RobertLumley comments on How would you take over Rome? - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Yvain 14 March 2012 04:24PM

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Comment author: gwern 14 March 2012 06:18:22PM 9 points [-]

Imperial Rome was in general extremely tolerant of new religions, of which there were many new mystery cults - as long as they accepted a few ground rules vis-a-vis politics, and even those ground rules were negotiable. For example, the Jews were allowed to break all sorts of rules like not sacrificing to the emperors or ejecting legion standards from the Temple. As far as we can tell given the sources available (which likely skew pro-Roman), the Jewish revolts were not really the Romans' fault.

Comment author: RobertLumley 14 March 2012 06:26:46PM 0 points [-]

My point is more that you're instantly going to alienate a great number of people and make things much, much harder for you.

Comment author: gwern 14 March 2012 06:41:59PM 4 points [-]

Who are you going to alienate by starting a new religion? No one unless you choose to. (Even the intolerant Hebrew scriptures were respected among the pagans by virtue of their antiquity, and this was a big selling point for the many fellow-traveler non-Jew Jews, if you will, and for the later Christians.)

Comment author: RobertLumley 14 March 2012 08:18:56PM 1 point [-]

But did the Hebrew's respect the pagans? Religion is mindkilling, and anyone who ascribes to another one is going to be less fond of you. At least that's what I was thinking.

Comment author: gwern 14 March 2012 08:41:45PM *  1 point [-]

Did they all? Who knows. Xenophobia is universal. We do know there were instances and veins of respect for some pagans who did not go so far as to convert & be circumcised. If they were 'righteous', which entailed following the basic moral code, they might even avoid Gehenna.