User:Ebatica/Sandbox

Christianity Notes
This is a place for all my scatterbrained notes about Christianity before I get to writing the entry, because I process way better by writing things out.

Differences from RL Christianity
Okay so I'm drinking and this will ramble. And it will be a mess. Hoooo boy.

Okay, I'm going to assume that some basic elements of Christianity have to exist in Tiandi, otherwise it wouldn't be Christianity. These are: 1. Judaism exists 2. Judaism has enough of a presence in Matobo to make Jesus's existence controversial 3. Jesus was crucified 4. An early church formed around Jesus's teachings 5. People went to spread the gospel to other places

That's probably enough to get started. There would obviously be some changes (such as modern Christians linking Old Testament verses to Tiandi locations) but there's probably no reason to get into that level of detail.

So assuming the life and death of Jesus is similar enough to RL to allow for points 4 and 5, the real differences are going to lie in how Christianity spreads. So I need to look at the factors that led to the early spread of Christianity, and decide whether or not those would be a factor in ancient Matobo.

1. The Roman Empire One of the most commonly cited reasons for the quick spread of Christianity is the sheer efficiency of the Roman Empire. Paul and the other apostles were able to easily travel throughout the empire because of the Roman road system and trade routes. For Christianity to have spread much beyond Matobo, we would need a similar system.

But ancient African empires were organized in a much more hierarchical and decentralized fashion--they were more like kings ruling over kings ruling over kings. So the Zadwabi Empire probably looks less like the centralized Roman state, and more like a large group of kingdoms that swear loyalty to one emperor. The individual kingdoms would be fairly autonomous and would have their own laws and regulations, meaning apostles could travel somewhat easily throughout the empire, but not as easily as they did IRL. This means Christianity probably does not spread far from southern Miju and southern Jungju during the first wave of missionary journeys.

2. Jewish Opposition Another reason for the early popularity of Christianity was its generally more relaxed approach to Jewish laws regarding matters such as food and circumcision. As the church grew to accept gentile (non-Jewish) members, it began to spread even more rapidly.

In ancient Matobo, any ancient Jewish communities would be groups of people who emigrated from wherever Judaism originated. They would be more akin to Beta Jews in Ethiopia, and Jews in Matobo would have different beliefs and schools of thought than Pharisees, Sadducees, and other Levantine Jewish groups. Matobwe Jews would have arrived somewhere between 1200-900 BCE, and would be similar enough to RL Jews at this point for religious rules to be a factor in the spread of Christianity (the major difference between Ethiopian and Rabbinical Jews is they don't base their belief in the Talmud, which wouldn't be a thing yet). Early Christianity in Tiandi, then, would still be appealing to the Jewish population, but the Jewish population of Matobo would be relatively small. Greater emphasis would probably be put on the conversion of gentiles. This means the Tiandi New Testament is probably even more geared towards gentiles. Practically speaking, this means there would likely be a greater emphasis on conversion of gentiles, who lived in the northern parts of Matobo. This backs up the idea that missionary journeys would probably travel inland through Matobo, not so much overseas.

3. Persecution Christianity preaches the joy of suffering and the reward of an afterlife. This appealed to early Christians, who were persecuted by Roman pagans for not offering sacrifices to Roman gods. As the persecution grew, it just further backed up the teachings of Jesus regarding having troubles on earth.

In Matobo, the majority religion at the time would be Bantu mythology, which is unique in that it is monotheistic. This would probably make it somewhat easy to convert pagans because of the parallels between the single god of Bantu mythology and the Christian God. However, the god of Bantu mythology was typically not directly worshipped and was more akin to modern views of deism--he didn't even create the world (it's always existed) and he left earth because of the wickedness here. Practitioners of Bantu religion didn't really "worship" god, meaning there aren't any sacrifices being offered like there were to Roman gods. In all honesty, the introduction of Christianity probably wouldn't be met with as much opposition as it was IRL. People may not like it, but you probably wouldn't see mass crucifixions or people being jailed for long periods of time for preaching it. This means early Christians wouldn't be persecuted to the extent that they were IRL, which removes a very important reason for the spread of early Christianity. There is probably nothing like Nero killing Christians that backs up the whole "in this life you will be persecuted in my name" thing. This means Christianity would still spread, but would probably spread more slowly than it did IRL. '''This laid back attitude toward the new religion also means that pagans would probably have incorporated the teachings of the apostles in with their own understandings of God, and Christianity would be more syncretic. The Christian concept of God in Tiandi is probably more akin to Bantu beliefs for this reason--he probably isn't believed to have created the world, and he probably isn't very actively involved in human affairs. He would still probably be believed to have traits such as a love for humanity and a general goodness. This could also mean that Christianity would probably be much more likely to adopt aspects of other religions, and the religions of colonizers would likely be incorporated into Christian doctrine.'''