>Most claims of Christian “persecution” under the Romans are heavily exaggerated. With the sole exception of Diocletian’s edicts, there was never an official sustained targeted persecution of Christians by the Imperial Roman government and what little persecution of Christians that did occur during that 300-year timespan was mostly localized, sporadic, and caused by local tensions rather than official decrees. Most stories of martyrdom are also pure fiction.>By the time Constantine died, Christians only made up less than 10% of the empire’s population and were at best a loud minority. Christianity didn’t become the majority religion until emperor Theodosius made an explicit effort to eradicate traditional pagan religions by forcibly closing down pagan temples and disbanding pagan priesthoods. Even then, pagan beliefs still heavily persisted among rural populations well into the early Middle Ages (where do you think the term “pagan came from”).>Many claims that were made by pagan critics of Christianity like Porphyry of Tyre have been independently verified by modern Biblical scholarship, e.g. the Book of Daniel NOT being written during the Babylonian exile by “Daniel,” but rather during the 2nd century BC under the reign of Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, long after it events it was “predicting.”Why do these facts make Christians seethe so much? The vast majority of scholars agree on all this, it is generally accepted that the Christian narrative of "persecution" under the Romans is propaganda.If you want to understand what really went on, I recommend reading the following books:>The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, by Candida Moss>The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, by Catherene NixeyAnd btw, the authors of these books aren’t “fringe” or “controversial,” they are well-respected scholars whose works have been awarded and applauded for their accuracy.
>>18291905>Worship Zeus and the Olympians in secret, be blessed by them.>Worship Jesus and Mary in public and get the unwashed masses to follow moral laws, be blessed by them.Why do you think the elites had huge cathedrals built in their names but palaces full of pagan art and symbols? It’s the biggest of redpills. Plato’s Laws lay out the framework for a moral society, Christianity produces it through a combination of coercion and persuasion through appeals to moral authority and mythology.
>>18291905Catherine Nixey is not an historian nor a scholar. https://historyforatheists.com/2017/11/review-catherine-nixey-the-darkening-age/>Nixey uses many of the same arguments [as Moss] to downplay the idea of her supposedly “tolerant” Romans killing large numbers of people over their religion. She writes that “there were simply not that many years of imperially ordered persecution [of Christians] in the Roman Empire”, noting there were “fewer than thirteen [years of persecution] … in three whole centuries of Roman rule” (p. 58) This is true, but only so long as we restrict things to “imperially ordered persecution”. This ignores the fact that a Christian killed in the many and various local and sporadic persecutions that happened in the rest of those 300 years was just as dead as the ones killed in the briefer Empire-wide, “imperially ordered” ones of Decius, Valerian, Diocletian and Galerius. And she goes to remarkable lengths to downplay the death toll in the Great Persecution of Diocletian. On this she cites Henry Dodwell’s Dissertationes Cyprianae of 1684 (!), from whom she gets her chapter title “On the Small Number of Martyrs”. A little later she at least manages to find an authority from within the last fifty years or so, this time quoting W.H.C. Frend as saying the martyrs numbered “‘hundreds, not thousands'” (p. 76). Her endnote gives the citation as Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965) p. 413, but if a reader bothers to check Frend’s book they will find he is not estimating the total number of martyrs, just the number for the short-lived persecution by Decius in 250 AD. Later in the same book Frend gives his estimate for the much more sustained and widespread Great Persecution of Diocletian as “a grand total of 3,000-3,500 victims” (Frend, p. 357).
Christians didn't fully come into orbit until the edict of Caracalla. They weren't citizens before that. When Decius was trying to fix the empire during the 3rd century crisis, he ordered all citizens to sacrifice to the gods for the protection of the empire. The Christians now being citizens were required to do this as well, but they refused leading to persecution. You are never going to find archaeological evidence for this because Christianity at this time was a very small portion of the empire and limited to large urban centers like Antioch and Alexandria. The persecutions are also going to only be effective if the provincial governor is enthusiastic in enforcing the law. If 500 Christians are living in a small town and 400 get massacred, you can downplay it and say "only a small number of people were killed"
>>18291925https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Nixey>Catherine Nixey is a British journalist, historian, and classicist.Fuck off.Also, a seething Christcuck whose only response is “nuh uh” is not a valid counter-argument.Cope and seethe.
>>18292146Oh well an unsourced Wikipedia page said it so it must be true.
It's important to understand Christianity as a kind of Roman Maoism. I was beyond shocked to find out that there were apparently Hellenist concentration camps in Palestine during the peak of the Christcuck reign of terror
>>18291905It's because they won't do shit, of course.
On the scale of cringe, making up stories where you're the victim has to be worse than making up stories where you btfo other people, right?
>>18291905>Why do these facts make Christians seethe so much?Why do you keep asking rhetorical questions about the straw men in your head using quotes you got from r/atheism? Couldn't you do this on /pol/ instead of shitposting here?
>>18291905>they are well-respected scholars whose works have been awarded and applauded for their accuracy.Actually, most historians gave their books negative reviews. Also, Catherine Nixey is an art critic, not a scholar.
>Most claims of Christian “persecution” under the Romans are heavily exaggerated… mostly localized, sporadic, and caused by local tensions rather than official decrees.This is a half-truth presented as a debunking. Yes, persecution was often local and intermittent. That does not make it imaginary or insignificant. Roman law criminalized refusal to sacrifice to the gods and the emperor; that alone made Christians permanently vulnerable. Pliny-Trajan, Decius, Valerian, and Diocletian all represent imperial policy, not folklore. Even if applied unevenly, a system where governors can lawfully execute you for your religion is persecution.>With the sole exception of Diocletian’s edicts, there was never an official sustained targeted persecutionDecius’ empire-wide sacrifice edict (250) directly targeted Christians as a class. Valerian’s rescripts explicitly ordered the execution of clergy. Diocletian’s Great Persecution lasted years and was the culmination, not the exception. “Sustained” is doing all the rhetorical work here.>Most stories of martyrdom are also pure fiction.Some hagiography is embellished. That has been acknowledged by Catholic scholars for centuries. But to leap from “some legends are stylized” to “martyrdom is invented” is ideological, not historical. Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, Lucian, and pagan inscriptions attest to real executions. Even Moss concedes martyrdom occurred; her argument is about frequency and rhetoric, not fabrication.>By the time Constantine died, Christians only made up less than 10% of the empire’s population…Estimates range widely (10-20% is common). Even at the low end, this is extraordinary growth under legal disability. A “loud minority” does not explain why bishops, councils, and a continent-wide Church infrastructure already existed before imperial favor.cont.
>>18292326>Christianity didn’t become the majority religion until Theodosius… by forcibly closing down pagan templesImperial support accelerated a process already well underway. Theodosius did not create Christianity ex nihilo; he legislated for what was already culturally dominant in cities. Also: repression cuts both ways. Rome had spent centuries suppressing Jews, Bacchic cults, Druids, and Christians without anyone calling that a “myth.”>pagan beliefs still heavily persisted among rural populationsNo Christian disputes this. The Church itself records it. Persistence doesn't equal legitimacy, and survival doesn't equal victory. Get it though your thick skull.>the Book of Daniel NOT being written during the Babylonian exile…This is a methodological claim, not a settled “fact.” The late-dating of Daniel rests on philosophical assumptions about prophecy, not manuscript evidence alone. The Church is not bound to modern critical consensus, especially when that consensus shifts every generation.>The vast majority of scholars agree… Christian narrative of "persecution" is propagandaAppeal to consensus is not an argument. There is no scholarly consensus that persecution was “propaganda.” There is consensus that Christians were executed for religious reasons, that martyrdom shaped early Christian identity, and that Roman tolerance had hard limits.>Candida Moss and Catherine NixeyBoth are polemical popularizers, not neutral arbiters. Moss has been publicly corrected by other patristics scholars; Nixey’s book is advocacy history that ignores Christian preservation of classical texts and selectively cites violence while sanitizing pagan brutality. Awards do not confer objectivity.
>>18291905>>By the time Constantine died, Christians only made up less than 10% of the empire’s population and were at best a loud minority. Christianity didn’t become the majority religion until emperor Theodosius made an explicit effort to eradicate traditional pagan religions by forcibly closing down pagan temples and disbanding pagan priesthoods. Even then, pagan beliefs still heavily persisted among rural populations well into the early Middle Ages (where do you think the term “pagan came from”).I know christians weren't the majority by then but how did they so effectively capture the institutions?
fedorautists are such cringelord banana in pooper enlightened by their own intelligence edge grifters >unsheathes katana >m'lady and this thread is the perfect exampleChristianity lives rent free in their mind, forever.They should have no reason at all to care.But instead, what you see them doing is caring even more about Christianity than most Christians do. But it's purely motivated by seethe and hate. So you see this kind of ridiculous revisionism and open lying.>>18292181lmao
