What if Christianity and Islam never existed.
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The religious landscape in Europe and the Middle East likely looks more like the religious landscape in Southeast and East Asia, with multiple traditions blending and melding together over the centuries as trade and empires come and go. Our fundamental view on what religion even is is different.
The idea that you can only belong to one religion is a very Abrahamic reflex stemming from Jewish law; you can be a Jew, or you can be a non-Jew. Jews weren't allowed to worship non-Jewish gods (the ancient Israelite religion changed a lot over the centuries, this monotheism and exclusivity developed over time; King Solomon worshiped other gods), and this exclusivity was later inherited by Christianity and Islam. For contrast, look at Buddhism in Asia: Buddhism is part of Hindu, SE Asian, Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese traditions without any contradictions.
Religious ideas flowed throughout the Roman world, either coming into conflict with the state religion or influencing/supplanting it (Sol Invictus was a local Syrian deity that Aurelian liked). Religions change over time, sometimes quite dramatically, and the Greco-Roman religion would have changed with the times and adapted itself by introducing new gods, downplaying others, or completely re-imagining some; worship of these traditional gods with their ancient temples would probably be done today, but it would look wildly different from how it would have been done in the Roman Empire.
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Last: 11/7/2025, 8:15:50 PM