The Persecution Letters

When we think of Christianity in ancient Rome, one of the first images that comes to mind is Christians being fed to lions in the Coliseum. But this wasn’t the norm throughout most of Roman history. Persecutions came in phases and were often short-lived, according to which emperor ordered it. The Romans didn’t always force their subjects to bow to their gods. Judaism was legal and since Christianity was considered a branch of Judaism, it too enjoyed certain rights and protections. At first. But as it grew, some started to view them with distrust.

Now, this isn’t to say the Early Church Christians didn’t experience persecution at all. Clearly they did. Paul said Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils of the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness (II Corinthians 24-27). However, it wasn’t official policy of the Roman government to treat Christian prisoners this way, and these incidents were kept at a local level.

But the ascension of Nero brought a new wave of uncertainty. Although the first few years of his reign were relatively peaceful, the circumstances of his rise to power indicated homicidal tendencies. He had conspired to assassinate the previous Caesar, his uncle Claudius, who died by poisoning. His mother, Agrippina (Claudius’ sister) had been obsessed with her son becoming emperor one day; but shortly thereafter she was next on his list. Nero ordered her death in 59, solidifying that there would be no more threats to his own ambitions.

When read in the right chronological order one can sense tension in the New Testament narrative. For example, Luke wrote Acts in 63 as an orderly account of Christianity’s history over the previous decades to appeal to the Roman officials (it’s addressed to Theophilus) of its legitimacy as a religion.

Then, disaster came. In July 64 AD, the Great Fire of Rome broke out, destroying 10 of the city’s 14 quarters in six days. An angry population, half of which was now homeless, was desperate for someone to blame and turned their attention toward the emperor.

To be fair, the legend of Nero playing his lyre from the rooftop of his palace while the city burned is probably just that. But it shows how quickly conspiracy theories can spring up in the aftermath of catastrophe. While Nero was guilty of many things, intentionally setting the city on fire was probably not one of them. The Great Fire was probably an inevitable accident. Rome had become a tinder box. The eternal city was said to be the greatest place to live in the world if you were rich and the worst place to live if you were poor. Magnificent palaces were within walking distance of cesspools of human filth. The majority of its citizens lived in tiny, poorly constructed apartment buildings stacked dangerously high. The dilapidated wooden material, combined with poor sanitation (the city had no method of garbage disposal; the streets were piled with trash), made the overcrowded city a ticking time bomb.

But regardless, Nero needed a scapegoat fast and was quick to blame the Christians. The entire empire turned on what they now viewed as a radical cult of outsiders. One could compare how Rome saw Christians to how we today see terrorists. Under the shadow of this paranoia, many Jewish converts abandoned Christianity to return to Judaism, mostly out of fear for their lives. The book of Hebrews was a letter sent by either Paul or Apollos using the illustrations of the Old Testament priesthood to persuade them to return.

In the Spring of 65, tensions finally boiled over into real-world violence. Nero’s persecution began. And once the emperor got his first taste of blood, the true sadistic nature of this monster was unleashed. According to the historian Tacitus, Nero would have Christians sewed up in animal carcasses to be ripped apart and eaten by dogs. He would also have them covered with wax, tied to poles, then set on fire, their burning bodies used as torches to light his garden at night.

Terror gripped the Christian world. As is often the case during despotic regimes, the persecuted group had to go in hiding. Church services were held in caves and tunnels. Understanding the Great Fire and the subsequent Nero persecution is crucial to understanding the historical context for the New Testament books written from 65-68 AD, which include:

Paul had written I Timothy just before the persecution began and to give advice on combating false doctrine at the church in Ephesus. He wrote a similar letter to Titus, who oversaw the church at the island of Crete. Paul then attempted to visit Timothy, but never made it. Near the end of 65 AD, he was captured and dragged in chains to Rome. As one of the most important leaders of Christianity, this was a big prize for Caesar. Paul was locked in the deep bowels of the dreaded Mamertine dungeon, a place reserved for Rome’s worst criminals.

This imprisonment would be the darkest two years of Paul’s life. While he had been able to talk his way out of plenty of trials in the past, here none came to his defense and enemies all around testified against him. Worse still, churches he had planted across the ancient world forsook him out of fear of association. Some of his most trusted friends like Demas betrayed and abandoned him.

But miraculously, Luke found Paul and was allowed visitation. Knowing his life was near an end, Paul had one final request: to pen a farewell letter to Timothy and to advise him on church leadership after he was gone. We call this epistle II Timothy.

According to tradition, June 29, 67 AD is the date Paul was beheaded in Rome. In his final letter, he had issued this summary of his own life: For I am ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: (II Timothy 4:6-7).

Peter was also arrested and executed around the same time; he would choose to be crucified upside down as he deemed himself unworthy to die in the same manner as his Savior.

But still Nero’s bloodlust wasn’t satisfied. The death toll would keep rising.

-Andrew, Peter’s brother, was crucified on an X-shaped cross in Patras, Greece. -Luke was crucified with him.
-Bartholomew (one of the original 12 disciples) was crucified in Armenia.
-John Mark (Peter’s apprentice and author of the gospel of Mark) was dragged by his neck from a rope tied to the back of a chariot around the streets of Alexandria, Egypt until dead.
-Other victims of the persecution included Aristarchus from Thessalonica, Erastus from Corinth, Trophimus from Ephesus, Joseph Barsabbas from Jerusalem, and Ananias of Damascus.

It would take Nero’s death to end the bloodbath. While Roman citizens had been suspicious of Christians at first, the depths of the emperor’s sadism actually started to garner sympathy. Nero was also never popular with the Roman Senate. Fed up with this cruel and embarrassing emperor, he was officially deposed and declared enemy of the state in June 68. Ironically, this was almost one year after the death of Paul. After his guards and generals abandoned him, Nero knew his time was up and attempted to flee for his life. But he didn’t get far before being cornered hiding out at a friend’s villa.

Contrast Nero with all the people he had caused to suffer in the past three years. The Christian martyrs had bravely faced their executions. But knowing he too would probably be imprisoned and killed, the emperor took the coward’s way out. Before stabbing himself in the neck, Nero uttered his famous last-words, revealing what a self-pitying narcissist he was to the very end: “What a great artist the world has lost in me!”

While the empire was still in chaos (the Jewish revolt was already beginning), the Christians at least were safe for now. If the New Testament books written just before the persecution had a cloud of dread hanging over them, and the ones written during the persecution were under fear and hiding, there is a sense of relief in the two produced afterwards, Jude and Revelation. The Nero persecutions had decimated Early Church leadership. But John the apostle, and others, were still alive and could come out of hiding.

This sounds like a strange comparison, but think of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. It destroyed most of life on Earth, including the species that had dominated for the past 100 million years. But it didn’t destroy everything. When the devastation cleared, smaller mammals and birds crawled out of hiding and began repopulating the earth. Life found a way.

In the Old Testament, sin found a way. A similar apocalyptic event fell on Sodom and Gomorrah obliterating sin. But just a little of that wicked spirit had managed to hide and creep out in Lot’s daughters, eventually repopulating the ancient world in the forms of Moab and Ammon. The sin of Sodom lived on and multiplied over the generations.

But in the New Testament, Christianity too was nearly annihilated by a great asteroid that claimed the lives of some of the greatest apostles. But it still survived, emerging from the tunnels and caves once the smoke was clear and moving on. Christianity had survived its first great test, and only endured afterwards.

-Viola, Frank. The Untold Story of the New Testament. Destiny Image Publishers, Shippensburg, PA, 2004, pages 158-160, pages 161-170.

-Scarre, Chris. Chronicle of the Roman Emperors. Thames and Hudson, New York, NY, 1995, page 51.

The earlier persecutions were at the command of the local governor. The emperor Decius (249-251) was the first to order an empire-wide persecution. Nero went after the Christians in Rome, whom he blamed for the Great Fire, but there is no evidence that Christians elsewhere were killed at that time.

Agrippina, the mother of Nero, also known as Agrippina the Younger, was the niece of Claudius and his fourth wife; Nero was her son by her previous marriage. Her mother, Agrippina the Elder, was a granddaughter of Augustus, the wife of Germanicus (Claudius' brother), and the mother of Caligula.

The Jews were not required to offer incense to the Roman gods because they had an ancient religion. Jewish Christians also enjoyed that exemption, but the Church decided that Gentile converts did not have to undergo circumcision--so in Roman eyes they were not Jews and therefore did not get the benefit of the Jewish exemption.

The earlier persecutions were at the command of the local governor. The emperor Decius (249-251) was the first to order an empire-wide persecution.

I'm well aware of that, but I don't seem to recall claiming that the Nero persecutions were empire-wide (though it may have come across that way). While there certainly was no official order, I do believe the political influence led to increasing persecutions outside of Rome.

Nero went after the Christians in Rome, whom he blamed for the Great Fire, but there is no evidence that Christians elsewhere were killed at that time.

According to one of my sources, The Untold Story of the New Testament, the Neronian persecution began to spread beyond Rome before the end of 65 AD. This was a 3-year massacre so while it started out locally we can't assume it was monolithic from beginning to end. This is precisely why Paul was arrested (he wasn't in Rome at the time, but was en route to Ephesus from Corinth). We also do have a rash of Christian leaders being killed during the three-year period from Patras to Alexandria that includes the men I listed (Andrew, Luke, Bartholomew, John Mark, etc.). Intense persecution against the churches in Northwest Asia also caused Gentile Christians to rebel against their local authorities, prompting Peter to write his first epistle (65 AD). Interesting that the man who had cut off a guard's ear trying to save Jesus has to remind fellow believers of the importance of non-violence. I mean, there isn't an official order to do this from Nero per se, but it seems awfully coincidental, and not unbelievable that implied pressure from Rome had caused a crack down on Christians in different corners of the empire.

The Jews were not required to offer incense to the Roman gods because they had an ancient religion.

This is pretty much exactly what I said, so I'm not sure what your point is.

Jewish Christians also enjoyed that exemption, but the Church decided that Gentile converts did not have to undergo circumcision--so in Roman eyes they were not Jews and therefore did not get the benefit of the Jewish exemption.

This is true, and all well and good, but sort of splitting hairs while missing my overall point.

I'm not trying to get into an argument with you. When it comes to the fates of early Christian leaders, I think there is a lot of disagreement about how trustworthy the legends are about how and when they were killed. There is also disagreement about the dates when various books of the New Testament were written.

Paul was in Corinth during the governorship of Gallio (the brother of Seneca) in the very early 50s, before Nero was emperor, and Luke's account of Paul's trip from Palestine to Rome (after he appealed to Caesar) does not include visits to Corinth or Ephesus. Even that trip must be earlier than the Great Fire.

The point about the Jews is that the Romans believed in mos maiorum, the ways of the ancestors, so they could respect the Jews for following the ways of their ancestors (even if they had a negative attitude towards Judaism), but Gentile converts to Christianity had abandoned the beliefs of their ancestors.

By the way, there is a church in Patras which claims to have some of the wood from the cross on which St. Andrew was crucified.

I'm not trying to get into an argument with you.

Hey, it's all about the love of the history. I could discuss or debate this kind of stuff for hours with people. I concede that I didn't explore the relationship between Agrippina and Claudius well enough.

I think there is a lot of disagreement about how trustworthy the legends are about how and when they were killed. There is also disagreement about the dates when various books of the New Testament were written.

Well whoever's in disagreement should just consult with me! ;-)

I'm double checking Paul's voyage to Rome after his appeal to Caesar and I'm not sure what you mean by visits to Corinth or Ephesus. I see the trail of his journey including Sidon, Myra, and Cnidus along Crete before the shipwreck at Malta. After three winter months (the synoptic gospels are written roughly during this time) they finally depart for Rome, stopping at Syracuse, Rhegium, and Puteoli before arriving.

Two years later, Paul travels straight to Spain immediately after release, followed by the island of Crete (appointing Titus over the church), then a few cities in Asia Minor where he finally meets Timothy at Ephesus. Is this what you're referring to? My book dates it at 63 AD, about a year before the Great Fire.

As for Corinth, I'm seeing Paul's last visit a few years earlier at 58 AD (he had never been to Rome and wrote Romans while staying there for three months, expressing his desire to visit the church there).

Luke does end Acts as soon as Paul arrives at his house arrest in 61, while things had clearly happened between that and the book being written two years later (63). However, I think this is intentional on the author's part. As an appeal to the Roman government to portray Christianity as a legitimate religion, the conclusion of Paul arriving gives the subtle impression that Christianity itself has arrived at the Eternal City, and can't be stopped.

Since you mentioned that Gallio was Seneca's brother, that reminded me of an interesting side note that I probably should have mentioned; Nero's madness was kept in check at the outset by his two advisers, Seneca and Burrus, head of the praetorian guard. After Burrus died, Nero ordered Seneca to commit suicide, and then there was nothing to hold back his homicidal tendencies.

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INDEED!!