She's making a very broad generalization with nothing to back it up. I haven't read her book, but the article is nothing but fluff.

The article is not footnoted academic writing, but it sure as hell does offer up lots of facts from history, including the segment about the actual persecutions during the time of Diocletian the First. Be honest. Did you know about Diocletian, ever hear of him in relation to Christian history? And how can you call this 'fluff'?
"Archeological evidence reveals that on those occasions when Christians did die en masse it was the result of general legislation intended to defend and fortify the empire. Christians were not named directly in imperial legislation until the second half of the third century, and it was only from 303-305 C.E., in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, that we see anything resembling the brutal persecution of popular imagination. Christians did die. And Christians were occasionally persecuted, but should two years of persecution under Diocletian lead to nearly 2,000 years of Christian persecution complex."

"Candida Moss is the author of "The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom" and professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. A graduate of Oxford University, she earned her doctorate from Yale University. A frequent contributor to the National Geographic Channel, Moss is the award-winning author of several scholarly works on martyrdom."

Oxford grads make the best fluff!!!!

What archeological evidence?

If I wrote a long, windbag article like this saying the sun revolved around the earth, would you be having an "a-ha" moment?

Like I said earlie, I haven't read her book, but this article is crap.

What do you think her motives are? Do you think that the bullshit about Christians being persecuted espoused by the right is legitimate?

I am not sure why you are so hostile to this article by a person who has the academic credentials to backup her claims. Do you need citation pages for Huffington Post articles?

she should actually provide some facts in her article. Her motives? I have no idea and couldn't care less.

Moss begins by pointing out that legends of some early saints' martyrdoms--the endless numbers of Christian maidens who refused marriage to pagan husbands and were then executed by various barbaric methods, for instance--cannot be historically proven. That's completely true. What's not mentioned in the article is that the churches which recognize saints have dropped said virgin martyrs from their rosterss, along with a number of popular but historically unsupported male saints, eg., St. Christopher.

The fact that Christians weren't identified by name in some early edicts isn't proof that they weren't persecuted. They were simply lumped in with some usually unrecognized company. Rome had a long-standing phobia for "Oriental cults" in general, not only nascent Christianity but the worship of Isis and Judaism. There were crackdowns and bans on all because they were held to threaten the Roman civic religion, especially emperor worship. One of the reasons that J. Caesar's and Marc Anotny's marriages to Cleopatra gave Rome the shuddering grues was the fear that the Egyptian queen would spread Egyptian religion within the Empire.

Modern claims of Christian persecution are a whole other category. Clearly they aren't persecuted in the Americas or Western Europe. They are, however, the victims of widespread hate crimes (or persecution if one prefers that term) in Egypt, Pakistan and other theocratic Muslim areas. The flip side is that Muslims are widely demonized and victimized in the West, frequently but not always by fundamentalist Christians--Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins stand shoulder to shoulder with Franklin Graham on this one.

As you read the full article, see seems to say the persecution was not for the right reasons, or didn't last long enough. Of course, I have always thought the Roman persecution was ironic, given that Rome is the home of the Church.

It will be tough going selling a book like that, so I can understand she needs to hype things up a little.

claims to martyrdom and persecution are so central to most people's Christian beliefs that they will vigorously deny any attempt to point out the reality of the situation.

of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69). These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus in AD 14 to the years of the First Jewish–Roman War in AD 70 ..."
Tacitus


... 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 Judaea, 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. 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 a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed ...
Annals XV.44

Tacitus is not a fan of the early Christians, whom he regarded as guilty of "abominations." Nevertheless, after reporting that "an immense multitude was convicted ... of hatred against mankind," he indicates "a feeling of compassion" for the victims was widespread due to "one man's cruelty" in this aftermath of the great fire in 64AD

better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him. They were both witnesses to the eruption of Vesuvius on 24 August 79 AD ..."
Pliny the Younger

"Trajan ... was Roman Emperor from 98 to 117 ..."
Trajan

"Bithynia et Pontus was the name of a province of the Roman empire on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia ... Pliny the Younger was governor of the province in 110-3 AD. His Epistulae ("Letters&quot to emperor Trajan (ruled 98-117) are a major source on Roman provincial administration ..."
Bithynia et Pontus


Letters of Pliny 10.96-97
Pliny to the Emperor Trajan

suggest they ran toward death, embraced it. In their minds, by remaining fiercely loyal to their beliefs, they won the reward of heaven. Cooler minds may judge the validity of that view, but nobody is likely to miss the comparison with radical Islam today.

The story of Perpetua, for example, can be read as a claim to the right of self-definition:

Sunni or the word Shi'ite.

It's a judgment call. Does Perpetua get good value for her choice in that story?

the reader attaches to the right to define oneself according to one's own conscience: those who think the right is minor and unimportant may sympathize more with the Roman governor who had her put to death, whereas those who think the right is quite important may sympathize more with Perpetua

to sympathize with Perpetua in the story. Of course because of the injustice done to her, but also because some of us doubt that she acted wisely.

There's an old adage in bargaining which suggests not to agree to a certain evil to balance out a possible good. By the possible good here I don't mean a quiet conscience, I mean heaven.

at times and places far removed from our own, since we cannot easily imagine the circumstances they faced or the cultural framework that shaped their responses

But many people do admire those who follow their consciences, perhaps even when there is some personal danger attached to the choice, such as the members of the White Rose in WWII Germany, whose members could certainly be regarded as acting naively and who were executed simply for saying what they thought had to be said

I'm sure you have read some of the novels that come from the pens of German soldiers in that
era.

It's very hard not to imagine they were following their consciences too. As were the ones who attempted to atomize Hitler.

Nothing is easy.

the government emphasized obedience. The Eichmann case is illustrative: Eichmann repeatedly indicated after his capture that he had been content to defer to his superiors on questions requiring ethical judgment. The regime encouraged this attitude, often by terror:

There are a few others, not many, at least easily available in the west. Reading that sort of material leaves the impression that ordinary folk were just in a terrible jam, which they were helpless to avoid. They then behaved so as to survive, not much else, but according to their consciences when possible. Clearly their consciences were malleable when required. The same could well be said about the allied forces.

Another salient point about German war novels--they often start out gaily and end rather sadly. So do most wars.

that if they didn't stay true to their god, and offered homage to the Roman gods in addition (as they were pressured to do), that they would suffer punishment. It wasn't just a matter of principle, or simple brand loyalty.

a link to a particular historical source document illustrating your claim

then it would be someone else's expertise, now wouldn't it? I realize that's the only kind of expertise you have access to (if that), but some of us know that there's a whole world of detailed knowledge and scholarship out there that isn't accessible through Google. Go do some real research for a change.

some other reference to a particular historical source document, explaining how it illustrates your claim

from AD 303 and 304. Then get back to us. And try actually reading them, and not doing your research on Google.

and then you might understand. I imagine you're wanting to take comfort by telling yourself that I must have just made everything up, but everyone here knows that you've been burning up Google trying to find something to contradict what I said, and have obviously failed...hence to absence of links in your responses. I have no desire to educate you on real research and scholarship, so I'll leave you to your Googleized understanding of the world.

Even if Christians were not named by named they still were tortured and executed. There is plenty of evidence throughout history that showed Christians were persecuted. This author did not provide any evidence. Whatever the real story behind why Nero did what he did Christians were killed during his reign.

As for today's Christian right I say there are nations on this earth where Christians are persecuted, but this one is not one of them.

She argues, it would appear, against a specifically Xian persecution. They saw themselves persecuted for following X, which entailed not worshiping the official gods.

Their persecuters would say that were persecuted for not worshiping the official gods, not specifically for following X. Probably following X would have been fine, had they also worshiped the official gods.

Take Pakistan as a current case in point. Xians are persecuted and see themselves persecuted for their faith. But they're not persecuted specifically because they're Xians. Shi'ites, Ahmedis, Hindus are also persecuted, and sometimes more severely than Xians are. This doesn't mean there's no Xian persecution; it means that the reason perceived by those persecuted and the reason that an outside observer taking the majority viewpoint would adduce are different, even if one viewpoint happens to entail the other.

Much of the rest is an argument ex silencio. One discards early stories that aren't sufficiently supported or which can't be verified by narratives by people with no interest in the Xians per se. Then one cites the lack of specific mention of anti-Xian pogroms as evidence that, well, they probably didn't exist.

We insist that some narratives reflect historical reality unless we can falsify them. Then we insist that some narratives can't possibly reflect historical reality unless we can substantiate them. The asymmetry is striking.

in many cases of Xstian persecution, the Roman authorities would have been happy if the Christians had just made token homage to the Roman gods, and didn't care so much what they did with their own. It was all about keeping vain and vengeful gods happy back then.