Quick What If

I was reading about the Egyptian Hellenistic Jewish apologist, Philo. Notable for attempting to harmonize Judaism with Platonism… not an easy task!

Then again, he did take part in a deputation to visit Caligula in 40 CE to attempt to defuse growing Graeco/Roman and Jewish tensions in Palestine and Egypt. I don’t know which would have been more difficult – squaring Platonism and Judaism, or trying to get Caligula to grant concessions that would have defused the rising Jewish zealotism in the region.

Had Philo and his deputation succeeded, then it’s possible that the Jewish Uprising might have been forestalled, the zealots reduced to political insignificance or accommodated into the Roman system without the annihilation of Jerusalem. Had Jerusalem not been destroyed, then I do not think that the Roman Christian Church would have been able to get the upper hand over the Jewish Christian Church. Christianity would have schismed into a minor Roman sect, as unimportant and unnoticed and ultimately assimilated as, say, the sect of the veneration of Apollonius of Tyana.

While in the eastern part of the Empire, Judaism might ultimately have reabsorbed most of Christianity (as, say, Hinduism did with Buddhism in India), with the Christianity outside of the Jewish sphere evolving as a more heavily Semitic, less Graeco-Roman salvation cult. Probably a more enduring version of the Ebionites or the Nazarenes.

In that scenario, however, the apologist Tertullian might have had nothing to write about. And Western Apologetics might be slightly different, concerning itself with earnestly defending the ineffability of Mithras instead of Jesus.