I'm not the dude arguing that it mattered in Japan at any distinct point in time, because it never did. What commonly passed for "Bushido" didn't hark back to the Hagakure specifically.

Generic differences in notchristian Europe? I mean, aside from the most obvious ones?

Pagan gods might got through a strange process of "chilling them out", at least the more fierce ones. It's totally possible and perhaps more probable that greek-roman gods could become something a little more... hrm, folklore-related (but still worshipped) but this a good opportunity to go crazy. What about an Avalotikesvara-Aphrodite mix up?

That being said, it's not like Japan forgot Susanoo. I don't think Germanic people would forgot Thor, but maybe he would become a great protector of temples or something.

In general I wonder how greek philosophy, with its emphasis on logic, would work on a "we're above logic" religion like buddhism (yeah, I do realize not all buddishm is zen, quite the contrary, but still). Would Plato be taken for a metaphor? Would Aristoteles' poetikon be taken as a good tool for learning?
Remember guys, there is the Renaissance to think about, soone or later.

BTW: medieval christianity was hard on the "divine right to rule" thing. Am I correct in assuming buddhism in our history wasn't that much? Becuase Zoroastrism was.
If Rome collapsed and barbarian sheaningans ensued, this is REALLY interetsting if you ask me.
Especially if the late western empire (and so Byzantium) was on the contrary buddhist.

So much that ITT it's called "Samaria", perhaps.

Hadn't the greeks long since stopped any kind of real reverence for gods by the time Jesus was a thing? And the even for the Romans it was more about ritual and deepseated tradition

>emperors turn into some kind of Bodhisattva alternate-dalai lama type figures and they're actually deeply spiritual and not just ostensibly so

I assume they were still part of folk traditions, even if the elites weren't as religious

Oh, no. They did their festivals as they did the past. The gnostic cults didn't change that.

Certainly more educated people took them more like a... a tale than it was in the past, but that isn't really relevant. Hell, buddhism in this regard is probably a good match, way better than christianity.

>BTW: medieval christianity was hard on the "divine right to rule" thing. Am I correct in assuming buddhism in our history wasn't that much? Becuase Zoroastrism was.
I think that originally the divine right to rule was more something like a divine obligation to rule, originating from the idea that all of earth is the property of God and earthly rulers only temporarily hold it and should rule in accordance with divine law. Over time it evolved to become the equivalent of modern day "only God can judge me" facebook whores.

As for Buddhism, it never prevented the Chinese emperors from being seen as the representatives of the gods or the Japanese imperial family being seen as mortal gods themselves. I imagine Buddhism would do very little to disturb the Roman caesaro-papist tradition. Keep in mind that Caesar and Augustus were worshipped as gods in some parts of the Roman empire.

The strange thing is that I don't think shit like that happened in east asia. At least, China, Korea and Japan didn't really "deify" their emperor in a buddhist way, even when the empero's religion WAS buddhism.

Am I wrong?

What about Indochina, anyway?

*Cough* Baltic Crusades *cough**cough*

Well Japanese emperor at least was traditionally already a divine figure being descended from their old animistic gods

And China had the Heavenly Mandate right, that so far as I know basically justified the rule of a dynasty as the Heaven's will so long as everything was going well, then when a usurper came along and succeeded it was Heaven's will to depose the old regime etc

What I am saying is: I don't think there really is an equivalent of Charle Magne crowned by the Pope. Even in China, to an extent the three big religions (yes, counting confucianism as one) had each one its niche, and buddhism wasn't really the imperial cult one.

I mean, nothing shoul stop us if we want something like the Dalai Lama in Constantinoples, but still I think it's worth thinking about that.

>BTW: medieval christianity was hard on the "divine right to rule" thing. Am I correct in assuming buddhism in our history wasn't that much?

The Indians switched to Hinduism again because it made arguing for a divine right to rule for any particular prince a whole lot more fucking easier.

Tibet and its proposition that the Dalai Lhama endlessly reincarnates to rule and educate the people is a specific and historically rather novel case. The rise of the Yellow Hats to pre-eminence only began in the 16th century and they didn't complete their takeover of Tibet until the 17th century.

It was a power play from both sides
Charlememe got legitimacy like no one else and the Chalcedonian christendom got the kingdom of the Franks, iirc at the time Arianism was THE flavor of christianity for germanic tribes, can't imagine that jived too well with the bishop of Rome

Don't know if there was ever a similar dynamic in play over in the east where a highly institutionalized faith was facing a massive spread of a heretic denomination

Yeah, was my feeling.

So how do we make this shit work?

They still have a strong polytheism and they still use more or less the apotheosis idea?

Seems kinda weak to me

>Jesus Christ is never born
That would require us having proof that he was at all. Otherwise it's not alternative timeline.

>Honstly? Nazism would have had a lot less trajection in Germany if the Protestant heresy would've been cut at the root during the 30 Year's War. A number of well-known german Protestant preachers paved the way for the ideology.
You mean national socialism.
For fascism you have to replace "protestant" with "catholic".

>That would require us having proof that he was at all.
Except the overwhelming majority of historians, even the secular ones, at the very least agree that Jesus existed, preached and was crucified for some form of heresy.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

>Historicity_of_jewish_persons_named_Jesus

Fixed that for you.

And where are those empires, those folks that mattered historically and politically, today?

Everywhere there is a neoclassical building, my dear shlomo.

I mean, we ARE talking about cultural continuity.

He was kind of stating the opposite really. Christianity tends to preach the doctrine of don't be a dick, which European powers conveniently ignored. The idea is that it doesn't matter what religion Europeans followed since they would still be aggressive and expansionist anyway.

You know there is a Fringe theory that Christ traveled to the east and studied under Buddhist monks before returning to the holy land?

Fair enough.

Don't some buddhists legit believe Jesus is one of Buddha's many reincarnations?

I've not heard of that. I do know that the Buddha is seen as an avatar of Vishnu though. In northern India and Nepal many holy sites do multiple duty as a pilgrimage destination for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, etc.

Viking Bushido/Viking Warrior Monks. Yes/no?

The point would be that the Near East will be Buddhist and probably culturally Greco-Roman.

I think you mean Vikings vs Warrior Monks.

That works as well

Actually, there is some stuff on a Jewish guy with the same name, similar description, who started an identically named group named Christians & was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate. For low class people, he had plenty.