Alternative Church Histories

I’ve been thinking what it would be like to set essay questions for students about alternative scenarios in church history.

Students would answer questions on how would the history of Christianity and the Roman empire be different if …

What if the Holy Family remained in Egypt?

If Jesus grew up in the Jewish community in Egypt, speaking Greek rather than Aramaic, immersed in Greco-Roman culture, and from there entering Palestine, what would have been different?

What if Paul went east into Bithynia rather than west into Macedonia?

Richard Bauckham actually did ask this question in an article, noting that Paul could have gone through Bithynia into Armenia, into Adiabene, and into a number of Hellenistic or Parthian cities between the Euphrates and Tigris. It would mean Pauline Christianity spreading primarily into India and China. How would that change world Christianity?

What if the Jerusalem Council made circumcision compulsory for Gentile Converts?

Would Paul have gone all maverick and just done his own thing any ways, confident in his calling to be the apostle to the Gentiles, Peter and James be damned? If Paul acquiesced,  what would Christianity have looked like? Would Jewish Christianity have been wiped out in 70 AD or even 135? Would there have been a parting of the ways? Would Jewish Christianity eventually take over Rabbinic Judaism as the prevalent form of Judaism?

What if the Marcionite churches became the majority in the second century?

I think it was Tertullian who said that the Marcionites build churches like bees build honeycombs: they just multiply. What if the Marcionites came to outnumber the proto-orthodox because their version of an unJewish and platonized Christianity won the day? Probably not good for Judaism, very different spirituality would emerge, a very different churches too.

What if Constantine lost the Battle of the Milvian Bridge?

Decius and Galerius had already worked out that trying to stamp out Christianity was not really working and gave up. Even so, it was Constantine’s victory over Maxentius in 306 that set the course for the Christianization of the Empire. But if Maxentius had won or else simply stayed holed up in Rome without engaging Constantine, would it simply have delayed the inevitable, or would Christianity have remained a minority religion in the Roman empire?

What if the Arians prevailed at the Council of Nicea?

Diarmaid MacCulloch has a lecture on this and I do wonder, wonder, wonder. For a start, it was mean that Christianity would not be Trinitarian but more of a Triadic Monotheistic Monarchy: Father as Big God, Son as Mini-God, and Spirit as the vibe between them (otherwise known as pop Christianity). I wonder if this form of Christianity would have been less affronting to the Muslim conquerors of the Middle East and North Africa and permitted Christianity more tolerance (maybe not).

Any other good questions for alternative church histories anyone can thing of?