From the conclusion of Chapter VII in Candida Moss' The Myth of Persecution.
Fascinating little book. Goes to show how much of a sham the reconstituted "history" of the church actually is.
Quote:At the same time that Eusebius was editing his Church History, other Christians began to edit and compose their own stories about persecution and suffering. As competition between religious centers and towns grew, there was a greater motivation for longer, more ornate martyrdom stories. It was important to demonstrate concrete links between the remains and the story of a saint over and against the claims of nearby religious centers. More broadly, Christians enjoyed hearing martyrdom stories. They relished the horrifying tortures, delighted in the battle between good and evil, and cheered the martyr’s final triumph. As time went on, the stories about early Christians were edited and changed in order to address later doctrinal issues and cater to evolving liturgical and literary tastes.
The result is that we are farther and farther removed from the historical martyrs. What remains is a narrative of persecution and suffering developed to justify and support the institutions of orthodoxy. We can see how Eusebius and the editors of Christian stories are using martyrs, and we can admire the edifice of Eusebius’s history of the church, but the idea of the persecuted church is almost entirely the invention of the fourth century and later.
Fascinating little book. Goes to show how much of a sham the reconstituted "history" of the church actually is.
