Why did Christianity and Islam get more popular than Judaism?

[Emperor Julian]

Islam and christianity assumed the Roman model of conquest by culture. Christianity effectively becomes a vector to romanize peoples but continues on despite the empires death. Islam has a simular relation with arabic culture. By contrast judaism is content to exist and doesnt need others to become jewish.

Which is interesting because both Christianity and Islam are probably fucked in the long run partly because they're both redundant whereas the jews may endure.

 

[soy_king]

Judaism's rules are restrictive, it's averse to conversion and proselytization, and it's founded on the idea of having a small group of people being God's Chosen. Yeah, that really promotes exclusivity.

 

[Aidan]

"Convert or die" - Christians and Muslims
"Fuck you goy" - Jews

It is a great mystery why Judaism is relatively small versus the younger Abrahamic religions.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

At one point (Hellenistic era until the 1st century AD) there were some proselytizing Jews all around the Mediterranean and Middle East. They were more open to converts although very strict and gentiles did convert to their faith. This is the Jewish culture where Christianity emerged and spread in, but there were other sects of Judaism around then too.

What happened was these Jews kept fighting the Romans for one reason or another and fighting the Roman Empire in the 1st century was a pretty shit choice to make so they kept losing. All of these Jews kept getting wiped out and their Messiah claimants were either cast out of Judaism like Jesus or killed by the Romans without restoring Israel. The Jews ended up shifting and adapting to this and that's where we get the Talmud and Rabbinic Judaism (which mostly came from the Pharisees) which is a lot more insular and strict on conversion.

 

[AMERICA]

So how do I become a jew, or at least make the other jews think that I am a jew?
I want in on this

 

[Zarael]

In the case of Christianity Romans saw the potential of how a people can rally behind one deity as did the Jews against Rome and put up considerable resistance as a result; making it eventually politically prudent to use it to unite a very diverse empire.

This is completely wrong. At the time when Constantine legalized Christianity it was still on the fringes of Roman society having endured a brutal persecution under Diocletian. The Great Persecution happened in 303AD. Constantine legalized Christianity in 313AD, only 10 years later. There's no reason to think the rise of Christianity in Rome was guided by a political agenda of any kind, in fact Constantine embracing Christianity went against what would be in his best political interests. The idea that the rise of Christianity was to "unite" the Empire is simply a historical myth. It was an entirely organic growth and after Christianity was legalized it simply grew in popularity for reasons completely unrelated to political expediency.

https://youtu.be/tcIuAJ-jaSg?t=757

 

[Queen Elizabeth II]

This is completely wrong. At the time when Constantine legalized Christianity it was still on the fringes of Roman society having endured a brutal persecution under Diocletian. The Great Persecution happened in 303AD. Constantine legalized Christianity in 313AD, only 10 years later. There's no reason to think the rise of Christianity in Rome was guided by a political agenda of any kind, in fact Constantine embracing Christianity went against what would be in his best political interests. The idea that the rise of Christianity was to "unite" the Empire is simply a historical myth. It was an entirely organic growth and after Christianity was legalized it simply grew in popularity for reasons completely unrelated to political expediency.

https://youtu.be/tcIuAJ-jaSg?t=757

No, it's quite right.

When Christianity appeared yes, it was first persecuted. As did the natives of Mecca tried to purge Muhammad's followers, as did the native Brahmins try to stir up anger against the emergent Buddhists against the cast system. As did the Iranians prior to Islam up resistance against the incursions of the followers of Zoroaster, as did the Christians who first tried to convert the Romans.

However, in all of the above cases there was a period when the religion was adopted at a higher level and seen as a useful tool of governance especially as the Empire went and remained in the East it kept finding stranger, and stranger traditions and cultures it couldn't so easily reconcile and combine with its own ways.

"The Great Persecutions" under Diocletian is also very misleading a term. Yes, within the east Christians faces pressure to convert from some of Diocletian's men. This was far from a universal thing, as I'm sure you know Constantius (Constantine's father, and a Caesar and later Augustus himself) openly denounced these policies and refused to apply them. The issue was far more localised than some believers like to think. Terrible yes, but it doesn't support their narriative or why they were persecuted in the firstl Place.

The evidence doesn't suggest Christianity was "created" for use to unite the empire, but it was unashamedly co opted when the Romans began to try to control it (which they did) by making it into an arm of government and an instrument of cultural dissemination and control by rulers like Constantine and emperor's who openly lived pagan lives for their entire lives; unless you want to count a delirious dying man who didn't provide consent when he was baptised on his death bed a fine example of finding God.

 

[jje100010001]

Hinduism is pretty much what happens when one of the polytheistic Indo-European pagan traditions survives into the modern era.

Had Christianity not violently stamped out paganism in Southern Europe and politically snuffed it out in Northern Europe, chances are that the ancient Greek, Roman, and Germanic religions would have eventually resembled something similar to Hinduism.

I think that’s an interesting view that many of the older pagan religions were more a set of rituals and loose societal traditions.

There was an interesting attempt at the revival of Roman Paganism by Emperor Julian, but by then, enough time had lapsed since Constantine that those traditions had passed out of daily life, and so things like animal sacrifice were now seen as strange, rather than ‘normal’ (same how some Hindu elements like the rat temple may seem shocking to the West, but part of life in India).

Ironically, his attempts to revive the old pagan religion and reorganize it seemed to have brought it closer in line to Christianity. I feel like mainstream Christianity and Judaism (same for Islam, but mostly in the West) are starting to lapse into tradition rather than true belief- if there’s a disruption in ritual, will people come back?

 

[Pixy]

Colonial populations whom converted often got a better deal than those who didn't convert, which greatly incentivised it as a way to make some form of a decent living under the rule of colonial empires.