u/TheIronzombie39

"Only I have the right to kidnap Persephone and forcibly make her my bride." - Hades probably

As for why this was their response to Jesus’ miracles, well remember that people in the ancient world were incredibly superstitious and believed magic was a real and active force in the world, even the most rational philosophers and intellectuals fully believed in practices that would be considered superstitious today. The Roman emperor Augustus literally outlawed witchcraft because he feared it would be used against him. Modern English words like “magic” and “magician” derive from the name of the magi (Zoroastrian priests) via Latin and Greek because the Ancient Greeks and Romans mistook them for being actual sorcerers. The Babylonians, despite laying the foundations for modern astronomy, also believed that the movements of the stars and planets were omens because in their worldview there was no difference between astrology and astronomy. There were several alleged “miracle-workers” roaming around like Apollonius of Tyana whose followers claimed had raised the dead, cured the blind, cast out evil spirits, etc. Even the Bible doesn’t deny the existence of magic, instead it attributes all magic to demons and advises that you shouldn’t engage in such practices. 

This is why many pagan critics of Christianity often claimed Jesus was a magician. In a worldview where magic is viewed as a real and active force in the world, it wouldn't be odd to believe that Jesus really did perform miracles without viewing it as proof of divinity.

Since this is obscure, I should add some context. The Margites was a mythological epic by Homer (though it's sometimes attributed to Pigres of Halicarnassus) detailing the story of of a guy named Margites who was for the lack of a better word, a complete fucking idiot. According to Aristotle, it was considered to be the peak of comedy

Unfortunately this work is lost.

Very very unrealistic I know, but hear me out.

When the Anglo-Saxons conquered what we nowadays call England, they thoroughly paganized the lands they conquered that the Catholic Church had to send missionaries to specifically re-Christianize said lands.

So I had a thought, what if somehow they resisted attempts at Christianization and remained as the last bastion of Germanic paganism in Europe?

Some things I can predict include:

- England never adopts the Latin alphabet and continues to write the English language in Anglo-Saxon Runes.
- They might make some attempt to centralize the religion and codify their scattered oral traditions. After all Anglo-Saxon paganism, itself a branch of wider Germanic paganism, was basically a series of loosely-related cults that in order to survive would have to reform and centralize.
- Due to remaining as the last pagan state in Europe, they would likely be isolated from the rest of the continent and would probably lag behind in development as a result of being isolated.

Yes I know the likely response to this will be “they get crusaded.” But let’s assume that somehow, they resist getting crusaded.

I know, I know, this is completely absurd and unrealistic, but it’s a thought experiment I had. Since the French Revolutionaries in OTL were already heavily influenced by classical civilization and had experimented with a civic non-Christian religion via the Cult of the Supreme Being, I thought to myself “what if they went further?” What if for some reason they woke up one day and randomly decided that the gods of Olympus were real and everyone should start worshipping them again?

Obviously it would fail spectacularly and when Napoleon takes power, he would immediately undo it due to viewing Catholicism as a far more effective means of social control (though he might have kept the imperial aesthetic). But what I want to know is what would be the long-term effects of an attempted Hellenist revival since even a failed one would still leave some sort of mark on European history?

Context: Manetho was an Egyptian historian and high priest of Ra who lived during the Ptolemaic period, more specifically sometime in the early 3rd century BC. He’s most famous for his Greek-language work detailing the history of Egypt titled the Aegyptiaca (Αἰγυπτιακά). While this work is lost and its contents are only known from summaries and quotations, we do know that it apparently contained an account of Exodus that was radically different from the biblical account.

According to Manetho, the historical basis for Moses was “Osarseph,” a renegade priest of Set (though since this work was written in Greek, Set is referred to as Typhon who was equated with Set via Interpretatio Graeca) who during the reign of a Pharaoh named “Amenophis” (likely referring to either Amenhotep II or Amenhotep IV) led a revolt of “lepers and unclean people” and allied with the Hyksos, foreign invaders from the Levant who identified their chief god Baal with Set. Osarseph and the Hyksos drove Amenophis from Egypt and occupied the country for 13 years. They set up their capital at Avaris and according to Manetho, Osarseph changed his name to “Moses.” During their 13-year occupation of Egypt, they committed sacrilege by destroying cult images and “treating the gods as if they were men” (I.E. forbidding their worship). They did this to the temples of all gods except of course for Set, whom Osarseph, the “unclean peoples and lepers,” and the Hyksos all worshipped. Eventually Pharaoh Amenophis returned to Egypt and expelled Osarseph, the “unclean peoples and lepers,” and the Hyksos from the country.

It should be said that most modern historians do not view Manetho’s account of Exodus as reliable at all. He didn’t completely make everything up, but what he did do was erroneously conflate multiple unrelated events often set apart by centuries like the Amarna Period, the Hyksos occupation of Egypt, and the rebellion of Irsu all into a single event while trying to link it to Moses.