The Bible--Wars, Culture, Faith, and Inspiration

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

It's a real mistake to talk about a normative Christianity before the fourth century.

I think you could take about it a bit during portions of earlier periods, but you would certainly have to qualify a lot to either accept that its in a great deal more controversy or generalize the concept compared to later periods.

There's still a lot of discussion going on throughout the various pieces of the Christian world and there are people with fairly wide ranging authority who can negotiate out individual pieces of consensus, but, as you might guess from what you know of my profession, I'm probably willing to accept and use a much more lax definition of normative right out of the hat than most would.

Church history is certainly cool, though for the most part its a little focused compared to other 'Biblical' periods and thus less suited for adventure.

I mean the dark ages are awesome and you can run with Bede or Gregory of Tours a good long way, but you'll be limiting the story if you're only running it from their ecclesiastical perspectives.

 

[S'mon]

Fusangite - I agree about the lack of a single normative Christianity, obviously it varied a lot and different groups had different ideas. Re Mithraism, I do find it striking how similar it was to what became the dominant form of Christianity, but you could argue that both of those drew from common Zoroastrian roots (in Christianity's case partly as a result of the Babylonian captivity). I do find it surprising how the Christianity of 500 AD looks far more like Mithraism (to me) than like what most Christian sects were teaching in 100 AD, hence my suspicion.

 

[Dinkeldog]

Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books could also serve as an example of how to bring Christianity to a gaming world.

 

[Henry]

Monte Cook's "Rallonach the Giving" from Arcana Evolved seems to borrow elements of Christianity for its tenets. It could have equally borrowed from other sources, of course, but just reading the description of the religion, from Rallonach, to the "holy oils", to its monotheistic relation to the other religions makes for interesting parallels. Arcana Evolved to me is a good example of a setting where you can have monotheistic religions side by side with polythestic ones, especially with how the magic system plays into it. Technically, you could even make the same claim that Keith Baker's Eberron is a valid way to set one up (although you don't have priests of Dol Dorn claiming that the Path of Light or the Blood of Vol are "not true deific paths").

 

[S'mon]

S'weird - when I see Henry has posted, I don't know if he'll be offering a contribution or locking the thread...

 

[Henry]

I'm genuinely interested in seeing what people have done with it for gaming material, but if it gets to be too much of a headache for people trying to bring it into a debate of religion, then we'll have to lock it. Which might indeed set the record for longest time from conception to locking for a thread on ENWorld.

 

[Dr. Harry]

Hmm, I tend to rely more on Herodotus for this sort of thing.

But Testament was an awesome game-supplement.

In response to your first point: Quite so, and let me point out:

http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/herodotus/

In response to your second point, Abso-fraggin'-lutely, and let me also recommend Green Ronin's Medieval Player's Manual (now available in PDF form at RPGNow). Who said Monotheism had to be boring?

http://www.greenronin.com/catalog/grr1403

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

If I want my Gnostic Crisan Monks to be butt-kicking martial artists out of "Kung Fu", likewise.

Ah, yes.

"I kick ass for the Lord!"

One of the best lines ever.

 

[jester47]

I think that I might use the false assumption that Jesus is a pacifist teacher as a part of my campaign. That the thought of his appearance in the world would not change anything. And so few actually fear reprisal. Yet the priests discover the text of revelation whuich depicts a militant Jesus, and being long long ago and worlds away all the prophecy has come to pass, so its now seen as history. This causes the priests to decide that they are the vangaurd in the world, and thus the orders of the clerics are born. This is looking like a really fun campaign to play... You could do a lot with the races and their take on the Hebrew God.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

There's no evidence of this. There were many strong influences on Christianity in the fourth century after its legalization but there is no evidence that Mithraism was one of them. There is actually far more evidence of Mithraism incorporating originally Christian elements than the reverse.

Absolutely. Epigraphical evidence for Mithraic doctrines and rites postdates Christianity.