Would They Die for a Lie?

[Pat Mustard]

Drich,

What your own quotes prove is that the Empire persecuted some early Christians for political reasons and not for their religious beliefs.

In those days there wasn't the politics/religion distinction there is now. They were too closely intertwined to be separated.

Hence the problem. A movement that declared Jesus as king (Christ) was already in big trouble with the Romans; it would have been taken as another in the series of minor rebellions. A movement that declared the Temple on its way out would have got you in big trouble with the Jewish authorities. A movement which said that being Jewish didn't get you to be one of the People of God any more got you in big trouble with the ordinary Jewish people. A movement which said that people should abandon the city deities got you in big trouble with the Greek cities.

What did 'big trouble' look like? Read the NT.

Agreed that the persecution didn't officially come close to Nazi-Jew, but it happened, and much of it would have been local incidents by local thugs that never made official records.

For an impartial summary of the official evidence, the BBC is, as always, excellent:

Here

That's pretty much all bullshit. From the records the church didn't burn for contradicting it's own mythology we know the Romans were very reluctant to kill the couple of hundred or so martyrs killed before Diocletian (yes, before he came to the throne there were very few christians killed by the state. The idea of martyrdom is a lie instilled by the church to big up itself and it's sense of worth). In fact they didn't even demand the renunciation of christianity in most of the cases, just simply that the idiot, in addition to their christian religion, sacrifice at the temple to the then reigning Emperor as a show of loyalty. They didn't even have to make a pretence at believing, just simply make the sacrifice, bow their heads during the invocations and leave.

I've done as much at rcc funerals (other than sacrificing bulls or goats, the rcc is only into human sacrifice), without ever being accused of being a catholic.

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As far as what the Disciples themselves went through, we only have folklore from Christian sources. The later Christian persecution under Nero was a pogrom where they were blamed as arsonists for the fire that burned much of Rome. It's fair to say they didn't see that coming.

Actually the pogrom under Nero almost definitely didn't involve christians, because there were no christians back then. What later became christianity was still a sub cult within judaism, not yet a separate faith.

Secondly there's no evidence that there actually was a widespread pogrom under Nero, yes some people were scapegoated for causing the fire (and quite possibly these were jews) but the reported widespread violence was almost as much anti-Nero propoganda like the "fiddling when Rome burned" (in fact Nero acted quite quickly and decisively to try and stop the fire) spread in the century after his reign by sycophants to later emperors (who wanted the Julio-Claudian dynasty down down).

Thirdly, as I mentioned above, any religious persecution in c65CE would have been against the jews not christians. Remember this is the point where Iudea is about to boil over into the first revolt, jewish terrorist groups are active throughout the Roman near east and there is much bad blood between Rome and the jewish communities. If a group as a scapegoat were needed the quite small and powerless, but very visible, Roman jewish population was perfect. Christians as good as didn't exist at the time.

And finally, we can discount any accounts of persecutions of christians as forgeries. The only account which can even come within a generation of being contemporary was Tacitus' and we know that the oldest surviving manuscript we have changed all mention of "chrestus" and "chrestians" to "christus" and "christians". All subsequent editions derive from that manuscript.