(July 29, 2014 at 3:01 pm)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:Their environment was much more hostile
You really need to read this:
http://interbook.us/?c=15&p=8510
You've been blinded by your own bullshit.
Oh, that's rich. The genius con men that created Christianity also embellished accounts of martyrdom as a tool for evangelism. The foresight!! Yet, they would do away with circumsicion for marketing reasons.
Even if the numbers were grossly embellished, that does not move the needle comparing the 1st-3rd centuries' environment to Utah in the US in the late 1800s, where "Only for approximately ten out of the first three hundred years of the church's history were Christians executed due to orders from a Roman emperor" and the rest of the time was up to the provicial governors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution...man_Empire