(January 28, 2015 at 2:48 pm)watchamadoodle Wrote: Imagine you conquer some pagans and force them to become Christians. How do you accomplish that when people are very attached to their old religion? Apparently a popular method was to absorb the old religion into Christianity. If the people worship a fertility goddess, then convince them that St. Mary is the same goddess. Some of the mythological stories about the fertility goddess become stories about St. Mary.
This process of absorbing the old religion probably happened on a smaller scale too. When a new political group became dominant in a religion, they would not be able to force their new orthodoxy on the masses. Instead they would try to absorb the old traditions into the new traditions.
Probably the oddities in religious texts and traditions would provide clues to earlier traditions.
Sorry if this is boring.
This was the ancient Roman model. Conquer an area and incorporate its religion into the state pantheon. Xtianity had a much simpler method. They would look to convert the king to at least call himself a xtian - didn't matter if he believed their bullshit or not...just like now - and tell the rest of the tribe that they had to be xtians too.
Xtianity was always about power. "Religion" is just the product it sells.
