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Article: The Christians as the Romans saw them.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- December 28, 1984
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1984 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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HOW DID Christianity first seem to the established society of the Roman Empire? Pliny, the urbane governor of Bithynia, considered it "a depraved superstition carried to extravagent lengths." The same disparaging term was used by Tacitus and Suetonius. Christianity first appeared in the Roman Empire as a religion of the dispossessed, scornful of the established pagan worship. In Pliny's day (63-113 A.D.) there were fewer than fifty thousand Christians in an empire of sixty million. Christianity, like all religions at their beginnings--whatever their metaphysical value--was a cult apart, most Christians being uneducated and illiterate, and all too easily exploited by ...