For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

But the whole point here is that Tacitus either says...or is made to say...that in 64 AD...less than 30 years after the supposed crucifixion of the godboy, we are supposed to believe that there are "multitudes" of xtians in Rome. But NO first century Roman writers bother to mention this fact? Sorry. Don't buy it.

How many is a multitude? All the dictionary says is a large number of people. I've seen arguments that there were no more than a few thousand two hundred years later but I haven't found an estimate for how many there were in Nero's day. Maybe Tacitus could have regarded a few hundred as a multitude if he thought that was a few hundred too many.

The point I was making was in reply to

Hardly the vast blood-letting that later xtians contrived

It sounded like you were saying there were only 147 martyrs in the history of Christianity up to Eusebius's day because that's all that were mentioned in his Church history. I added a PS to my last post to say that there were more bodies than names in the Palestinian martyrs account.

We know from Pliny's correspondence that he ran across a group which called itself xtians in Asia Minor c 110 AD. From what he describes they sure as shit do not sound like the later proto-orthodox gang which grew into the child-molesting, money-hungry perverts we have today.

Christians in Pliny's day were nothing like modern Christians. They were too busy being the underdogs to do any blood thirsty persecutions themselves.

Christianity Becomes The State Religion

Theodosius promoted Nicene Trinitarian Christianity within the Empire. On 27 February 380, he declared the "Catholic Church" the only legitimate Imperial religion, ending official state support for the traditional pagan religions and officially ending pagan sacrifice and religious rituals.[12][13]

Rome, the great military power, could now become Rome, the great military religious power and it did.