What if….

For the last couple of years I’ve left my choice of NaNoWriMo project up to the whim of my fellow NaNites, letting them pick something that sounds interesting from my list of works in progress or under consideration.
 
One of those WIPs – and quite a popular one, although not so popular that I’ve written it yet – has been The Nazarene Sect, a sort of timey-wimey story which, in some form, takes in the life of Jesus Christ on earth. Well, I have decided that its time has come, and have recently been playing with some basic plot points and characters so I can hit November running.
 
The big challenge remaining though is world-building. I like world-building. Maybe that’s why I read and write science fiction. Not that I’m creating an alien planet or a far future civilisation here; I’m doing something far more complicated. I’m writing an alternate history.
 
So, the central premise of The Nazarene Sect is, as you may have gathered from the title of this post, very much in the ‘what if?’ area of science fiction. Specifically: what if Jesus didn’t die on the cross?
 
OK, stop shouting ‘Heretic!’ at me and give me a hand – I’ve got 2000 years of history to rewrite and about six weeks to do it in. So, humour me for a moment, and tell me what you think 2013 would be like if Jesus had not gone to the cross, but faded into history as just another 1st Century Rabbi.