Giday, I'm Gary Stevens.

And welcome to the third season of the History in the Bible podcast.

In this final season, I explore how the Jews and the Christians constructed new religions when they

were sent spinning into the void after the destruction of the temple.

All of the history about all of the books beyond the Bible. Episode 3.33. Speculations Part 4.

Four more speculations.

I argue that an important element of Christianity's success was that it quickly transformed itself into what I call the Imperial Church Incorporate.

Would Christianity have succeeded had it not done so?

Second, could Mithraism have triumphed over the church?

Third, could Gnostic variants of Christianity come to dominate?

Finally, the Jewish arm of the church vanished after the Barciceva revolt of 132.

What might have happened had that group survived and thrived?

Let's take a look at scenario 9 in my list of speculations.

Now this one comes off, I don't know, I don't know whether you call it a bug bear or a theory of mine.

The scenario we're looking at is what would have happened if the

Christians had developed a different organisational structure? One of my theories is that it was

the organizational structure of Christianity, which made it such a successful entity.

I've never been really convinced by most explanations I've

seen for Christianity's success. Most of these explanations talk about the attractiveness of its beliefs,

or it talks about how conversions occurred through just converting the paterfamilious, as we

discussed last time. I had never seen an explanation

which talks about the church's organisation. Now that could entirely be just because I just

...