While Buddhism has been confirmed to have events that allow for pops to randomly switch to it as a religion, this has only prompted a question for me: will the most evangelistic religion of the game gain similar events to represent its unparalleled growth in the period that Imperator covers? I am, of course, referring to Judaism.
This assertion may seem odd or even antithetical to many readers, but I am confident that, once I have finished making my case, I will have sufficiently demonstrated that Judaism was a period abnormality beyond being monotheistic and deserves to be treated as such - or, at the very least, get events similar to Buddhism. Before we can begin in full, however, context of the Judaism in the time Imperator begins at is needed; by 304 BC, an independent Jewish state in Judea had not existed for nearly three centuries, and there was already a large Jewish diaspora across much of the eastern world. The largest expatriate communities currently were in Babylon, Egypt and across Aramaea (Adolf von Harnack estimated that Syria and Egypt were both estimated to house a million Jews on their own1), all having arisen owing to the collapse of the Jewish states of Israel and Judah, but there were plenty of smaller communities spread across the Mediterranean and Middle East: even well before Alexander conquered most of the known world there was already notable community of Jews in Athens, to speak nothing of those in Ethiopia or Arabia. This trend towards diaspora would only continue to grow as the Greek world solidified itself around the Mediterranean; almost invariably these communities formed as migrant Jewish merchants and craftsmen settled down, but some notable exceptions existed (such as Antioch's diasporan community; initially formed by Jewish veterans of the Seleucid army who were settled in the fortress-city, or the Elephantine community in Egypt). It was in this Hellenized and later Greco-Roman environment that two very large and important trends in the Jewish community began: the increasing Hellenization of Jewish thought and communities, and the emergence of a fringe Judaism. An explanation of the former is necessary for the latter and its consequences, and so I will begin there.
As Alexander's successors would solidify their hold over the eastern Mediterranean in the decades to come, combined with innumerable Greek colonies and city-states in the western half, Koine would emerge as something approximating the Lingua Franca of antiquity. The consequences of this would be felt perhaps most sharply by the Jewish communities scattered around that great lake, as it would eventually reach the point that many scholars agree that most Jews worldwide spoke Greek as a first language and few could even speak Hebrew as a secondary language2: even in Judea proper many Jews spoke Greek as an everyday language (and many even had Greek names - for example, Antigonus of Sokho; Pharisee, possible progenitor of the Sadducees, and the first noted Jew to have a Hellenic name. He was active in the immediate decades following Imperator's start and possibly even during 304 BC). The demands of this linguistically divided demographic soon reached the extent that the Alexandrine Jews, who spoke Greek as a first language, would work to translate the Torah into Greek: the Mosaic Law was the first, likely only decades after Imperator's start (sometime in mid 3rd century BC), followed by the rest across the remaining BC centuries. This would have larger consequences than just allowing an expatriate community to read their religious texts: it opened the way for theological and philosophical intercourse with the wider Hellenic (and later Roman) world. This would be a two-way road. While the influence of Platonic and Aristotelian thought upon Judaism in this period is well known, the main point of interest to this thread is the obscure yet significant amount of gentiles who converted to Judaism.
To put this into context, Judaism was not the only faith to gain significant traction across the Greco-Roman world in Imperator's timeframe: polytheism is notoriously weak when it comes to retaining adherents against exclusive religions, and the malleability and vastness of the Hellenistic pantheon - qualities that only grew as it absorbed the deities of more and more conquered cultures - was particularly fatal. Not only is there virtually no impetus to proselytize in the name of deities who have very human qualities and demand nothing but propitiation, but, in the words of famed sociologist Rodney Stark:
This is to not say polytheism had no credibility in the ancient world: quite to the contrary, in fact, as the Cults of Cybele and Isis - both polytheistic but focusing worship on an exclusive deity - gained massive traction and arguably helped enable the spread of Judaism by normalizing exclusivity. And much like Judaism, both were viewed with suspicion by the established Greco-Roman temple faiths because of the threats they posed to the temple monopolies; such that Cybele (Magna Mater), with its transvestite eunuch priests, would eventually have more temples in the city of Rome than any of the city's traditional gods. The Cult of Isis was even more successful, her devotees swelling only a few decades after gamestart. Its origins as a phenomenon likely have its roots in Manetho's ranking of the gods, where she was placed equal to Serapis, meaning all temples devoted to Serapis had sections to Isis. Regardless of the origins, Isis' popularity became uncontestable in the polytheistic world: in the city of Rome, she had twice as many temples as Cybele (who, despite being kept on the religious peripheries of the state pantheon, was still endorsed by the Roman State) and thrice as many as Jupiter.4 It is also of little coincidence that the Cult of Isis came the closest to monotheism of the pagan cults.
It was in this world of increasingly popular and exclusive oriental religions, transmitted by a common language that Judaism stepped into. This led to a softening of Jewish proscriptions about intermingling with gentiles as the Diaspora expanded: intermarriage was not uncommon with Greeks, most Diaspora communities spoke and worshiped in Greek, and participation in feasts with them was the norm - even the names of pagan deities such as Apollonius and Dionysus were popular. This intermingling with the gentile world had a predictable effect: many gentiles began converting to Judaism. This was not done solely through the usual method of social networks: some Jews intentionally missionized to the Greeks, such that in 139 BC an edict was issued to expel the Jews from the city of Rome on the charges that they were attempting "to introduce their own rites" and "infect Roman morals".5 Josephus echoed this sentiment, saying "The multitude of mankind itself have had a great inclination for a long time to follow our religious observances."6, and Philo also made statements about the numerous converts to Judaism; both agreed that the practice of inviting gentiles to attend services at synagogues were common. The extent of Jewish growth, both through fertility and conversion, was such that there were an estimated number of anywhere from 4 to 9 million Jews in the Roman Empire at the time of Augustus' order for a census: this is out of a total population of 60 million7, which is a significant proportion of the empire regardless of which end of the estimate is more accurate. These weren't social pariahs without any power either; Cassius Dio wrote that in 95 AD Domitian executed his cousin, amongst a number of other prominent Romans for having either converted to Judaism or shown sympathies for Yahweh worship ("drifted into Jewish ways" is the actual term used - this distinction will be extrapolated)8. However, there were two major bars on full conversion to Judaism: circumcision, and the inescapable link between the Jewish faith and the Jewish ethnicity. This created a periphery on a periphery: a sort of class of 'God-fearers'; those who, while not fully accepting Jewish law (including circumcision and prohibitions on certain foods) and thus not fully converting, still worshipped Yahweh. In fact, these God-fearers feature quite prominently in the Biblical Book of Acts: take for example the Centurion Cornelius, traditionally held as the first gentile convert, who was described in Acts as being "devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly."9, or Paul's sermon in Pisidian Antioch, which opened with "Men of Israel, and you that fear God, listen.".10
I believe the evidence is apparent enough that Judaism, as a religious force, deserves to be represented with similar events that are granted to Buddhism; the conditions for its historical spread are already set in place to such an extent they would feasibly be impossible to revert in time even with player intervention. The way I could see said events working are such: in Hellenistic port-cities with a sufficient civilization level (representing their cosmopolitan nature) without a Jewish pop in them, there would be a MTTH event to spawn a citizen or freeman Israeli-Jewish pop representing the growth of a diaspora community. Subsequently, any city with a Jewish pop in it has a chance event to convert a non-Jewish pop to Judaism. This follow-up event wouldn't be able to trigger more than thrice per city and would similarly require an even higher level of civilization/pop density than that of the initial event that spawns Judaism to prevent an event spam.
With all that said, I'll just conclude with sources:
1: von Harnack, Adolf: Ausbreitung des Christentums
2: Stark, Rodney: Cities of God
3: Ibid.
4: Beard, John North and Simon Price: Religions of Rome, Vol 1: A History
5: Smallwood, E. Mary: The Jews Under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian
6: Josephus: The Jewish War
7: Stark, Rodney: Discovering God
8: Dio, Cassius: Historia Romana
9: Acts 10:2
10: Acts 13:6
This assertion may seem odd or even antithetical to many readers, but I am confident that, once I have finished making my case, I will have sufficiently demonstrated that Judaism was a period abnormality beyond being monotheistic and deserves to be treated as such - or, at the very least, get events similar to Buddhism. Before we can begin in full, however, context of the Judaism in the time Imperator begins at is needed; by 304 BC, an independent Jewish state in Judea had not existed for nearly three centuries, and there was already a large Jewish diaspora across much of the eastern world. The largest expatriate communities currently were in Babylon, Egypt and across Aramaea (Adolf von Harnack estimated that Syria and Egypt were both estimated to house a million Jews on their own1), all having arisen owing to the collapse of the Jewish states of Israel and Judah, but there were plenty of smaller communities spread across the Mediterranean and Middle East: even well before Alexander conquered most of the known world there was already notable community of Jews in Athens, to speak nothing of those in Ethiopia or Arabia. This trend towards diaspora would only continue to grow as the Greek world solidified itself around the Mediterranean; almost invariably these communities formed as migrant Jewish merchants and craftsmen settled down, but some notable exceptions existed (such as Antioch's diasporan community; initially formed by Jewish veterans of the Seleucid army who were settled in the fortress-city, or the Elephantine community in Egypt). It was in this Hellenized and later Greco-Roman environment that two very large and important trends in the Jewish community began: the increasing Hellenization of Jewish thought and communities, and the emergence of a fringe Judaism. An explanation of the former is necessary for the latter and its consequences, and so I will begin there.
As Alexander's successors would solidify their hold over the eastern Mediterranean in the decades to come, combined with innumerable Greek colonies and city-states in the western half, Koine would emerge as something approximating the Lingua Franca of antiquity. The consequences of this would be felt perhaps most sharply by the Jewish communities scattered around that great lake, as it would eventually reach the point that many scholars agree that most Jews worldwide spoke Greek as a first language and few could even speak Hebrew as a secondary language2: even in Judea proper many Jews spoke Greek as an everyday language (and many even had Greek names - for example, Antigonus of Sokho; Pharisee, possible progenitor of the Sadducees, and the first noted Jew to have a Hellenic name. He was active in the immediate decades following Imperator's start and possibly even during 304 BC). The demands of this linguistically divided demographic soon reached the extent that the Alexandrine Jews, who spoke Greek as a first language, would work to translate the Torah into Greek: the Mosaic Law was the first, likely only decades after Imperator's start (sometime in mid 3rd century BC), followed by the rest across the remaining BC centuries. This would have larger consequences than just allowing an expatriate community to read their religious texts: it opened the way for theological and philosophical intercourse with the wider Hellenic (and later Roman) world. This would be a two-way road. While the influence of Platonic and Aristotelian thought upon Judaism in this period is well known, the main point of interest to this thread is the obscure yet significant amount of gentiles who converted to Judaism.
To put this into context, Judaism was not the only faith to gain significant traction across the Greco-Roman world in Imperator's timeframe: polytheism is notoriously weak when it comes to retaining adherents against exclusive religions, and the malleability and vastness of the Hellenistic pantheon - qualities that only grew as it absorbed the deities of more and more conquered cultures - was particularly fatal. Not only is there virtually no impetus to proselytize in the name of deities who have very human qualities and demand nothing but propitiation, but, in the words of famed sociologist Rodney Stark:
3
This is to not say polytheism had no credibility in the ancient world: quite to the contrary, in fact, as the Cults of Cybele and Isis - both polytheistic but focusing worship on an exclusive deity - gained massive traction and arguably helped enable the spread of Judaism by normalizing exclusivity. And much like Judaism, both were viewed with suspicion by the established Greco-Roman temple faiths because of the threats they posed to the temple monopolies; such that Cybele (Magna Mater), with its transvestite eunuch priests, would eventually have more temples in the city of Rome than any of the city's traditional gods. The Cult of Isis was even more successful, her devotees swelling only a few decades after gamestart. Its origins as a phenomenon likely have its roots in Manetho's ranking of the gods, where she was placed equal to Serapis, meaning all temples devoted to Serapis had sections to Isis. Regardless of the origins, Isis' popularity became uncontestable in the polytheistic world: in the city of Rome, she had twice as many temples as Cybele (who, despite being kept on the religious peripheries of the state pantheon, was still endorsed by the Roman State) and thrice as many as Jupiter.4 It is also of little coincidence that the Cult of Isis came the closest to monotheism of the pagan cults.
It was in this world of increasingly popular and exclusive oriental religions, transmitted by a common language that Judaism stepped into. This led to a softening of Jewish proscriptions about intermingling with gentiles as the Diaspora expanded: intermarriage was not uncommon with Greeks, most Diaspora communities spoke and worshiped in Greek, and participation in feasts with them was the norm - even the names of pagan deities such as Apollonius and Dionysus were popular. This intermingling with the gentile world had a predictable effect: many gentiles began converting to Judaism. This was not done solely through the usual method of social networks: some Jews intentionally missionized to the Greeks, such that in 139 BC an edict was issued to expel the Jews from the city of Rome on the charges that they were attempting "to introduce their own rites" and "infect Roman morals".5 Josephus echoed this sentiment, saying "The multitude of mankind itself have had a great inclination for a long time to follow our religious observances."6, and Philo also made statements about the numerous converts to Judaism; both agreed that the practice of inviting gentiles to attend services at synagogues were common. The extent of Jewish growth, both through fertility and conversion, was such that there were an estimated number of anywhere from 4 to 9 million Jews in the Roman Empire at the time of Augustus' order for a census: this is out of a total population of 60 million7, which is a significant proportion of the empire regardless of which end of the estimate is more accurate. These weren't social pariahs without any power either; Cassius Dio wrote that in 95 AD Domitian executed his cousin, amongst a number of other prominent Romans for having either converted to Judaism or shown sympathies for Yahweh worship ("drifted into Jewish ways" is the actual term used - this distinction will be extrapolated)8. However, there were two major bars on full conversion to Judaism: circumcision, and the inescapable link between the Jewish faith and the Jewish ethnicity. This created a periphery on a periphery: a sort of class of 'God-fearers'; those who, while not fully accepting Jewish law (including circumcision and prohibitions on certain foods) and thus not fully converting, still worshipped Yahweh. In fact, these God-fearers feature quite prominently in the Biblical Book of Acts: take for example the Centurion Cornelius, traditionally held as the first gentile convert, who was described in Acts as being "devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly."9, or Paul's sermon in Pisidian Antioch, which opened with "Men of Israel, and you that fear God, listen.".10
I believe the evidence is apparent enough that Judaism, as a religious force, deserves to be represented with similar events that are granted to Buddhism; the conditions for its historical spread are already set in place to such an extent they would feasibly be impossible to revert in time even with player intervention. The way I could see said events working are such: in Hellenistic port-cities with a sufficient civilization level (representing their cosmopolitan nature) without a Jewish pop in them, there would be a MTTH event to spawn a citizen or freeman Israeli-Jewish pop representing the growth of a diaspora community. Subsequently, any city with a Jewish pop in it has a chance event to convert a non-Jewish pop to Judaism. This follow-up event wouldn't be able to trigger more than thrice per city and would similarly require an even higher level of civilization/pop density than that of the initial event that spawns Judaism to prevent an event spam.
With all that said, I'll just conclude with sources:
1: von Harnack, Adolf: Ausbreitung des Christentums
2: Stark, Rodney: Cities of God
3: Ibid.
4: Beard, John North and Simon Price: Religions of Rome, Vol 1: A History
5: Smallwood, E. Mary: The Jews Under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian
6: Josephus: The Jewish War
7: Stark, Rodney: Discovering God
8: Dio, Cassius: Historia Romana
9: Acts 10:2
10: Acts 13:6
Would be grand to have this in the game somehow.
