By Bart D. Ehrman, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
The earliest Christianity in the Roman world is known to have faced severe opposition and persecution. Yet, there are numerous misunderstandings and misconceptions about the real situation. It’s usually assumed that Christianity was widely seen as a threat to the ruling authorities from the very beginning. But the reality was far from this and too complicated.
Early Christianity: A Threat?
Better known than the early Jewish persecutions against Christians are pagan oppositions, especially those brought about by Roman officials. It must be noted that Christianity was not seen as threatening in the world at large in the early decades at all, as it was so small and insignificant.
Even by the end of the 1st century, there were approximately only 7,000 to 10,000 Christians in an empire of 60 million. Moreover, it was not declared illegal at all until the middle of the 3rd century, 200 years after Jesus’s death.
A Weird Cult
Christians were not generally arrested. Most lived in peace as members of rather a weird cult. There has been only one incident of Roman imperial involvement at the highest level in the 1st century, a truly exceptional and widely misunderstood case involving the emperor Nero.
Even though Christianity was not an illegal religion, there were occasions when Christians aroused the ire of pagans as a meddling and troublemaking group. Usually, neighbors and suspicious others in town, and sometimes the complaints of regular folk led low-level administrators to intervene in order to punish the Christians. Instances such as these can already be found in the book of Acts.
The Book of Acts
A good example demonstrating the Christian persecution can be found in Acts 16. Paul is on one of his missionary journeys, and he moves from proclaiming Christ to interfering with a pagan religious activity, in Chapter 16.
Paul and his companions are in the city of Philippi, and there they encounter a slave girl who is possessed by a demon that allows her to predict the future. She has a supernatural understanding of who this Apostle is, this Apostle of the true God, and she hounds the Apostle and his companions. She publicly maligns him and after a few days, he begins to find it irritating.
And so, Paul deals with the problem by exorcising the demon. But the owners of the slave girl are incensed because they were making a profit off of her demon-inspired ability to tell fortunes. And now Paul has stolen away their livelihood.
As a result, they take the Christians up before the local magistrates and they complain that they have been causing disturbances and proclaiming customs that are opposed to Roman ways. The magistrate responds by having Paul stripped, beaten, and thrown in prison, and it’s only because God works a miracle that night, that Paul and his companions are set free.
Even though the veracity of the event is questionable, it is indeed indicative of the thing that almost certainly happened in general. Christians were seen as opposing pagan cultic practices. Therefore, they were troublemakers, and they were treated accordingly.
This article comes directly from content in the video series The Triumph of Christianity. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Christianity Gets Popular
A similar incident is narrated in Acts 19. In this case, Paul comes to the city of Ephesus and stays there for some months doing miracles and preaching the gospel.
Because he makes so many converts, the local silversmiths find themselves losing work. Nobody wants to buy their idols, especially the idols of the city goddess Artemis, the patron goddess of the city. This leads to a public uproar.
Christians are dragged into the arena where there is a big theater and the crowds all come out filling up the theater. A virtual riot breaks out, as the crowd cries out that Artemis is the great goddess of Ephesus, and they want nothing to do with the God of Jesus.
Evidence in Paul’s Letters
Again, there’s no confirming evidence that this actually happened. And given what Paul himself says in his letters, it seems extremely unlikely that anywhere he went, he was so successful that he was driving idol workers out of business.
He’s much more modest about what it was he was accomplishing, and so, when he writes his letters, it’s pretty clear, that he was not converting tens of thousands of people.
Nonetheless, the basic idea behind these narratives seems solid. When Christians came to be known, they were seen as anti-social and opposed to Roman religious customs and ways, and to that extent, they were undesirable elements of society.
Support for this view can again be found in the writings of Paul. When he details his sufferings as a Christian missionary, he not only mentions being flogged five times in synagogues, but he also indicates that on three occasions he was beaten with rods, Second Corinthians 11:24–25, beaten with rods.
Flogging was a form of Roman corporal punishment that was administered by duly appointed Roman officials. And so that means that Paul really was occasionally being punished by local officials, probably for being a troublemaker.
Common Questions about Pagan Opposition and Persecution of Early Christians
Christianity was not seen as threatening in the world at large in the early decades at all, as it was so small and insignificant. Even by the end of the 1st century, there were approximately only 7,000 to 10,000 Christians in an empire of 60 million.
When Paul details his sufferings as a Christian missionary, he not only mentions being flogged five times in synagogues, but he also indicates that on three occasions he was beaten with rods.
Even though Christianity was not an illegal religion, there were occasions when Christians aroused the ire of pagans as a meddling and troublemaking group. Christians were seen as opposing pagan cultic practices. Therefore, they were troublemakers, and they were treated accordingly.
