memes

I think Christianity was somewhat different to alot of the other religions which the Romans easily assimilated out of realpolitik and by the classic interpretatio graeca. Like Judaism, adherence to Christianity precludes (in theory) adherence to any other source of divinity than the one true God, and the more metaphysical, moral and emotionally intense (in some respects) relationship that Jews and Christians imagined themselves as having to God were very distinct from the more formally legalistic and communal relationship that normal Romans understood as the relation to their gods, especially earlier on, in the Republic and early Empire, prior to the deepening of Greek, Egyptian and Semitic mystical influences on Roman religion. As institutions in Rome were understood to be, by their very nature, sacred (instituted by the constant will of the many gods and by Aeneas - son of Venus - and Romulus - son of Mars - to not recognize, for instance, the divinity of Roman gods of the Emperor, or of the sacred institutions was understood as a political challenge to the Empire. When you read Roman Latin texts about the Jewish rebellions it often sounds very similar to the way that modern imperialists speak about liberation or 'terrorist' movements.

Once Christianity started becoming popular, it was not perceived by the more traditionalist Romans as equivalent to the assimilation of other Gods, because it could not be assimilated to their religious ideology. It was often very scandalous when not only slaves, but aristocratic women would be found to have secretly converted to Christianity. Of course we're talking about a long period of time, i.e. from the death of Christ to 313 AD, before Christiantiy achieved something like a priviledged or dominant position in the Empire, so we shoudln't generalize about this whole length of time as if the relationship of different changing sections of the Roman social body were not themselves understanding relationships to eachother and to religions, themselves changing (notably when Christianity became less Jewish and more gentile). You are of course correct that culturally Christians translated many figures and symbols into analogous Christian ones, most obviously certain festivals and the saints, as has always happened when Christianity was been introduced or imposed on non-Christian groups such as in Africa or the Americas.

This is why the Jews and Christians had a uniquely controveral status within the Roman Empire. The Zealot revolt was the most spectacular example of this against Rome, and in many was a genuinely revolutionary movement. The Essenes and Christians who followed represent a less violent revolutionary opposition to Imperial Roman power, but were still very controversial, hence the repeated (albeit often exagerated) purges of Christians. It's not to difficult to understand why Jesus would be controversial if he was saying anything like what he's presented as saying in the New Testament.

I had forgotten the Odin example but that's really fascinating. I think similar syncretic cases have been found in Scandinavia. From what I understand, it seems that the Scandanavian aristocracy were, similarly to Rome, the immediate force behind the conversion to Christianity, in that it seems that there was something like a domino-effect in which the aristocracy came to see it was in their interest to convert to Christianity, which further increased the incentives for the remaining pagans aristocrats, the reasons likely meaning economic, military and political. Given lack of sources and data it's impossible to say to what extent this was also due to a pressure from the lower classes due to conversion of farmers, artisans, builders and slaves to Christianity, whereas in the Roman case we know that it seemed initially to have been most popular amongst the lower classes and the subaltern.