David Howery said:
If we assume that Christianity will rise and spread as per OTL, the new religion will be one of anti-slavery, as it would arise from this modified Judaism. What would be the affect on history of this change in one of the world's major religions?
I am fairly sure that the very fact of being anti-slavery would prevent the spread of Christianity. Slavery was an accepted part of the Roman world, and any belief system that spoke out against it might find acceptance among the slaves (though even that needs to be qualified - especially among the city slaves there were many who would probably not have favoured a change of the overall status quo), but would have serious problems making converts among the free and the freedmen. If you then put the whole force of an afterlife-centered faith behind the prohibition, you could end up with serious disturbances in the social fabric (slaves practising civil disobedience, refusing to work and suffering terrible punishments because 'the kingdom of God is at hand and I will be whole and blessed there"). The Romans had a bad history of dealing with that kind of thing, and while they tended towards the tolerant in religious matters, upsetting civic order was the one thing guaranteed to bring them down on you like a ton of bricks. Remember the Bacchic scandal? If the Roman state in, say, AD 70, had the least reason to assume that the nascent Christian community had anything revolutionary in mind that would most likely be the end of that. I mean, they even occasionally persecuted Cynics, and cynic philosophy had no serious following whatsoever.
If, on the other hand, Christianitry philosophically opposed slavery more clearly and unequivocally, but favored acceptance of the status quo with the exception of encouraging manumission 'to store riches in heaven', that could become - interesting. Definitely a stronger anti-slavery movement with much better arguments. Possibly a definitive end to slavery in Europe in the course of the middle ages (with an attendant strengthening of contractual and legal inequalities as a social structuring factor). If we were to see a post-medieval slave system like we did OTL (not that unlikely, I mean, Jesus is pretty unequivocal about killing and that didn't help), we could have the defenders of slavery in the course of the 19th century revert rather than to a religious position, to a modernist, scientific position. A strongly religious, anti-slavery north and a secularist, pro-slavery south? What mid-term repercussions for popular culture does that have? Will secularists forever be tainted with the 'slavery' brush? Will the Moral Majority campaign on behalf of racial equality? Will angry NAACP protesters picket town halls where gays marry? Where does that leave the ACLU?
("Damn nigger-loving Fundamentalists" vs. "Pinko racist Liberals" ;-) ? )