Within Reason - #123 Candida Moss - Were Early Christians Really Persecuted by Rome?

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

Candida Moss is a historian of Christianity and author of The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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episode. What is a martyr? Yeah, that's actually a really great question and more complicated than you would think. A martyr generally is someone who dies for their religious beliefs or maybe if you want to broaden it out, say their political beliefs, maybe their ideological beliefs or principles. But in practice, if you go look at the history of Christianity, there are people who are acclaimed as martyrs who didn't die for being Christian, who are sort of more like murder victims, you might say. There are people who didn't even die at all who are called martyrs, like the first martyr, St. Thetcler, the first female martyr, shouldn't die, she disappears into a rock, which feels easier. And there are others who, it seems like they weren't

actually killed for being Christian. And so it sounds really simple. A martyr is someone who dies in order to protect and preserve their religious beliefs. But in actual fact, it's a lot more complicated. I'm interested in etymology on this show. We've done a couple of episodes on the subject. And the word martyr has quite an interesting history, right? Like it hasn't always just meant someone who dies for their faith. That's right. And in fact, before Christianity in Greek, the Greek word martus, it just means like a witness, someone who bears witness to something, often in a law court. And you can see how that kind of shifted into Christianity, because in order to become a martyr, ideally you'd be in a law court to sort of proclaim your

Christianity. And so originally it just means someone who bears witness to something. And then in Christianity, it goes on to take on this very specific meaning of someone who dies as a result of that witness. So this term martyrdom is connected to Christianity and particular. It's just that these days when you hear the word martyr, you're probably sooner think of a suicide bomber than think of an early Christian. But is that sort of the origin of this concept and term? Yeah. So the term does come from Christianity. It's Christianity that sort of changes the meaning of the language. Although I'm sure Christians wouldn't be thrilled to learn that when you hear martyr, you think of a suicide bomber because they think

that's not martyrdom. That's suicide bombing. But the concept, that's not a Christian concept. The idea of dying for something bigger than yourself, be it God or nation or country or city-state, that idea, that existed long before Christianity came along, both in Judaism, when you think about Daniel and the lion's den, or in pagan religions. If you think about Socrates, he could have gone into exile if he wanted to, or Achilles. He could have abandoned Troy and gone home to be a farmer, but they didn't. They died for something else, be it philosophy or or valour or God. And so, I mean, you write in your book, and the book is the myth of persecution, which we'll get into why this might be a myth.

And you're talking specifically about the Christian context, the so-called persecution of early Christians. And we will get into that. But as you do in your book, it's worthwhile giving a sort of broader overview of martyrdom as a whole. and you address this idea that martyrdom as a concept is kind of born of Christians. And this can often happen where a would-be historian mistakes the first emergence of a term for the first emergence of a concept, just because we don't have a word for a particular thing. It doesn't mean it wasn't happening for a long time. So it may be true that martyrdom as a term develops in early Christianity,

but as you point out, there are plenty of examples which could be called martyrdom. And I guess I'd be interested in what you consider, like, the necessary and sufficient conditions here. So take someone like Socrates, right? Like he's a man who, according to Plato's reporting, was killed in part because of things that he believed and things that he did. Like, is that enough to be a martyr? What criteria do you need to fulfill? Yeah, so I have a kind of sort of ragged definition of what makes someone a martyr. And when I think about the book, what I'm trying to push back against, a sort of commonly held misconstitutional.

conceptions, particularly by Christians, by people who grew up Christian, as I did. And we're told certain things about martyrdom that made it sound very simplistic and straightforward. And what's interesting to me is that you have this term that takes on this kind of cemented form in Christianity, but it's broadly applied to a lot of people who don't fit the definition. So it's not about religion. They don't make a profession of faith. They don't die. And so when you talk about how people think about it. I think we should think about Christian modern and was coming out of this wider phenomenon of noble death in antiquity. So in the ancient world, about 50% of people are dead by the time they would have been 18. Half of people aren't mating it. And what that

means is people think about death a lot. You know, there's no one who hasn't seen a dead body in the ancient world. Everyone would have in their home as a child. And so people think about death. They think about what happens after death. They think about what kinds of death are good. They've seen a lot of very painful deaths. And when they think about death, they have the idea of a good death. Someone dying a good death for something bigger than themselves. And so when you think about what kinds of conditions, I think often when people talk about this, they mean you could have escaped if you hadn't embraced this death, whether it was for country or God or whatever it was, you had the opportunity to get out of this. You make some kind of statement. And usually

in Christianity, and this is kind of a response to suicide bombers, that you kind of, you didn't volunteer. You know, it's sort of, there's this weird tightrope walk between, where Martyrton sort of walks this tightrope between suicide and just murder. Because just dying while being Christian doesn't seem sufficient to be a martyr. Lots of people die while being Christian or just being murdered while being Christian doesn't necessarily make you a martyr. And this is where persecution comes into it. Like the other person presumably has to want to kill you because you're a Christian or because you're Jewish or for some reason connected to your martyrdom. And they're not always connected.

But I think intentionality is really big here. were you trying, were you deliberately embracing death for God? So I recently read this biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. Joseph Smith is acclaimed as a martyr by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to this day. And he died in half-tham. It's funny how you had to take a breath in between while you were saying the name of the church. You had to stop the breath halfway. Yeah, you know, I want to be respectful.

So when he dies in a prison in Carth, The way they tell it, he was trying to draw attention and gunfire from his Mormon brethren. And so he moved towards the window. Now, a more skeptical analysis of this is he was trying to escape, you know, and failed. And so, you know, it's this sort of interesting question. what's, if he was trying to draw off fire away from these others, then maybe he's a martyr. If he's just trying to escape, then maybe he was killed by an angry mob. Yeah, that's interesting.

I mean, like, specifically just this idea, not just of whether you could have recanted and said, no, no, no, like, you know, I changed my mind and that that would have saved you. But that you kind of didn't have a chance to escape. And if you did have a chance to escape, you didn't take it. Although, I don't know. I'm confused here because, like, you know, to be a martyr, like, would it be that if there were just no escape for you and someone killed you for your beliefs that you're a martyr, even if, like, had there been a way to escape, you would have escaped? Like, you know, I think if we discovered some story that, you know, the Apostle Peter, they tried to kill him a year prior to his death, but he managed to find a window and clamber out and run away. I don't think Christians would look at that and say, oh, you know, that's. shows a weakness in character, he's not a true martyr. I think they'd say, well, of course he's going to take the chance to escape when he can.

It's a perfectly rational thing to do, and if he doesn't manage to escape, you know, he's still a martyr for that reason. And thinking about Joseph Smith kind of draws that out, it does seem to, you know, diminish the story a little bit that he got shot while he was clambering out of a window.

But I don't know why that would necessarily diminish his status as a martyr just because he tried to escape. But did, but I guess the question is, is it central to your definition of martyr that someone choose death? That they had the opportunity to escape and they choose death and they choose to die. Because if he was trying to escape, then he didn't choose death. It's interesting you chose Peter as your example because, of course, Peter, according to some Christian tradition,

is in fact leaving Rome to escape when he meets Jesus and turns back, the Krovarter story. So he's like an excellent example. But I think what we're getting at here is it's very complicated. So let me give you another modern example. Edith Stein. So Edith Stein was a Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism and became a nun. She is known to this day in the Catholic Church as sister Teresa Teresa Benedicta. And she is remembered as a martyr, as a Catholic martyr.

And this is really interesting because she died at a concentration camp. and she was clearly there for being Jewish because that was how she was raised. Is she a Catholic martyr? Or to put it differently, can she be a Catholic martyr if they're not persecuting her for being Christian? Because they aren't, right?

And in fact, to say that she's a victim of persecution seems to do something really unjust to those who died in the Holocaust to pretend that she's a Christian martyr. when she certainly wasn't being persecuted for being Christian. So it seems like in the sort of, in the core definition, you have to somehow choose or have a choice or make a statement that leads to your death. And the other person has to want to, or the organization or the government or whoever it is,

has to want to kill you because of that religious identity. Because I would say if Catholics want to remember Edith Stein as a Catholic martyr, They can. She was a Catholic. She was a nun. She clearly believed. But if they want to say that she was persecuted for being Christian, that just feels wrong. That feels historically inaccurate. And also like it's doing something unjust to the legacy of the people who died in the Holocaust. So I guess in terms of the definition, it's very complicated. And as soon as you dig in to the ancient stories, you start finding martyrs who did volunteer to die, who just like put their hands. up, or, in some cases, throw themselves into bonfires. And I think there, some people would say, oh, sounds like suicide to me. Why would you do that? Does that meet the definition of martyr? And I would say when you look at Christian history, there are lots of people who are being acclaimed as Christian martyrs who do not meet the criterion we might have for a Christian martyr. In one case, we have synchronous thought, who wasn't even human, who was acclaimed

as a Christian martyr. And so, you know, there was... Who's that? So there's a greyhound in France, who was revered as a Christian martyr for defending the master's baby from, I believe it's a snake. It's not a rat. It's a rat when the story gets adopted by Lady in the Tramp. You know the Disney movie. So there's a snake. It's going to attack the baby. The greyhound defends the baby. But when they come in, you know, as in lady in the tramp. Oh, look, the room's a mess. So they beat the greyhound to death and only later realized, oh, there was a snake. They were protecting the baby. And there was a whole

little kind of shrine. And we might say, given that this is a greyhound, this sounds sort of a bit pagan. And people would go there and, you know, pray to St. Gwinafort, who again was a dog. I cannot say this strongly enough. And it took a hundred years for the Catholic Church to be like, can you stop. This is not Catholicism. This is a dog. And so, you know, we have lots of examples of people celebrating individuals as martyrs who don't fit the criteria, who in lots of cases did not exist. And in other cases, we have no evidence that they were killed for being Christian or that they chose to die for being Christian or that they had any kind of way of getting out of this if they wanted to. So I guess it's complicated. I know that's satisfying.

Absolutely that. And as someone who's not studied martyrdom, intuitively, when I hear about this criterion that you have to, you have to somehow choose your death. But if you choose it too strongly, if you just decide to go and run into a fire, that doesn't count. But if you've got absolutely no control, it also doesn't count. Like intuitively to me, I'm thinking maybe it's something to do with the fact that you could make a decision to save yourself, but only by somehow betraying your faith. So like, it, climbing out of a window doesn't necessarily indicate that, you know, the Mormon faith is false. But if there was some prescription in Mormonism that you're not allowed to climb through windows and Joseph Smith climbed through a window to escape, then it wouldn't count as a martyrdom because the choice he made wasn't just to escape, but to do so in a way which would betray his faith. So, you know, maybe it's not enough to just say you have to choose to die because you could just, you know, in that case, you know, you could hear that. the Romans are coming and just say, well, you know, I want glory, so I'm just going to sit here and wait for them.

And that doesn't seem very, very rational. But you do have to make some decision. And maybe it's got something to do with that. I'm not sure. But I think there are sort of two reasons to be interested in this to me. One is, as a point of history, it's interesting to hear stories about the Greyhound and the story of early Christian persecution by the Roman Empire and of the disciples. and whatnot, but there's also a deep apologetical undertone to all of this for Christians. In particular, when it comes to the martyrdom of the original apostles, the followers of Jesus who claimed to see him after he died, if they died for something they claimed to see with their own very eyes, it becomes very difficult to explain why they would be willing to do so unless

those events actually happened. So you can come at this from sort of two angles. And for me, the context in which this comes up the most is people using early Christian martyrs as evidence in a roundabout way for the truth of Christianity. It's not enough to say, if somebody died for Christianity, therefore it's true. Yeah, that would be obviously ridiculous. But there is this idea that the people who were the eyewitnesses of Jesus, his 12 followers and people like Paul as well, who saw Jesus after he died and were put to death for that belief. And because of that, we've got reason to think that they were sincere. So can we maybe start this investigation by talking about these original Christian martyrs, the disciples of Jesus who were allegedly put to death

for their beliefs? How much truth is there in this story? Yeah. So you have something right, this is where people use martyrs to do theological work in the present. The eyewitnesses, they wouldn't have been willing to die unless he had really been resurrected from the dead. This is the proof of Christianity. They wouldn't have done it otherwise. So the stories about the martyrdom of the first followers of Jesus, almost all of them come from outside of the Bible. So you have the story about the death of Stephen in Acts 7,

which is written according to now scholars will tell you, was actually written in the second century. So sometime after events, let's say somewhere between 70 and 100, years after that was supposed to have taken place. All of the other stories of the deaths of apostles are written between 100 and 150 years afterwards. And the interesting thing about these stories is, particularly sort of the stories of really prominent apostles like Peter and Paul, is that the stories grow over time and they

change over time. But the first sort of narratives, like a story about the martyrdom of Peter, that's found in a text called The Acts of Peter, which is written towards the end of the second century. And it's written in the style of a Greek romance novel. So all of these stories about the travels of the apostles after the death of Jesus when they set out to convert the world, all of these stories that sort of have these kind of block elements in them. So there's always a shipwreck. There's always a case of mistaken identity, just as there are in contemporary Greek romance novels that were circulating at the same time. So the people writing these stories, they want them to be

engaging, they want to be captivating. And when you read these stories, the problem is that they usually they go somewhere, they persuade, usually the wife of someone important, that she wants to be a Jesus follower. And now because she wants to be a Jesus follower, she should probably stop sleeping with her husband. And her husband turns out to be someone important, and he's annoyed, and he ends up executing the apostle for being a rabble rouser, out of a sense of sexual frustration. These are the reasons given. Nobody really cares about Christianity per se. But it takes a really long time. We're talking about a century. And then we're talking about stories that are modeled on fiction. And that's fine. That is a completely acceptable

thing to do in antiquity, to write history and to model it using these kinds of stylistic forms from fiction, that's okay. But if we take those of statements as facts, that's different. For most of the apostles, the legends actually grow up much, much later. Let's take someone really important like Peter. So if you go to Sunday school or something, you probably hear that Peter, and also Paul, died in the aftermath of the Great Fire of Rome in 64C.E. when the the evil emperor Nero burned a bunch of Christians. And this is why Peter and Paul ended up dying. Now, not convinced Nero killed any Christians in the aftermath of the Great Fire.

But with respect to Peter, our first piece of evidence comes from a text written at the end of the first century that just says that the pillars of the church, which we think refers to Peter and Paul, that they were killed on account of jealousy and envy. This is Clement. This is from First Clement, yeah. We don't actually know it's by Clement, but that's who it's attributed to. And so here we have a text written maybe 30, 40 years later that alludes to their death. It does not mention Nero, it doesn't mention a fire, it doesn't tell us how they died. But the language it uses of jealousy and envy, that's language that people usually use for kind of intercommunal strife. So one scholar has said that probably what happened is that the author of this story thinks that Peter and Paul were killed because other Christians in Rome don't like them. And so they kind of engineer their death. That's our first reference. Quite far away from what you might hear in charge. Our next earlier source is going to be this late second century account of the death of Peter, the Acts of Peter. And it's

In this story, Peter ends up being crucified upside down. He asked to be crucified upside down because it's a symbol of how things in the world are not as they seem and how good has been set on its head. And Peter gives this long speech that is, for most Christians today, would be considered heresy. Because the authors of this story subscribed to religious beliefs that are now known as Gnostic, which is now seen as a grand arch heresy in early Christianity. And so it takes a long time. It takes about 400 years before we get to the first Christian story that sounds even slightly like what you would hear in church, which is that Peter asked to be crucified upside down out of humility because he didn't feel he was worthy to die like Jesus, which is what you would hear in church today. And as a historian, I want to say, that story is clearly much later. The earliest version of being crucified upside down. is actually about a theological point that no Christians believe in anymore and attacks that no Christians were put in their Bible because they do not subscribe to these beliefs. And our earliest nugget of information about the death of Peter tells us nothing about the circumstances of his

death. And if it tells us anything, it suggests that he wasn't attacked for being a Christian. There was some kind of intergroup strife that led to his death. But what I don't know, if we're thinking about definitions of Martyrton, is what Peter said, if he had the opportunity to escape, why they were attacking him, these later stories make it sound like the apostles were targeted because they were socially subversive. No one really seems to care about just sort of the beliefs. Do you want to learn more about religion, especially from an academic perspective, but maybe don't have the time or the money to go to university? Well, luckily, the team behind religion for breakfast have created an online learning platform for exactly that purpose.

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religion department.com forward slash historical Jesus, or click the link in the description, to check out that course as well as the other offerings and begin your academic study of religion. And with that said, back to Canada. Yeah, okay, so that's an interesting trajectory. I do find it interesting how the first indication of this crucifixion upside down, which is such a powerful image in Christianity, comes from a Gnostic text, which in all other contexts Christians would sort of laugh out of the room in terms of its authenticity.

That is interesting to hear. And it's easy also to imagine how this story of Peter being crucified upside down, even if it really did happen, that, like, this earlier source is probably more trustworthy in understanding what people had thought Peter did it for, like, his reasons. And you can kind of imagine how that would develop over a few hundred years into, oh, like, yeah, no, he was just so, so humble that he wanted to be crucified upside down because he didn't want to be like Christ, and sort of, that's where we get this image from. But of course, one question that springs to mind, I mean, there are a few questions that spring to mind. One is about the dating

of Acts. You said that scholars talk about acts being dated in the second century. Now, I was under the impression that the book of Acts was written by the same person who wrote the Gospel of Luke, and that the Gospel of Luke is dated to sort of, you know, 80-ish AD. And so is that, is this scholarship that you're referring to pushing that whole corpus forwards, or separating out acts from the Gospel of Luke? So the scholarship I'm referring to, which really is sort of taken off in the last 20, 25 years. So to date myself back when I was at university, I didn't hear this. It is pushing acts separate from Luke. It is pushing it further back and removing it further from oral tradition and to sort of what might have happened earlier. But again, I would say

that even when it comes to Acts of the Apostles, Paul doesn't die in Acts of the Apostles, Peter doesn't die in Acts of the Apostles. We don't have accounts of the deaths of all of any of those first followers. And when it comes to the death of Stephen in Acts 7, that death is very clearly modeled on the death of Jesus in Luke. It's the same story, it feels like. And lots of scholars have written about this.

And that doesn't mean it didn't happen. You know, I'm sure Stephen's dead. If Stephen and the original apostles are not dead, they should definitely let us know that would really clear up a lot. But, and he may have died because he was irritating other Jews in Jerusalem who were concerned about, you know, is he going to spark a rebellion? Is this going to be bad for us? I just don't really know the

circumstances. I can't speak with authority about what any of these figures said before their death. I think many of them died and probably many of them were killed by local authorities because this is not a period in time where people let you walk away if they think that you're sort of inciting sedition. Well, doesn't the fact that acts, you said that acts doesn't, you know, tell us, but it doesn't narrate the death of Peter and Paul? Doesn't that give us an indication that that just means that acts was written before Peter and Paul died?

Because of course it would have mentioned Paul's death. It follows Paul throughout so much of his journey. And so the fact that it doesn't talk about him dying means that it was still written while he was alive, right? So it's, again, an earlier dating of acts. Or that whoever wrote it doesn't yet. know the stories of the death of Paul that emerge later. So Acts ends with Paul is going to leave for Rome and presumably die there. Acts just maybe doesn't know the traditions or just chooses

to end there. The story of Acts of the Apostles, actual chronological time period, it ends quite early. It ends before the period where the Apostle is supposed to start dying. If we're going to say to ourselves, I think the basic principle that you're saying is if someone doesn't mention something, then doesn't that tell us something? Yes, it does. And I think the thing that I would say is no early Christians talk about widespread persecution of Christians after the Great Fire of Rome. Our first discussion between Roman officials about Christians comes in 112. And there, they don't seem to know anything about how you should treat Christians before that. And what that tells me is, Romans didn't really know who Christians were. They certainly didn't have a protocol for killing them or putting them on trial or making them sort of pass a test to prove that they're not Christian. So by the time you get to the early second century and we start finding Romans saying,

what are we going to do about these Christians, what that tells me as a historian is that prior to that period, there were no protocols for dealing with Christians. And what that means is certainly Nero never had like a widespread persecution of Christians because no one knows about it. And so I would say the omission of references to Romans persecuting Christians, that's really interesting. The deaths of lots and lots of Christians.

It seems, and yeah, so that's a, there are sort of two conversations to be had here, right? There's this, like, the martyrdom of these individuals, these important people like Peter and Paul and the rest of the disciples. And then there's this slightly later sort of widespread persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, which is also coming under suspicion in your book.

And those are sort of two issues. This stuff about Peter, I find really interesting because, of course, one question that springs to mind is, like, how much historical data could we expect? I mean, like ancient history is a difficult thing to do, right? And even if we've just got this sort of spotty reference to maybe Peter and Paul being killed, but we're not sure if it's them,

and then it's a little bit later, but we do get this idea that, He was crucified upside down, and then hundreds of years later, even if it's mythologically embellish, it's embedded itself into the consciousness. Can we at least confidently say it does seem like something happened here, like Peter at least, maybe Paul as well, were probably put to death in some kind of way, which embedded itself into popular memory as something akin to a martyrdom. Yeah, I think we can absolutely say that. What we can't do is say that we know with certainty what happened. We definitely shouldn't say Peter was executed upside down out of humility because that

tradition is so much later. I'm not sure we can say that he was crucified upside down because that seems very much entangled with Gnostic theology in that text. I think it's fair to say they probably died as martyrs. They didn't all die as martyrs, but it's fair to say they died And in their minds, that might have been because of actions they were taking on the part of Christ, which would make them a martyr. But that doesn't mean that they were being persecuted. They may have just been executed as nuisances or stubborn or superstitious or rabble rouses or people who appealed to low-status members of the Roman Empire and thus were a little problematic for people to. trying to keep the peace in those regions. And when you read the stories of their deaths, someone's written a century later, it appears that they just irritated people. And while we may

say, well, you can't just execute someone for being irritating. Romans did that all the time. Yeah, you can. Yeah. So that's not, that's not a basically high bar for the Romans. And so I think it's fair to say they were martyrs. What we don't know is the circumstances of their death. And if we're going to then try and make that the foundation of sort of proof that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, now we have a problem because if we don't know for certain what happened, we can't now push backwards and say, well, they embrace death for Christ because of the resurrection, because we don't have anything to prove that. So there are a few things that you've mentioned, which I think bring us into sort of the broader

persecution of Christians in the ancient world, which is another really. important point for Christianity here because the martyrdom of the apostles is all about sort of proving the resurrection. You know, they wouldn't die for a lie. When you get into the persecution of the early Christian community in the first few hundred years of Christianity, that's a lot more firstly to just do with like, you know, the pitiable condition of early Christians. You know, let's have empathy for these people who had these beliefs. But also the amazing sort of success of its growth rate, the fact that despite this widespread persecution, Christianity manages to grow and establish itself as the religion of the Roman Empire finally, which, again, isn't

a proof, but I think for a lot of Christians, it's like, gosh, you know, it does sure seem like God was on their side if they managed to sort of beat out all of this persecution. So let's talk a little bit about that, right? We talked about Peter and Paul possibly being martyred by the Emperor Nero after the great fire of Rome. I don't think they, I'm sorry, I don't think not by Nero. I think they probably die, but like I don't think Nero took it. any vested interest. And I don't think Nero was seeking out Christians after the Great Fire of Rome. But yeah, but let's assume they died. Well, this is the thing. What I was going to ask is like, this is the story, right, that we're told is that you've got this Emperor Nero

who is known for being brutal and particularly he just really hates Christians and wants to do everything he can to bring them down to the extent that when Rome burns and like, you know, three quarters of the whole of Rome just gets destroyed in this great fire, we have this report from Tacitus that Nero blames this on the Christians because he just hates Christians so much and this is evidence of widespread persecution. That's a story. Tell me, you know, the other side, as it were. What do you make of that? So we have this story from Tacitus and I think it's important to say at the outset that Tacitus is writing in the 120s or at the earliest in the one teens, depending on when you date this. So some 50 to 60 years after the

events, and Tacitus would not have been around when this happened. So he's going off some kind of report, stories. Tacitus also does not like Nero, and he wants to present Nero as unjust. In the interim, let's say, between the Great Fire of Romans 64, and let's say, let's just be as generous as we can to the pro-persecution lobby. Let's say it's 115 that Tacitus is writing as early as possible. A lot of Christian texts have been written that have not mentioned Nero-killing Christians after the Great Fire of Rome. There's just no reference to it in Christian literature. And that is surely where you would expect to find it. There are a lot of Christian texts written in that period. And then you have Tacitus. Tassadus who is writing after this correspondence between

the Emperor Trajan and this Roman governor, Pliny, where they do talk about Christians for the first time. They're like, what to do about Christians? Now, by the second century, people know who Christians are, and they don't like them, particularly if they're officials. Christians are odd. They meet at night, and that's already secretive, and Roman authorities do not like anyone meeting at night.

This sort of sounds potentially seditious. And they're actually Roman laws about, please don't meet at night. We will not let your labor union. neat at night. And so what I think is happening, and I'm not the only one, others have made this case. And again, I'm going to say, I'm going to be as generous as I can to the pro-persecution lobby and say that there are some textual problems. Tacitus, some have doubted if that passage is original, but let's say it's original. Let's say he really meant Christians, even though he writes Christians. I think that Tacitus, in making Nero look bad, looks back at history and

says, who would Nero have targeted for this? How about Christians? Because none of us like them. And they seem difficult. So he probably kills the Christians. And that seems to be what Tacitus assumes when he writes his history. All of our other Roman sources about this actually are dependent on Tacitus in some way. Tacitus is sort of ground zero. Other than Tacitus, we have nothing. No Christian sources and no independent Roman sources. And I would really recommend because I think it's open access online. There's an article by a classicist called Brent Shore that was published after my book called The Myth of the Noronian Persecution that also says this didn't happen. Now in 64, when the Great Fire took place, and that did take

place, Christians weren't actually called Christians yet. They were just Jews. They don't start using the label Christian until the end of the first century. There's no evidence that Roman authorities even know who they are. So the idea that a Roman emperor would target as an as yet unnamed group and then persecute them in this very brutal, violent way, when Romans don't even know who these people are yet, they're just Jews. If Nero-targeted someone, it's probably Jews, because they will later be ejected from Rome.

They occasionally get expelled from the city of Rome because they're seen as potentially suspicious because they keep to themselves. But there's no evidence that they're even using this name, and our earliest source comes from six years later. And the reason why Tacitus, Peter and Paul get sort of joined together, that we have Nero being the one who killed Peter and Paul, though there's no evidence for that. There's no evidence of that for hundreds of years. This is because of the mythology that grows up around Peter and Paul.

the story you might hear of Christians being thrown to the Colosseum after the Great Fire of Rome cannot be true they couldn't have been thrown to the Lions in the Coliseum in 64 because the Coliseum wasn't even finished. There was no Coliseum until ATCE and so the timelines are just off. There are no Christians in this period. They're just Jews. There's no Coliseum for them to be thrown to lions in. There's no evidence for 100 years of the death of Peter and Paul there, it just, everything seems off. And we have a person from Asia Minor writing in the second century, oh, he probably targeted the Christians. Because at that juncture, people don't really like them. And we now have the first sort of rumors of official Roman

procedures about how you deal with these Christians. Okay, there's a lot to say there. And again, it's worth emphasizing that I'm somebody who doesn't know very much about this. I mean, I'm more interested in the philosophy of religion and, like, New Testament studies and that kind of stuff. So this really isn't my area. I'm aware that in Tacitus, we have this reference to Nero. It says, consequently, to get rid of the report, this is about the fire, and Nero's incompetence, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations called Crestians by the populace. And it goes on to talk about how an immense multitude was convicted.

Not so much for the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths, covered with the skins of beasts. They were torn by dogs and perished or were nailed to crosses or were doomed to the flames and burnt to serve as nightly illumination when daylight had expired. So just like exquisite torture, right, of multitudes of people, it is suspicious that this doesn't get a mention. I think that's true. In response to what you've said about, for example, Christians not really being a thing yet, they're not being called Christians, they're not really being known. Two things spring to mind. Firstly, of course, Tacitus is writing this decades after the fact. So it's no mystery that he, I mean, he says in the present tense,

Christians by the popular. So he could mean that the people who are now called Christians are the people that I'm talking about back then. So the name alone isn't much of a surprise to me, but the idea is, you know, were they a popular enough group for Nero to have thought of? And I'm thinking about the fact that the Emperor Claudius, who, if I'm not mistaken, in before Nero expels the Jews from Rome in part

because of the discussions and debates and problems they're having around this character of Crestus and again it's this Crestus but presumably talking about Christ so we have in Swaytonius's life

of Claudius that it says since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Crestus, he expelled them from Rome. And in the book of Acts chapter 18, Aquila and Priscilla are said to have had to leave Italy because of Claudius, you know, Claudius pushing them out of Rome. So it's pretty historically certain, as far as I'm aware, that this did happen, that the Jews were expelled from Rome, and that it's written here that this has something

to do with this Crestus character. So it wouldn't actually be that surprising to me. if Nero, who was a later emperor, actually had hurt of these Jews who later came to be known as Christians, but at the time were just a sect of Jews who were causing the Roman Empire a bunch of trouble and thought, you know what, those group of people who were always bickering about this Crestus character, yeah, that they were to blame for the fire. Like, that doesn't actually seem that surprising to me. Yeah, so again, I think as a historian, I want to start from our sources and work backwards

and see how good, how good they are, how solid they are. And Soutonius seems to be dependent on Tacitus. He also is writing in the second century. And Scytius in lots of ways, Tacitus is a historian by ancient standards, which would not meet our modern standards, but as a real historian, Scytonius is, you know,

it would be generous to call him a biographer. Perhaps some people might think that he writes the kinds of magazines you find by the checkout at the supermarket that may or may not tell you celebrity gossip, that he's that kind of sort of, that level of accuracy in Soutonius. So in terms of do I think Jews were expelled from Rome? Absolutely. Do I think it's reasonable for Soutonius when he's writing in Tacitus when they're writing to connect dislike of Christians in their own day with dislike of Jews in the past? I think if Nero targets someone, if he targets a particular

group, it does make sense if it was Jews. Because they lived in Trascivary, which was a part of the city of Rome, that actually pretty much escaped the blaze. And so if Nero does target someone, it's probably Jews, not Christians specifically. And I do not believe that there would be any kind of sifting process to figure out, are you a follower of Christ or Christus? Or if you're just Jews. Now, would that then be understood later to be, oh, no, but it must have been the Christians, not the Jews, because everyone's fine with Jews. Very possibly. But that doesn't mean that Christians were being targeted in 64. And if Christians were being targeted, why is it not mentioned in the Book of Revelation?

Lots of people. Lots of people dying like this. Why isn't it in First Clement, which is written in the city of Rome, some period of time later? Christians are talking about being socially marginalized, being maligned, being persecuted is the language they use. But in the book of Revelation, it's only a couple of people who have died so far. In First Peter, which talks a lot about persecution, First Peter says that they haven't yet gotten to that point. And that book, again, it post-dates the Great Fire of Rome. So I don't think, if Nero targets someone, it must have been Jews.

there's just no reference to it. That Soutonia, St. Tacitus would in the second century assume that they were Christians, that makes perfect sense. They are looking back into an earlier period and projecting the political circumstances of their own day. Just as when you look at sort of the evangelists who are writing some period after the life and death of Jesus, there's an extent to which they too are projecting the concerns of their own day back into the life of Jesus. And this is just normal writing at the time. This isn't deceit. Okay, so let's talk about another Roman emperor who we've already alluded to and comes even later than Nero.

And that's the emperor Trajan, because this is an emperor who at least at one point concerns himself with the governance of Christians. And we have an incredibly unique document, which is his correspondence, with the governor Pliny. And this is unlike anything else that we've got from the period, like a sort of direct insight into the back and forth between a Roman emperor and a Roman governor. And there's this curious moment where they explicitly discuss Christians. Now, roughly when are we talking about?

And why is this so special? So this is 112 CE. We know because these things have such concrete dates. It's from Bithnia Pontus is the region. It's from northern Turkey. And Pliny the Younger, he writes to Trajan and he says, and it's clear that the problem is economic. He's poured money into renovating a temple. No one's going to the temple. No one's offering sacrifices. It's sort of a financial burden that this isn't happening. They were going to recoup those funds by people buying animals that would then be slaughtered. But it's not happening. and he blames the Christians. And he describes Christianity as a superstition, it calls it a superstitio. And it's mostly, while Christians come from all walks of life, it's mostly among slaves and women and people who don't have great resources.

And he tries to find out about them. So he takes two enslaved women and he tortures them. And he's like, this is just superstition. There's really nothing there in terms of what they do. They just meet at night and sing hymns and pray. There's nothing there. But boy, do I find them annoying. They're very stubborn. They will not offer sacrifice to the sort of spirit at the emperor. And by sacrifice, I just mean some grains of incense in a flame. You know, a pledge of allegiance. They say they can't do that. I found this very irritating. I gave them a chance to recant, so I executed them. And that's what I've been doing. And was that the right thing to do? and the fact that he asks, is that the right thing to do, proves that there was no clearly known procedure for Christians prior to this point. And Trayton writes back, he says that's the

right thing to do. Don't let there be anonymous denunciations. So if someone's accused of being a Christian, they have to be accused openly. It can't be an anonymous accusation. You have to be willing to put your reputation on the line and then give people a chance to recant. But if they won't then absolutely execute them. And so here's our first, and it is really remarkable that we have it, this is our first exchange about how should we treat Christians. And this is what they decide. And the problem is that Christians, who are this sort of new, far-spreading superstition, that they refuse to participate in what's called imperial cult, which is a display of allegiance to the emperor. And most people, regardless of which deities they worship,

participated in that because it's it's a display of loyalty it shows that you support the roman empire that you support the emperor himself that you're a good roman you're the right kind of citizen of course in the ancient world for a lot of people who were not monotheists it wasn't a huge problem to sort of have your religious like ideas and your gods but then just also take part in the imperial cult because there's there's no sort of exclusionary it's a very sort of inclusive pantheon back in the ancient world. But for Jews and Christians who insisted on the one god of all, it was a little more troublesome. And that's why they were particularly unwilling to engage in the imperial cult. That's right. But with Jews, you know, they have

storied history. They've been Jews for thousands of years. They have a sort of special exemption. And they do offer prayers for the health and well-being of the emperor and sacrifices. On his behalf, they're just not really participating in imperial cult. But Christians, they came out of nowhere. They're far spreading. They're damaging the local economy. And there's no real precedent for them. And the Romans don't really want to encourage large groups of people wanting an exception from this rule.

And then you have to think about what Christians say when they're talking to Roman authorities. So a Roman judge or magistrate or governor, if you're in front of someone really important, will say, why won't you be pious? And the Greek word there, surveyor, it means piety, but it also means sort of loyalty and respect. So saying, why won't you respect the emperor and just offer sacrifice and then I'll let you go? And they're like, no, I can't do that. I only respect Christ, who's the emperor of the world. And that, even today, if someone came into court and said, no, I only respect my God. I don't respect. I don't respect. respect this courtroom, that would be a problem. But for the Romans who execute people for satire, this is particularly troublesome. They're claiming they have an alternative emperor. That's treason. They say that they won't respect the emperor. They won't participate in a practice that everyone else will participate in. And they seem to be contagious. Christianity seems to be contagious. So for a Roman magistrate, it seems sort of obvious that you would execute them, but they don't always do it.

There's a story from Totalian, who is a second-century Christian writer in North Africa, and tells a story, and it happened in Asia Minor, the same region as Plenetrajan. So you would imagine that the Roman governor involved, Aria Santinus, this is around 185, that he would know the Plenetrajan correspondence, because he's in that very region. And apparently a mob of Christians go to his home in the night, they knock on the door, and they demand to be executed. And the governor, who's probably annoyed he's been woken up, says to them, if you want to die, you have ropes to hang yourself with and has someone closed the door and walks away. This presumably, if Christians are routinely being sentenced to die for being Christian, he should not have done that.

this is a story about Christians offering themselves to die, not a story about Roman persecution. He just sends them away. And so even after the Plenitrean correspondence, Roman governors and magistrates are often just being like, just go away and quit taking up my time. When is this story happening? Who is it that this group approaches? And also, do we know much about like why this happened, like why they went to his house and why they wanted to be killed? Yes, right. Is it the question like, why would you do this? So let's start with, we do know who it is. It's C.A. Arias Antoninus, who is a very high up official in the region. We do get this story from Titalian, who is in North Africa. So there's some geographical distance here. Is this just a rumor? Who knows? But Tittalian is a Christian who very much supports martyrdom and is willing to tell this story even though it is not a story about Christian martyrdom because they're sent away. Why did they approach him? We don't know. What we do

know is that Christianity promised people very lofty rewards for dying as martyrs. If you died as a martyr, you did not have to worry about post-mortem judgment. You would not go to hell. You would go directly to heaven. You would participate in a banquet of food. You would get a seat on the throne of God, Revelation says. There are all kinds of rewards. awards. And so, and there definitely were people who wanted to die as martyrs in the same way as in the present day. There are people who think that if they die as martyrs for Islam, that they will receive heavenly rewards. Early Christians thought that too. So in terms of why did they do it, presumably they thought they were going to get heavenly awards. Did the story happen? I'm not sure, but it probably exemplifies a tendency on the part of Roman governors not to execute. Christians to just send them away. Okay, so but just going back then to this, this correspondence between Pliny and Trasian. In your book, you quote a particular passage, which is from Pliny to Trasian. He says, I'm just reading from your book here. I interrogated these as to whether

they were Christians. Those who confessed, I interrogated a second and a third time, threshing them with punishment. Those who persisted, I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserved to be punished. There were others possessed of the same folly, but because they were Roman citizens, I signed an order for them to be transferred to Rome. Of course, Pliny is writing to Trajan and sort of saying, like, how do we treat the Christians here? And, you know, you're right to point out that if he's unsure, there can't have been this official policy that was well known of widespread Christian persecution. But the fact that this Roman governor

was persecuting Christians, and seemingly, at least in this excerpt, just for confessing that they're Christians and ordering them to be executed, even if this wasn't like an official edict from the Roman Emperor, does this not provide some really good evidence that Christians were suffering persecution, even if just locally under particular governors? Yeah, so I definitely want to dig into what do we mean when we say persecution. So if what we mean is someone is being killed for their religious beliefs that that is persecution, then yes, this is evidence of persecution. What I would want to push back against is I think the common misconception that they were constantly being persecuted. And that when we say persecuted, we mean they were being sought out by the Romans.

When Trajan responds, Pliny and Trajan agree. We're not going to seek out Christians. It's just if they show up in our courtroom, and if they do this, then we'll kill them. But in the passage you just read, he says, we're not killing them because of what they believe. We're killing them because they're obstinate and inflexible. And so I don't know that this is about Christianity, so much as it is about a behavioral tendency that they're exhibiting that Romans don't like, which is obstinacy and inflexibility. and I think that anyone who exhibited those things in a Roman courtroom might find themselves executed unless they're a Roman citizen because it's quite easy to sentence someone to die in this period and Pliny has a lot of power regionally over non-citizens.

And so do I think that killing Christians in this way is okay? It's not okay. I don't think this is a good thing. We should not do this today. It's wrong now and it was wrong. then. But I don't think that Pliny is killing them because they think Jesus is the son of God. I think Pliny is killing them because he does not understand why they will not participate in the imperial cult. It is not obvious to him why they will not do it. And to him, that looks like social subversion at best. And then they behave in this really obstinate fashion. And he sees people who are his social inferiors, and he thinks I just cannot tolerate this, this ridiculous superstition that came out of nowhere. They're obstinate. They won't participate in ordinary

social discourse. They're a nuisance. They're rebel rouses. They are affecting the local economy. I'm going to execute them. They throw people off rocks for writing satirical songs. Is that the persecution of satire? Probably not. In this period, we can say Romans are killing Christians for reasons that had to do with their Christianity, but not just because of their Christianity, because there will come a time in the latter quarter of the third century and in the early 4th century where they will target Christians just for being Christians, and they will name Christians explicitly. But Pliny is very clear.

We're not going to seek out Christians. We're not going to go get them. We don't have a problem with Christians existing, but if they end up in our courtrooms and they're obstinate, then we'll kill them. And that's wrong, but it is not the Sunday school myth. They're very... So, I mean, I'm trying to think about what this like does, right? Because the Christian is going to say, look, we've got a bunch of early believers in the message of Christ who, despite persecution on account of those beliefs, kept them up. nonetheless, right? And you want to come in and say, well, I don't know if it's persecution because

it's not clear that they were being targeted for their Christianity. And the Christian will turn around and say, okay, well, use whatever language you want. It's clear that they had this belief in Christ, which compelled them to believe and act in a particular way, which, at least in some circumstances, it caused them to risk their lives and sometimes be executed. Even if Rome wasn't like, you're a Christian, so I'm killing you. It's like, you won't partake in the imperial cult, so I'm killing you. And the Christian knows that that's because of their Christianity. I think for the Christian, it sort of does the same thing. In other words, it might be an important point of historical interest or like conceptually when you're studying martyrdom and persecution. But on this side

of like the Christian apologist who just wants to talk about how, you know, pitiable the condition of early Christians were, do they have recourse? So just say, okay, maybe we shouldn't call it persecution to be technical, but, you know, the thrust of our point still stands. that they were being, that they were sort of believing this on pain of their, of their very lives. Yeah. And I guess what I would say is if you want to believe that the few people who die, let's say, in this period and the Plinyratian period, if you want to believe that they're martyrs, absolutely, I'm with you. If you want to say that they were martyrs, absolutely. If you want to say that Romans were targeting Christians, we would disagree. I would say they're not targeting them. And there aren't that many people who are dying in this period. Earlier, you just said to another kind of theological idea that martyrdom is used to prove,

which is the fact that Christianity survived against the odds is proof that Christianity is true. And I don't think that's true. I don't think that's logically true. But I also don't think that that many people were dying. Now, this doesn't mean it wasn't profoundly affecting. Just a few people dying would greatly impact the psyche of early Christians, especially when there weren't that many of them. You don't need many people to die to feel very encumbered, very put upon,

like you are being persecuted. I don't doubt the sincerity of their belief that that is what was happening to them. What I doubt is the sort of modern understanding is that a lot of them were dying, that they were constantly being persecuted. because I don't think that's true. And Christians were actually pretty savvy when it came to legal measures against them. Even once Christians are barred from participating in legal affairs, which was very important. If you were wealthy and now you can't draw up contracts, you can't, you can't collect rent, you can't do all of these things, that's a big issue. They find workarounds.

So we have a letter from an early 4th century Christian writing to his sister and he says, you know what? I've made power of attorney to my pagan brother-in-law. Now he's going to conduct my business affairs for me, and now I don't have to worry. So they have workarounds. And I think even once you have laws are in place, and you have edicts being issued, even if for short periods of time that are targeting Christians, we have to ask ourselves, like, we have to have some sense of scale when we talk about persecution. I think we need to have a sense of how many Christians are dying in each period and why? And are they caught up in Roman legislation that's not about them? Or are they being targeted? And I think those are differences that we have to

identify. We have to distinguish. So in the middle of the third century, the Emperor Decius issues legislation that is not about Christians. But Christians are going to wind up in Roman courtrooms and dying because they cannot participate in imperial cult, which the Emperor Decius wanted everyone to participate in. There's no evidence that D.S.S.'s law was thinking about Christians. We don't actually have it. But we do have examples of pagan priestesses participating in this. So clearly this was not about targeting Christians. By the time you get to the fourth century, there are going to be some edicts passed for a couple of years between 303 or 305. Those are about Christians. That is the kind of persecution that people mean when they talk about Roman persecution.

of Christians. And I think if ultimately the reason we study history is so that we can understand the past and try and change things in the future, a misunderstanding between Romans and Christians about why it is Christians can't participate in a Roman imperial cult is very different from persecution. So, I mean, you mentioned, you said earlier that it's sort of in the latter. quarter of the of the third century that we begin to see some indication of of Christian persecution you mentioned this law of Decius which is interesting because this is a little bit earlier this is like 250 yeah and we don't like you say we don't have the law but we do actually have some of the so-called libelli or I don't know I don't know how you pronounce it but like

this libellis which means little book right and this is something which allegedly people were sort of provided with, they had to sort of show up, pledge their allegiance in front of some witnesses to the Roman imperial cult, and they'd get this sort of little certificate to say, yeah, I've sort of sworn my allegiance, which of course Christians wouldn't want to do. So Christians wouldn't be able to get one of these books. And you write in your book about the fact that some people have suggested that this was done to target Christians. It seems more like this was just Decius being a little bit insecure about. his position as emperor because he's he's just sort of won it in like a in like a military

battle or something right it's like not entirely he's trying to sort of assert himself and so he just sort of puts out this edict that everybody has to pledge their allegiance and it just so happens again to inadvertently obviously cause christians a lot of trouble um but how widespread do you think these little books are i mean we know that they existed because we found a couple of them these books which say yeah this person has in front of witnesses sworn their allegiance um Does that give us an indication that, again, even if just as a sort of accidental implication, Christians really were undergoing some trouble here? I think a lot depended on where you were. So I think that if you were in North Africa in 250, it seems like the Roman authorities there were more diligent in trying to enforce the DCN.

But you have a lot of options as Christian. So no one, they aren't going door to door to make sure you have a labellus. You're supposed to go volunteer. So if you're a Christian, you find yourself in this situation, you have options. This really only happens in towns, in cities, right? This is not happening little backwater villages. So you could either just leave town, go to your country estate, if you're rich enough to have one. That's one option, that people, that wealthier Christians followed.

you could go there and say, no, I can't do this. I'm a Christian. And you might end up imprisoned. You might end up tortured. You might end up dying as a martyr. You could go there and you could offer sacrifice and just hope you'll be forgiven afterwards, which a lot of Christians did. Now I know we call that apostasy. But I think there were Christians who kind of sort of selectively decided when they were going to be Christian, as there are today. There are a lot, you know, I have lots of Jewish friends who sometimes bacon. Should they be eating bacon? It's not up to me to decide, but they selectively eat bacon and they're still Jewish. And I think there were Christians who went and offered sacrifice and were still Christians. And then there were others and they were like, you know, I'm just going to stay home. And if I get dragged into a Roman courtroom, then I'll decide then. And it wasn't everyone. It was one person per household. We know from later periods that some Christians, And this is not a nice thing to have done. Instead of them going and offering sacrifice, they sent their slaves to offer sacrifice.

So their slave, who was a Christian, apostasized. But it was good for the whole household, the apostasy. And so they didn't apostatize, their slave did, but now they're in the clear. So there are all kinds of workarounds. Now, it's not good that Christians get caught up in this, but Decius is just doing something, as you said, He wants unity in the empire, and he's a military ruler. And in the military, when someone joins the military, they have to do exactly the same thing. They have to offer this sort of oath of allegiance and put incense in a flame.

So he's basically just taking something that he's seen in the military. He's like, it'll be great. I'll do this. I'll have unity in the empire. And then maybe I'll have more support. A lot of emperors had been assassinated or usurped in the years prior to his reign. That's what he was trying to do. It is deeply unfortunate for Christians that they can't do this and they end up dying as a result, but they don't all die.

This mostly seems to have taken effect in North Africa. All of the Labelli that have survived come from one month, a single month. So that may just show that in Egypt, where these LaBelle come from, that in Egypt people were only really interested in this legislation for a month and after that they kind of forgot about it. So we don't know how extensive it was. And there were definitely areas of the Roman Empire throughout this period where if you were a Christian, you were probably in the clear because none of these edicts were enforced. And you talked then about how a little bit later on at some point we get finally to, yes, actually this is genuine persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire. Can you just tell us about that? Like when are we talking about what happens there?

Yeah. So the emperor Diocletian, who reigned at the end of the third century, around 303 to sort of celebrate 20 years of Diocletian's rule, he starts issuing edicts sort of about conformity. He starts with he wants to get rid of Christian buildings, Christian books. He wants Christians to lose high positions in office. Interesting that they were holding high positions in office. Indeed. And this, this happened. several times, it happens in 267 as well, that the first thing that happens is they're stripped of high positions of office. And the first thing we should say is, they had high positions of office. Surely they're not hiding. They're not hiding and they're not persecuted and it's not disavarnaging them. So he starts there. And then he said, well, we should arrest Christian clergy. Then he issues an amnesty. And then he says, actually, everyone has to offer sacrifice.

And that last edict, which is in place for about, let's say, generously, years. That's the one that's everyone must offer sacrifice, and this is going to be a problem for all Christians. There will workarounds. The first thing that happens with the Diocletian persecution is that they rip down a church in Nicomedea that is kind of across the street from an imperial palace. And again, we should ask ourselves, how persecuted are Christians before this that they're building churches in the emperor's front garden? Yeah, it's like building a synagogue outside of, you know, the Nazi holiday residence or something. Exactly. So there are these periods. We can say, I don't think DCS, I don't think it's persecution, but Christians are caught up in that and they do die.

There's this other very brief period in 266 to 267, wherein they're in the same position, but it's very brief. And then there's this period under dieication that's real persecution. but even if I'm going to be as generous as I can last no more than a decade, if that. There are these periods where it's persecution, and in between, Christians are flourishing. They're raising up the ranks of Roman government. They have acquired a lot of money. They are in the emperor's household. One of the first things that Valerian does in 267, he's like,

if there are Christians in my household, they should be sent to the country. So they're in his home. And so clearly the situation that Christians find themselves in between these brief periods of attention is pretty good. They're not being sought out. They're not hiding in catacombs. And they're certainly not being persecuted. Yeah. And then is Diocletian followed up by,

Constantine, or is there someone in between them? Because Constantine is usually pointed to as this first. Often mistakenly thought of as the person who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, which is not true. But he's the first to have converted himself to Christianity. And presumably from then on, it gets a little bit easier for the Christians with a few bumps along the road. Yeah.

So, Constantine, we usually associate the big date for Continuous 3.13. This is when he fights his big battle, this is when he has his vision, after which he doesn't convert immediately, but things radically change for Christians after that. Diocletian's persecution is 303 to 305. There is an emperor after him who continues to target Christians, and that is over by 311. The reason it's quite complicated is because Diocletian had divided the Roman Empire into four, and he had like sort of four emperors, sort of two senior emperors. two junior emperors, and one of those was actually Constantine's father in the West, in France and Britain. So it, almost immediately after Diocletian, we have a complete sea change for Christians, and they're going to find themselves in a position of great power in the Roman

empire under Constantine. So we've sort of jumped to a few centuries here. We've started with our apostles, and we've come up to some instances of the Diocletian persecution of Christians, what do you think is the takeaway from all of this? As in like, the story that's often told is that there is widespread persecution by the Romans of early Christians, beginning with the apostles and going all the way up until sort of Constantine. And we've been talking today about how that might not be true. You know, it doesn't seem like the Romans in many cases actually cared that much about Christians. We don't have very good evidence for their, for their targeting and persecution. But at the same time, it does seem like a lot of Christians, like, were dying,

even if there's like a sort of unintentional result of, you know, this desire for adherence to the imperial cult. Like, having just sort of covered this all for our listeners, what's our thumbnail sketch here? Like, what do you think is an accurate way to depict the fact that Romans and Christians didn't get along, but that Romans were not sat around every day thinking about how they can persecute Christians. How would you summarize the relationship over those few hundred years? Yeah. So what I would say is for most of this period, Romans don't seem to have, Roman authorities don't seem to have a problem with people in the empire who are also Christian. There are these brief periods where Christians are targeted, usually for political reasons or

inadvertently. I wouldn't say, I mean, any amount of people dying is going to affect those communities of Christians. But if we're thinking tens of thousands, it's not tens of thousands. But those just had a big impact. I think what we have to say is because Christians enjoyed relative peace and security in the Roman Empire for this first, let's say, 400 years, we cannot use persecution as proof of the accuracy of Christianity. This isn't proof that God is on your side. If God is on your side, maybe he won't insist on you being executed in Roman tribunals or being thrown to animals in arenas. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. And certainly this narrative of like the small group overcoming great odds, well, they did overcome great odds because

there were lots of cults that sprung up and then died out, but they didn't overcome great persecution. We can't use the fact of persecution to prove that Christianity is true. We can't use it in general. And we shouldn't use it for the apostles either, not only because we don't really know how the apostles died, but also because just people will die for lots of things. It's pretty true that there are martyrs for every religious tradition. Are they all true? Well, not on their own terms. They can't all be true.

What they are proof of is that people who have sincere religious beliefs will value. lay down their lives for those beliefs, often their promised rewards. But they're not proof that that religion is true because there are too many of them. Your book is The Myth of Persecution, How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. We've talked about the myth of persecution. That subheading is pretty provocative as well. early Christians inventing this idea of Martin, this story of martyrdom. So I suppose my question in closing would be, having seen that maybe the story isn't quite

what's taught in Sunday schools, like, why is that what's taught in Sunday schools? Why is it that we get this popular narrative surrounding martyrdom? When did it begin to spring up? And for what reason? So in the early 4th century, during the reign of the Emperor Constantine, there we find our first church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, who himself had lived through persecution in the great persecution of Diocletian. And so it was very much on his mind. And he wrote the first Christian history and he used persecution and martyrdom as one of the great kind of framing devices. He's the one

who tells us that Christians are sort of constantly being persecuted. It's how he tells the story of Christian history. And he really set the terms for everyone ever since. When you talk about Christianity, you talk about persecution and overcoming great odds and this war between good and evil in the early church. One of the reasons he did that was that he would use martyrdom as a way to combat his kind of theological adversaries. So for example, he tells the story about an early Christian martyr called Polycarb. He tells the story, it's not in the early earlier stories of Polycarp's death. But in Eusebius's version, Polycarp once encountered the heretic Marcian in Rome, and he snubbed him because he avoided heretics. And he tells lots of similar

stories. But what Eusebius does there is he uses the power of Polycarp, this bishop and martyr, to show that Marcian's a bad guy. And he'll repeatedly use martyrs and things Martyrs allegedly said to sort of push back against people he disagrees with. So Marserton becomes this really powerful rhetorical tool. And it is today you will sometimes hear modern Christians talk about how they're persecuted. You'll hear that a lot in the United States where I live, that Christians were under attack. About 60% of white evangelical Christians today think that Christianity is under attack in America. And that's amazing, because this seems like a country that's really quite favorable to Christians, to me, at least.

There's someone who lives here. And so Eusebius is the reason that when we think about Christianity, we think about martyrdom and persecution. He's the inventor of this story. But that kind of invention that gets picked up by lots of other people, because people love martyrs. These stories are inspiring. You can really connect to them. But it's because of that story that we have this misunderstanding. about Christian history.

And I would say that you could still love your martyrs, but recognize that early Christians weren't constantly under attack in the past, just as they're not constantly under attack in the present. Well, Candidomoss, it's been fun. As I said, the book is the myth of persecution, how early Christians invented a story of martyrdom. I did have to click on to the book to remember that bit word for word. It's in the description, if people want to buy it.

and read it. Otherwise, links to other places people can find you will be down there too. Thank you so much for taking the time. It's been a topic that I should have covered a long time ago because it comes up so much an apologetical context. And I am so excited to have my next debate about early Christian persecution with all this new knowledge. So thanks again for your time. Thank you.