Fun gameplay thought puzzle: Should the ancient Slavs convert to Judaism?

[rakovskii]

The Invictus Mod expands the Baltic culture into a Balto-Slavic group that includes three tribes mentioned by Herodotus: the Melanchlaeni (Bryansk, Russia), Neuri (south Belarus), and Budini (Kharkiv area). The ancient Slavs were pagan, but as their descendants migrated south, they came into more contact with Christian Byzantium and Christianized from the 6th to 10th centuries AD. Bulgaria, Serbia, and the Czechs Christianized in the 9th century AD. From the Christian point of view, paganism worshiped false gods and idols, and Christianity was the continuation, fulfillment, and successor to OT Judaism. The OT tends to treat religious groups in broad collective terms, as generally either being either pagan Polytheists worshiping false gods, or following Torah and worshiping the one true God. However, historically some pre-Christian pagans like some Greek philosophers believed in Monotheism.

Imperator Rome's game mechanics regarding pagan kingdoms' relations with Judaism are rather basic: Either your kingdom is pagan and over the game's length, the Jewish population in pagan lands may convert to paganism, or you convert your kingdom to Judaism and your Jewish residents stay Jewish in religion.

In my playthrough as the Slavic Melanchlaeni, I conquered the Baltics, most of Ukraine, and Poland, and the Mod lets me make a decision to "Form Slavia." At 220 BC, I've conquered Crimea and Maeotia (Krasnodar region in modern geography). These areas have had a small Jewish population since the start of the game.

I can spend 340 Influence Points and convert my kingdom to Judaism (called the "Israelite religion" in the Mod).

The 340 Influence Point requirement comes from the 140 Influence Points that it takes to move my capitol to a small, Jewish dominated settlement, plus the 200 Points that the Conversion decision directly requires. Currently I have 128 points, make about 1.84 points per month, and will reach 340 points in about 10 years. So converting to Judaism is doable, but a little slow and expensive. Another little downside is that you would lose some of the Slavic cultural feel by abandoning Slavic paganism for Judaism. Plus, joining into Moses' Torah is probably not really necessary for gentiles from a Jewish religious POV anyway; Judaism would categorize them as Noahides and be more concerned that they follow Jehovah and abandon false gods than that you join the particular Covenant that Jehovah made with Israel in Sinai.

The other option is to keep following Slavic paganism. I guess you could theoretically justify it as "Inclusive Monotheism", whereby all the gods are just emanations of the one true God. But the practical downside is that keeping paganism as your state religion may eventually pressure your whole tiny Jewish population into accepting paganism.

 

[DukeLeto42]

While it's entirely up to you what path you want to take, in extremely broad strokes the spread of Christianity into what we'd broadly call "Slavic" groups has a lot of political and religious rationales, few if any of which Judaism in this period provides. To significantly oversimplify, I'd summarize it in three points:

1. Proselytization: Christianity was actively spread beyond the borders of Christian nations, so there was an external push to adopt. This of course was furthered by Christian kingdoms viewing those beyond their borders as either "future Christianized subjects" or "kings in need of Christianization." Judaism never really developed that strong emphasis on converting others to the faith (as you note), so this really doesn't fit.
2. Inclusion: conversion gave societies access to the economic networks of the Christian world. This is one of the reasons we see a split in terms of which denomination (Catholicism / Orthodoxy) portions of Europe adopt - a Rus merchant trading up and down the Volga would benefit more from taking on the version of Christianity recognized in Constantinople, while his cousin over in Denmark is much more interested in trading with England, the Low Countries, and Germany. Lacking numerous large nations to link into, Judaism doesn't have this economic rationale. Then again, Jewish communities were already fairly widely dispersed, and adopting a faith present in small numbers across the Mediterranean world (one that's not the Hellenic faith you fought with to gain control of Crimea) might be attractive.
3. Royal power: this is discussed extensively in Anders Winroth's The Conversion of Scandinavia, but in brief an enforced religion with Catholicism's strict hierarchies meant to mirror the laity was a fairly significant aid for kings trying to establish permanent royal authority. Separating religious and secular authority also helped erode the power of lower nobility (even though kings would later find themselves on the other side of investiture controversies). This rationale is probably the best one for why to convert, as we're considering the state of Judaism before Rome's destruction of the Temple and a shift towards a more decentralized faith. However, I don't know if it still provides the same level of support for royal authority as, say, being crowned by the local archbishop.

 

[rakovskii]

Good thinking, Duke.
You gave good reasons for why Russia and the Slavs weren't likely to convert to Judaism or find it very practical. Judaism has many strictures that work OK in the Levant, but not great in 1st century BC Russia. Rand Syria had circumcision, so for Israelites it wasn't much difference, but it's a bigger deal if your tribe is in southwest Russia. Likewise, the Torah emphasizes pilgrimages to the ancient Temple and the role of the priesthood, but 1st c BC Russia was far away from it. Then there were bans on pork meat and mixing wool with linen. The rabbis and Christians dealt with the Torah Law Covenant restrictions differently. The pharisees/rabbis added rules, like the handwashing ritual prayer, and found ways around some Torah rules. Jesus in the NT, especially in Matthew's Gospel, criticized the rabbis' additions and maneuvers.

Plus, Judaism gives the monarchical Divine Mandate to David's line, and your kingdom is Slavic, making a little issue with the proper lineague. You would probably want to be a vassal of a Davidic Judea if you wanted to fulfill this issue of the Divine Mandate.

 

[rakovskii]

One could argue with your points, and I don't understand fully what you meant in your third point about how Judaism would affect a European monarchy's power. But ultimately the conclusion would be the same as yours.

The Kazars would be a case of a Russian region's rulers adopting Judaism, although they adopted it in the medieval period. The Khazars were a little like the Asiatic Kalmyk steppe people, or maybe even Turkic, and they have a small tribe or collection of tribes descended from them today in Crimea or Ukraine. And there is historical and archeaological evidence of some ancient Jews living in the northern Black Sea region, like they also lived in small numbers across the Mediterranean. So the idea of an ancient Russian tribe converting to Judaism is not totally unrealistic.

In my playthrough puzzle I was coming from the mentality of a medieval or modern Christian Slav, who would want their nation to accept Christianity ASAP, besides of course dominating the Satum lands like Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Persia. Conquering Maeotia and its Jews creates a dilemma because on one hand, converting to Judaism isn't very practical either game wise or historically and would be rather like partly displacing a Slav culture with a Levantine one that might come across as a little foreign and OCD about its strictures, but on the other hand, a medieval Christian Slav wouldn't want to have converted ancient Israelites to worship pagan Polytheism.

 

[rakovskii]

Duke,
I am playing in the Invictus Mod, and I think that I must have met all the requirements for converting my kingdom to Judaism, but it says that the character requirement is only 153/156 full, even after a month of having a loyal Israelite character in my court. Here is a Screenshot:

Steam Community :: Screenshot :: It seems that I must have met all the X requirements for embracing Judaism. But what does it mean that I met 153/156 for the character?

Steam Community: Imperator: Rome. It seems that I must have met all the X requirements for embracing Judaism. But what does it mean that I met 153/156 for the character?

steamcommunity.com

- I have over the 202 required Influence Points.
- I have an Israelite (Jewish religion) character in my court, Nehi, that I "recruited" from Egypt. It says that his character meets 153/156 of the requirements. So I reloaded the savegame and invited him to my court and had him join a noble family instead of getting him with the Recruiting function. But this time, his character still just met about 151/155 of the character requirement points.
- I moved my capitol to Hermonassa, and then moved enough Israelite/Jewish religion adherents to the capitol to create a majority or 50% Israelite population in the capitol.

In the "Decisions" menu, as my screenshot above shows, all of my requirements are met, except that there is still a red X next to the Character requirement line due to the 153/156 point level. I gave the Nehi character a job and ran the game into the next month, and he still doesn't meet the requirements.

I don't know what the onstacle is, except that maybe the Invictus Mod has blocked the ability to Embrace Judaism.

 

[DukeLeto42]

Looks like they reworked the decision fairly substantially. You don't meet 3 of the conditions:

1. Have a deity in your Pantheon from the new religion. That might be tough, seeing as you're in the wrong part of the map to have holy sites.
2. Less than 20% of your pops are Jewish. That's going to be very tough to fix if you're not migratory and can't convert pops into units to get rid of spare Slavic pops.
3. The character conditions aren't about a single individual - it looks like the 153/156 is the number of characters that meet the requisite conditions, those being "is over 60 loyalty" or "not clan chief" - in other words, 3 of your clan chiefs are disloyal.

 

[rakovskii]

Nice. Makes sense.