For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

Here's an alternative thought based on some evidence.

According to Roaman writings, an earlier emperor (It could have been Claudius), issued a freedom of religion decree, providing that people of non-pagen faiths don't play missionary. If they do, then the gloves come off (forced armed service, servitude, or jail time, IIRC). The Jews looked at it as "they are stopping us from learning Torah" when in actually they could learn in private, but not to force it on others in the public manner.

It's all very complicated because Christianity was originally despised but not persecuted because it might have been regarded as a Jewish sect. It appears that Jews were exempt from participating in public religious ceremonies.

Persecution Of Christians In The Roman Empire

Political leaders in the Roman Empire were also public cult leaders. Roman religion revolved around public ceremonies and sacrifices; personal belief was not as central an element as it is in many modern faiths. Thus while the private beliefs of Christians may have been largely immaterial to many Roman elites, this public religious practice was in their estimation critical to the social and political well-being of both the local community and the empire as a whole. Honoring tradition in the right way -- pietas—was key to stability and success.[16] Hence the Romans protected the integrity of cults practiced by communities under their rule, seeing it as inherently correct to honor one's ancestral traditions; for this reason the Romans for a long time tolerated the highly exclusive Jewish sect, even though some Romans despised it.[17] Historian H. H. Ben-Sasson has proposed that the "Crisis under Caligula" (37-41) was the "first open break" between Rome and the Jews.[18]

Things changed.

After the First Jewish–Roman Wars (66-73), Jews were officially allowed to practice their religion as long as they paid the Jewish tax. There is debate among historians over whether the Roman government simply saw Christians as a sect of Judaism prior to Nerva's modification of the tax in 96. From then on, practicing Jews paid the tax while Christians did not, providing hard evidence of an official distinction.[19] Part of the Roman disdain for Christianity, then, arose in large part from the sense that it was bad for society.

This resulted in -

Once distinguished from Judaism, Christianity was no longer seen as simply a bizarre sect of an old and venerable religion; it was a superstitio (a superstition).[21] Superstition had for the Romans a much more powerful and dangerous connotation than it does for much of the Western world today: to them, this term meant a set of religious practices that were not only different, but corrosive to society, "disturbing a man's mind in such a way that he is really going insans" and causing him to lose humanitas (humanity).[22] The persecution of "superstitious" sects was hardly unheard-of in Roman history: an unnamed foreign cult was persecuted during a drought in 428 BCE, some initiates of the Bacchic cult were executed when deemed out-of-hand in 186 BCE, and measures were taken against the Druids during the early Principate.[23]

Now to Pliny's letter and Tacitus's insult which were supposedly written after AD 96.

Pliny's opinions of Christianity -

But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.

For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms.

Tacitus

and a most mischievous superstition , thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

This raises questions when it comes to the above being possible forgeries. I checked for articles about the Roman definition of superstition and found Religion and Superstition For The Romans

According to the Roman orator Cicero, religio relates to the customs and traditions that came from ‘forebears’ and were ‘pertaining to the cultus (worship) of the gods’. In other words, those who ‘diligently’ followed the ancestral customs were known to be religious. The word ‘diligently’ is significant as it relates to the ‘correct’ observance of these rituals.

In contrast, if religio is that which fosters traditional beliefs, superstitio is that which undermines that same traditional wisdom. On Plutarch’s treatise concerning superstition, he records superstitio as the strange and foreign rituals that:

‘distort and pollute their own tongues with absurd titles and foreign invocations, to do shame to, and sin against, the divine and national dignity of religion’

Cicero lived 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC while Plutarach lived c. 46 – 120 AD. It looks like the Tacitus and Pliny comments are what Romans would have said after AD 96 so any forgers were very careful.

It appears that some Christians belonged to the lunatic fringe. Persecution From 2nd Century to Constantine

Some early Christians sought out and welcomed martyrdom. Roman authorities tried hard to avoid Christians because they "goaded, chided, belittled and insulted the crowds until they demanded their death." According to Droge and Tabor, "in 185 the proconsul of Asia, Arrius Antoninus, was approached by a group of Christians demanding to be executed. The proconsul obliged some of them and then sent the rest away, saying that if they wanted to kill themselves there was plenty of rope available or cliffs they could jump off."[13]

Further Details

This attitude was sufficiently widespread for Church authorities to begin to distinguish sharply "between solicited martyrdom and the more traditional kind that came as a result of persecution".[35] At a Spanish council held at the turn of the 3rd and 4th centuries the bishops denied the crown of martyrdom to those who died whilst attacking pagan temples. According to Ramsey MacMullen the provocation was just "too blatant". Drake cites this as evidence that Christians resorted to violence, including physical, at all times.[36]

I don't know if the story about the proconsul of Asia is true but I can imagine a Monty Python sketch about it.