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Persecution and Early Christianity
Essay: Everyday Life in Greece and Rome
The first three centuries of the Christian era were marked by persecutions of the infant church. ... Until the burning of Rome in the year 64, The Roman Empire peaceably accepted the presence of Christians. ...
The first Christians were conditioned to expect persecution even before they experienced it. Suffering and martyrdom were a mainstay throughout Jewish history and therefore suffering in persecution was the willing sacrifice made by the righteous for the sins of the unrighteous. Such acceptance and even expectation of persecution had become entrenched in Jewish tradition by the time Jesus began his ministry. Jesus warned his followers not to be surprised by persecution; he then himself died a martyr’s death. ... Nero persecuted the Christians as scapegoats for the fire of Rome, “First of all, people who admitted their belief were arrested, and then later, through their information, a huge crowd was convicted not so much of the crime of setting the fire, as of hating humankind. ... Politics and religion were inseparable and Rome judged the religion of others from the same viewpoint. ...
Still, Rome showed itself tolerant of the gods of its subject peoples. ... Still Judaism was accorded the status of a lawful religion, a religio licita, as Rome did not consider the Jews a danger to traditional religion. Judaism was the target of persecution only when it presented itself as a political threat to the Empire or when it enjoyed religious expansion. ... The gods in their totality were the guardians of Rome and failure to give them their proper due, embodied in rites handed down from time immemorial, could bring disaster to Rome and her achievement. ... The mob that gave the Christians their name hated them for their crimes; their leader had been put to death under Pontius Pilate, but their ‘deadly, new and wicked superstition’ spread throughout Judea and even to Rome. ... “Only from about the middle of the third century do we find a full blown discipline of persecution, complete with carefully constructed edicts, for the purpose of the systematic extermination of Christianity.” The persecution of the Christians under Decius and Diocletian took on the character of a holy war.
Approximate Word count = 1794
Approximate Pages = 7.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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