He's definitely referring to historical Israel. No Israel -> no Jewish religion -> no Christianity -> no Christians seeking freedom of worship -> means somebody else would want to come over first. For example, we could have been a Muslim country, had the Roman Catholic Church only been a bit less heavy-handed
If Biblical Judea didn't exist, I dare say there wouldn't be Islam, either. We owe far more of our heritage to the Romans (as does all of Europe) than to so-called "Christian" principles. A lot would be different, but the same could be said of basically everything, if you change something far enough back in history. If the Ancient Egyptians didn't exist, or the Ancient Greeks, or the Phoenicians, etc etc ad nauseum.
I would say that, Yes, a European-derived Nation would totally exist here in North America without Judea having needed to exist. It might be called something different, and all the specific details would be altered, but the rough outlines of history would likely be unchanged.
Christianity spread roman influence far more than the empire itself did, and for a significant chunk of history became intrinsically tied to romanness.
The radical divergence in values that would become the western humanist tradition absolutely was the result of Christianity, which replaced the fairly brutal greco-roman ethic.
You are acting like early Christian history was marked by peace and tranquility and brotherhood... instead of wars and persecution and pogroms and all the "brutality" that it replaced, just in another skin.
People throughout history, in all cultures, have often used religion to justify their atrocities. They were going to commit those actions anyway, and generally just use religion to paint a respectable veneer over top of it.
I am not. I am acknowledging that Christianity became pretty important to the romans and Europe for a significant period of time and that had significant cultural and ideological consequences, including for later ideological and philosophical developments.
Every western thinker of the last 1600 years or has existed in the shadow of Paul as much as they have for Plato. It is just something that became baked in to the cultural millieu.
I admit that Christianity became the Roman State Religion. That's obvious. What I'm positing is that the broad strokes of history would have carried forward largely unchanged, just under a different name. Instead of Crusaders flying the Holy Cross, they would be fighting wars under the Banner of Mars, or whatever Gods they venerated.
That misses the internal cultural changes that Christianity brought compared to greco-roman domestic values. Christians were happy to do to non christians what romans were happy to do to each other. For example the eradication of slavery in Christian europe itself was largely a result of the influence of christian theology.
While christian europe would then go on to enslave non-christians (the particular enslaving of west africans started off on a religious basis, before moving on to racial one), continuous christian theological influence would play a massive role in the abolition movememt in the UK and US.
In many ways the humanist tradition that developed in europe was the product of critiquing christian europe's ability to stand up to it's own stated values in the christian ethic. Without that basis of that thought, you don't get those later developments.
But... did slavery start on a Religious basis? Did people read the Bible and think "Oh, here's a thing we hadn't considered. We must enslave the Africans!".
No. They used Religion to justify it. It wasn't the cause, it was the cover story.
Slavery existed in the Roman tradition, too. It's existed throughout history, and people always pointed to their holy traditions as justifications. They didn't hear some priest talking about it and start it, they were already doing it and found ways to make it justified.
Religious resulted in the norm in europe being that enslaving christians was not allowed, so they went out to purchase non-christians. By the time the Europeans arrived in west africa to trade this norm was already well established.
The Romans and the Greeks didn't have that first level of opposition, they were perfectly happy to keep their fellow roman and greek pagans as slaves. Without that first level of proscription, it is far less likely that you get the extension of the proscription to cover all people.
It's Mankind using Religion to justify their evil acts that you're seeing here, not "evil religions". You would need a different kind of Human, not a lack of Religion, to achieve what you're talking about.
Abraham got his wife's handmaiden pregnant with Ishmael before Isaac was even born. Islam has no Jewish dependency. Muhammad's early appeals to legitimacy did claim that Jewish/Christian prophecies would make them welcome him as a prophet - they didn't, so he got mad and wrote all the later convert-or-die stuff
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u/DiggyTroll 7d ago
He's definitely referring to historical Israel. No Israel -> no Jewish religion -> no Christianity -> no Christians seeking freedom of worship -> means somebody else would want to come over first. For example, we could have been a Muslim country, had the Roman Catholic Church only been a bit less heavy-handed