Paul's "persecution" of the early Christians?

[Pat Mustard]

To kill a non citizen was to kill a potential problem. Paul was held up and thanked for what He did with Christians.

Bullshit, somebody going around killing christians in c45-60 CE and being lauded for it would be like me killing somebody for being a worshipper of Sithrak and expecting to get a medal for it.

Christians weren't even on the radar at that stage in the Principate (frankly, they weren't on the radar until near the time of the Battle of the Milvain Bridge) because of one single fact, they were a tiny and insignificant sub-sect of the jewish religion, which itself was only a very minor player in the Roman world. Christianity didn't gain any prominence at all in Rome until it was officially adopted, and wasn't even the majority religion in Western Rome when the empire broke up.