Would They Die for a Lie?

[Drich]

And, of course, there is a Wikipedia article on this:

Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire occurred intermittently over a period of over two centuries between the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD under Nero Caesar and the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, in which the Roman Emperors Constantine the Great and Licinius legalised the Christian religion.
The persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was carried out by the state and also by local authorities on a sporadic, ad hoc basis, often at the whims of local communities. Starting in 250 AD, empire-wide persecution took place as an indirect consequence of an edict by the emperor Decius. This edict was in force for eighteen months, during which time some Christians were killed while others apostatised to escape execution.
These persecutions heavily influenced the development of Christianity, shaping Christian theology and the structure of the Church. The effects of the persecutions included the writing of explanations and defenses of the Christian religion.

Wikipedia:  Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire

This is known as a tetary source meaning it has gone through several 'digestion cycles' to be compiled as a commentary. tetary sources are the weakest form of argugment because they can contain alot of personal conjecture and unsupported fact.

A secondary source would be one of the source links at the bottom of the wiki page that are often cited to support the personal conjecture found in the wiki page.

In this case A primary source is a direct 1st century transcript or letter from two known and vetted high ranking officials pertaining to this specific subject.
Primary sources trump all other forms of source material as primary sources direct from the people and time period. there is no conjecture or speculation no conclusions need be drawn as two people in authority from that time are laying out the policy the wiki page is trying to figure out 2000 years after the fact. why look there when you have an actual letter from the time? (because it does not fit your preferred world view)

The letter in question shows Specific targeting of people who maintain their faith. This means the roman government per the emperor personal words to a regional governor gave imperial consent to hunt down all self admitted Christians. I don't think you understand what this means or how this changes the faith. It means no open door meeting/No church allowed as all the governor would have to do is have troops stand out side the church and round up everyone who showed up. Then Execute them. This means no evangelism as anyone caught preaching the gospel would be executed. This means out reach of any kind as all the government need do is feign need and arrest and execute anyone showing up in the name of God to provide relief. These are 3 foundational functions of the church.

Now did the hunt ramp up yes. In the second century they when from simply asking or trying to catch people in the act to an inquisition style of eradication.

Bottom line in the first century if you were Christian you died. if you were not or could demonstrate you had renounced the faith you would live. Christian=dead not christian = alive. 

Would you even be arguing this if it were gay people instead of Christian? If the governor asked if you were gay and you said yes they would execute you and if you said no the would let you live. None of you would argue this was not persecution of gay people, but when christians endure this it is not persecution some how

Been a hypocrite long? do you even care you display such a telling double standard? How do you justify this double standard or do you simply pretend it is not there?

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I have no idea why you would refer to Dr. Carrier as being "ilk".  He is an independent scholar who has his opinions about things, but his academic credentials are foundational in the areas in which he does his research, even though his views are outside of mainstream scholarship.

By the way, the reference above is to an undergraduate textbook in New Testament criticism and not one of Dr. Ehrman's popular books.

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No, the early Christians were not killed because of their faith (if they were, they would have been murdered unconditionally); rather, some were executed because they placed allegiance to Jesus above that of Caesar, which put some of them at odds with the Empire.

And the fact Christians were considered trouble makers

Indeed, they pissed off the jews who in 70AD revolted against rome because in part the jews were not allowed to 'handel the christians in the way they thought the word of God commanded. As a result Rome destroyed the jewish religion by burning all of the text, destroying the temple taking all the valuable holy relics and smashing everything else.. then in a final stroke/attempt to destroy judaism the murdered all of the sadducees (the ruling priest class) meaning all the higher ups. in effect because they had no one who could orally cite the OT they had no temple to make sacrifice in they had no alter to sacrifice on OT judaism ended. This is what they did to the jews. Now for inciting the jews a bounty was put on the heads of christians. As rome did not care about messiahs or sons of God. They only cared about the tributary paying taxes and doing so without making a fuss. or they were broken.