The Jewish High Priests, the main two being Caiaphas and Annas, at the time of Jesus of Nazareth, made a decision. Their nation and people were at the mercy of the Romans, and they were allowed to continue practicing their faith and keeping their culture alive. Caiaphas, Annas and the other High Priests have to make a decision about one man, who would be a prophet for fututre generations. Jesus of Nazareth at this time in his life is gaining a lot of support for his new idea of practicing, so much support that the Romans begin to notice. So Caiaphas, making a political decision to save his people and his nation from assimilation, decides that Jesus must be executed to keep the Romans from coming in to stop a potential uprising. He then has Jesus arrested through information gainede from Judas, and has Jesus taken before both Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas to be tried. Both of these men cannot find a reason for him to be executed until the High Priests demand it due to his claiming to be the messiah, an act of sedition at the time. Pilate then gives the Jewish people the chance to set him free as it was a passover tradition to release one prisoner, but they realeased Barabbas, a criminal instead. This greatly changed the face of religion. If Jesus had never been martyred, would Christianity have spread the way it did, or even exist at all? Would polytheistic paganism still be the mainstream religion? I want everyones opinions on the subject.
If Jesus was never martyred, Christianity would not have existed. It really was the crucifixion, and the resurrection experience that made Christianity a viable religion. If Jesus had not died, his movement would have largely been forgotten, except maybe a passing mention in Josephus.
There were other religious leaders like Jesus from that time which we know of largely because of Josephus. Incidentally, Acts of the Apostles also mention one fellow now known as the Egyptian, who led a religious movement around the same time, but failed. Josephus mentions him briefly, but most knowledge of him has passed away. John the Baptist is another famous example of this sort of leader.
A few decades after Jesus, there was also another more well known "Messiah" figure. Bar Kochba was considered by a number of individuals, including some respectable Rabbis of the time. But once he failed, that idea slipped away. And now most don't have a the faintest idea about him. The same most likely would have been true of Jesus if he wasn't crucified.
As for what the mainstream religion would have been, that is harder. There is some suggestion (and this is a topic I'm reading more up on, so I'm not completely have all of the information) that Judaism was gaining quite a few of converts around that time. There was also a growing amount of individuals who were attracted to Judaism, but never fully converted (thus, not actually being Jews, but still following at least a partial amount of a strain of Judaism).
At the same time, a growing number of gentiles were growing tired with the popular polytheistic religions of the time. They just did not offer what was wanted. Judaism, and later Christianity, did give them something that they weren't getting elsewhere.
So without Christianity, it is still possible that a monotheistic tradition would have risen that would have replaced the polytheistic religions. However, it really can't be sure.
