The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom

• Book ID: 126196797
• Publisher: Harper Collins
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 906 KB
• Category: Standards

✦ Synopsis

According to Cherished Church tradition and popular belief, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the fourth century, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints, Christianity's inspirational heroes, are still venerated today.InThe Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss reveals that the "Age of Martyrs" is a fiction--there was no sustained three-hundred-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches.The traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school classes, celebrated in sermons,...

✦ Subjects

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