Early Christian persecution (src: Ryan Reeves)

Video

• Link to recording segments on Dropbox

Summary

Believers in the early church faced persecution from the Romans. Based upon how some textbooks and such talk about things, you might think believers in the first couple centuries after Christ were very systematically persecuted, but this was actually not the case. Up until around 284 AD (around when the imperial power structure shifted from what historians call the “Principate” to the “Dominate”), Christians faced persecution that was largely sporadic and localized, rather than empire-wide. In this video, we talk about some examples of persecution of early believers (for example, under the Roman emperors Nero and Trajan), as well as going over the concept of source analysis and how we can even know some of these things to begin with.

Content

Overview

Foreword: How should we view accounts traditionally dated to be from the time period of the early church, associated with or written by so-called “church fathers”?

Before we get too far in discussing accounts from the time period of the early church, I think a brief foreword is in order. Some basic points:

• We can appreciate the glimpse into the culture of the early Church and its relationship to Rome that early Christian accounts give us without completely believing them = while still holding them at arms length. We have no way to verify many claims that are truly too important to be careless about. For example:
  • Did Polycarp truly study under the Apostle John, as legend has it? A cynical part of me would point out that you can see why someone would want to claim this as a fallacious appeal to authority (i.e., just because you did, so what? That doesn’t inherently make you right), for selfish ends. Don’t get me wrong—I am not taking an ironclad position that Polycarp definitely didn’t study under John, as claimed. My point is, there is no way to be sure, so we should not make too much of this.
  • Also, was he truly around at the early date of 155-160 AD? Later accounts claim so, but that itself is not particularly strong proof.
• What about the martyrdom of Paul—was it really in 66 or 67 AD? How can we be sure of the date?
• Was Peter really martyred by being crucified upside-down, at his request? Tradition says so, but based on what?
• Etc.

As another example, consider the letter of 1 Clement. Was it really written in 95 AD = very close to the penning of the New Testament? Was the one who wrote it the Clement mentioned in Philippians 4:3—making him an individual acquainted with one or more of the Apostles at a personal level? I would contend that it does not matter. The letter is not inspired, so we ought to care little about it compared to actual scripture. Some people get offended at this sort of blanket dismissal of supposedly historical people and events and so on, but we ought not flinch at prioritizing inspired scripture above all else. If we cannot prove from a textual perspective that the letters were even written by the church fathers they supposedly were, I hope the issues here are obvious.

The only reason we don’t apply this same sort of blatant skepticism to the Bible itself is because of the doctrine of inspiration. Put simply, serious scholars are generally incredibly skeptical of most historical sources as a matter of principle, so that ought to be one’s “default position.” The only reason the Bible gets a pass is because of our faith in its trustworthiness as a source of truth.

As if all that weren’t enough on its own, many of the church fathers had demonstrably bad theology in a number of areas (some more than others, of course), so even if they did write the letters they were traditionally said to have at the times they were traditionally said to have, we can’t particularly trust the contents therein. Not like we can the New Testament itself. Some people make a fallacious appeal to antiquity to assert that because these people actually lived closer to the time the Bible was written they must have had insights into interpretation that we modern people—separated by large gaps time and culture—necessarily lack. However, arguments both then and now ought to be only concerned with what the text of the Bible says and means, which is to say that the only thing that belongs in discussion of interpretation is hard objective evidence (for example, Greek word usage across the corpus of ancient Greek, grammatical analysis, etc.), not unquantifiable hand-wavy notions that “the church fathers spoke Greek better than us and lived closer to the time of Christ, therefore they are right, QED”.

We also have computers nowadays (that can help with statistical computations to assist lexical analysis, for example), and, via digitization efforts, also have access to many complete or near-complete ancient texts that early Christians lacked (which can be used to get a comparatively better sense of the semantic scope of certain Greek words, for example). Of course, not being native speakers of ancient Greek does have all sorts of disadvantages for us; that part is no exaggeration. But proper interpretation does not rest upon that alone.

Further discussion

Introduction: Early Christian persecution

Video clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points and follow-on topics

Summary points:

• Video introduced by discussing the martyrdom of Polycarp
• Polycarp, so the accounts go, did not flee persecution, but invited those sent to arrest him inside and served them refreshments.
• Sort of put on trial in a public arena, questioned about his beliefs. He is even accused of being an atheist, because he did not believe in the pagan pantheon.

Follow-on topics:

• The witness of martyrdom: loving our enemies. Matthew 5:43-44; Luke 6:27-28; Romans 12:17-21; 1 Peter 3:9.
  • We ought not go about seeking to have people mistreat us, but the point is that if we are mistreated, there is opportunity in that to show the world the divine, unconditional form of love that God showed us by sending to Jesus to die for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8).
• People thinking Polycarp was an atheist because he did not believe in the pagan pantheon—interesting how culture makes a difference in one’s views, isn’t it?

Further discussion

Popular misconceptions

Video clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points and follow-on topics

Summary points:

• In general, overall, given the breadth and depth of the Roman government, and looking at the Church as a whole for several centuries, early Christian persecutions were sporadic, and they were local.
  • Many “pop history” sources make it sound like Rome tried to stamp Christianity from the face of the earth, in an ethnic cleansing sort of way. That just isn’t true for the earliest centuries of the church.
• Persecution does get noticeably worse in the so-called “Third Century Crises” and up into the reign of the emperor Diocletian in the early fourth century AD.
• The intensity of Roman persecution of Christians pretty closely tracks with how Roman imperial power functioned:
  • The Principate - 31 BC-284 AD
  • The Dominate - 284-476 AD
• During the Dominate (but before Constantine), the emperors largely come from the Army, and the Army was a bastion of traditional paganism.

Follow-on topics:

• It is good to consider that if you try to answer a question like “What was Rome’s relationship to Christianity?”, you answer the question incorrectly if the first things out your mouth aren’t return questions to the effect of “Where in the Roman Empire exactly, and at what point in time in history?”
• It is sort of baffling that pop culture gets stuff wrong here, because as far as historical questions go, this isn’t the most controversial of stuff.
• We might shrug and ask why any of this matter anyways, but I would argue that people really do go around making generalizations about “the history of Christian martyrdom” and such, while parroting things that simply false. If we are going to make theological points relating to the concept of martyrdom and its history in the Church already (which I would argue is a necessary conversation to have when discussing the end times persecution believers are prophesied to face during the events of the book of Revelation, for example), then we’d best get the facts right, Amen?
• We’ll talk more later today about some of the nitty-gritty mechanics in evaluating historical sources for claims.

Further discussion

Sources for persecution

Video clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points and follow-on topics

Summary points:

• Not many firsthand accounts of martyrdom in the first several centuries AD.
• By far most important textual source that describes stories of martyrdom from these centuries is a History of the Church, from Eusebius.
  • But this probably was written in the early fourth century (!). That’s hundreds of years after the events it purports to describe.
• Eusebius tries to outline persecution of Christians in the early Church since the time of the Apostles. Although some people are skeptical of him as a source, since some of this could be propaganda to get people to more fully support emperor Constantine. (“See what he saved you from!”)
  • But he’s the best we’ve got, unfortunately.
  • In general, historians seem to think he did a decent job trying to write down what happened as far as the sources he collected told him. But that makes him only as good as his sources.

Follow-on topics:

• This sort of analysis of sources and their potential biases is a fundamental part of historical analysis. We need to be rigorous in our scholarship as Christians. There is no need to fabricate or exaggerate, because Jesus was real and so is our faith.
  • I actually think it does great harm when modern Christians attempt to stand up for obviously political propaganda pieces written during the era of Constantine and afterwards. Those groups of people who were interested in centralizing political power and influence—what do they have to do with spiritual growth and the teachings of the Bible? The validity of my faith system does not depend upon them or their occasionally shady actions.
  • I’m not saying we try to ad hominem attack all powerful people in the early centuries of the Church. I am just trying to say that we should not turn off our brains as scholars who ought to question everything when it comes to putatively Christian sources.
  • Even though we believe in the doctrine of inspiration, we don’t even need to spare the Bible from this sort of rigorous analysis. If you take a look at the raw data, the Bible is by far the best preserved text in all of antiquity. So again, no need to fabricate or exaggerate anything.

Further discussion

Christianity and Judaism

Video clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points and follow-on topics

Summary points:

• The Romans naturally saw Christians as being connected to the Jewish faith… because we are!
  • But this doesn’t ipso facto mean that the Romans had great trouble distinguishing between the two. Some people seem to believe that, but it is another sort of misconception that has not nearly so much actual evidence as you might think, given its prevalence.
• Relationship between Judaism and Rome goes back to before Christ.
• Jewish diaspora
  • Judaism spreads throughout urban centers of the Greek world, post-Hellenization.
  • By one count, up to 8-10% of the Roman population was Jewish by the time of the birth of Christ. That’s a lot of people!
• Many Jewish writers were incredibly intellectual
  • For example, Alexandria, where as much as a third of the city was Jewish, was where the Septuagint arose, and there was much study of the Old Testament scriptures undertaken there.
  • Philo of Alexandria: c. 20 BC to 50 AD.<!– — –>
• Rome has complicated relationship to Judaism. In some senses, the Romans respected Judaism’s “oldness” (remember: Romans big on tradition), but they didn’t “get” monotheism or the Jewish sacrificial system, and so on. So, the Romans consequently often struggled to properly relate to this segment of their population, and tended to end up enraging the Jews out of what essentially amounted to religious tone-deafness.
  • Jerusalem a good example of how things sometimes ended up bungled: Romans forcibly install the half-Jewish Herod the Great as a tyrant on the throne of Jerusalem.
  • The Romans often could not find a good balance between the them exerting control, and the Jews having some degree of autonomy. The Sanhedrin had real power in Jerusalem, but it was still ultimately governed by a proconsul from Rome (e.g., Pontius Pilate in the gospel accounts). The give-and-take did not always work well.
• Biggest issue: Romans continually try to coerce the Jews to come around to their way of thinking. Like Antiochus IV centuries before, Roman leaders (both locally and at the wider level) try to force-convert the Jews.
  • For example, Caligula tried to install a statue of himself in the Holy of Holies… yeah.
  • Later looting of the temple causes riots.<!– — –>
• The Jews responded to this sort of action with outright violence. In this period of time (and back to the time of the Maccabean revolt), there is nothing particularly pacifistic in how the Jews relate to external threats.
  • The Romans even respected them for this in some ways. Even though they mercilessly shut down the rebellions and publicly executed those deemed traitors, armed resistance to external authority is sort of how the Romans thought oppressed peoples “ought” to react.
• But Christians… don’t react that way.
  • Christians are referred to as a “new superstition”, and Jews are never referred to that way. Romans could tell that Christianity was something new and different. Again contrast that with the notion that they somehow couldn’t tell apart Christians and Jews.
  • The Romans thought the Christians were insane to be pacifists and not try to overthrow the yoke of Rome’s oppression. They didn’t understand this “not resisting” mentality.
• The differences in how the groups are viewed by the Romans are not just theoretical. The Romans always tried to force the Jews to assimilate/become “syncretized”—to become more Roman, more pluralistic—but Christianity gets straight up outlawed and made illegal. That is not the same treatment as the Jews got from the Romans.

Follow-on topics:

• How revolutionary Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:11-25 actually are: submitting to government authority, not violently resisting even unjust government oppression.
  • We might note that somewhere along the line the message seems to have gotten confused, because there are lots of modern Christians who seem intent on taking over the government and forcibly resisting any sort of persecution with political reprisals. I would argue this is not scriptural in the least.
• If you’ve never thought about it much before, here is a good place to consider how Christianity was born of Judaism, but is so fundamentally different from it that the Romans treated them drastically differently in practice, in what we might term a “legal” sense.
  • At the same time we should not underemphasize the importance of Christianity’s Jewish roots, we need to not overemphasize the connection either. Anyone who has ever read the parts of the Sermon on the Mount dealing with Christ’s masterful reframing of the Law (Matthew 5:17-48) should have an appreciation for how the teachings of Jesus Christ differ from the Jewish understandings that came before.

Further discussion

The first persecutions

Video clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points and follow-on topics

Summary points:

• 49 AD - Emperor Claudius expels the Jews from Rome after a controversy arose over someone named “Chrestus” (a name we get from Suetonius). There is debate, but many scholars think this was a misspelling of the Latin title for Christ, and that the nature of this dispute was in fact controversy caused by Jews disagreeing whether or not Jesus was the Messiah.
  • Compare also Acts 18:2: “There he [Paul] met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome.”
  • A bit too much of a coincidence for Suetonius to not be talking about Christians, don’t you think?
• Persecution intensified under the emperor Nero.
  • Secondary sources tell us that the Emperor Nero used Christians as a scapegoat for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD.
  • Persecution was intense, but was short-lived, and localized (mostly in and around the city of Rome).<!– — –>
• Persecution also happened under Trajan
  • Pliny the Younger (governor of Bithynia) writes a letter to Trajan asking how to handle Christians. Trajan replies that they should be treated like all other superstitio religions/cults through the Empire.
    • Don’t seek them out, but if two or more people come in-person as witnesses, put them on trial, and set up a test to have them sacrifice to the gods. If they won’t do the sacrifice, put them to death.
  • In many ways, this sort of legal framework for executing people is more disturbing than the whims of an individual.
• Nero and Trajan sort of present the two main approaches to persecution of Christians:
  • Hot blooded/reactive: A plague comes to Rome -> blame the Christians.
  • Cold-blooded: Christianity viewed as illegal and illicit, and prosecuted under the justice system as an official crime.
• But the point to emphasize is the for these early centuries, while persecutions may have at times been hot-blooded and very intense, they were sporadic, and in no way systematic ethnic cleansing.
  • One might even say Roman governors almost didn’t care about Christianity or Christians unless circumstances sort of forced them to care.
• But following the Apostles, Christianity was nonetheless an officially illegal, persecuted religion, where not just a few lost their lives for following Jesus Christ.

Follow-on topics:

• A gentle introduction into source analysis, through the lens of the so-called “Neronian Persecution” of Christians. Was it historical?
• Did Nero really presecute Christians? : r/AskHistorians
• The passage in question reads as follows:
  • “But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, 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. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind”<!– — –>
• Speaking of “pop history” and Nero: the 1951 movie Quo Vadis portrays Nero feeding Christians to lions in the Colosseum. Whatever one thinks of the claim that Nero blamed the Great Fire on Christians, the Colosseum bit hasn’t a shred of textual evidence anywhere. This same film also has Nero playing the lyre while Rome burned, and we can’t exactly guarantee the accuracy of that either, so there’s plenty of unsubstantiated history to go around. (Although Tacitus mentioned this rumor too, to be fair. Some people think Tacitus just disliked Nero and wanted to throw shade, and what can the long-dead emperor do to him anyways? But Tacitus is actually far more civilized in his treatment of Nero than Suetonius is. For example: “[As to his ancestors], Nero perpetuated their separate vices, as if these were inborn and bequeathed to him, while failing to exhibit their virtues…” Real historical sources are often spicy in their name-calling 🌶️🌶️)
  • Nero never fed Christians to the lions in the Colosseum | Culture | EL PAÍS English
  • Compare also our conversation last week about the dangers of mixing art and theology. Mixing art and history usually has similarly poor success.

Further discussion

Review Questions

Coming soon!