Before looking at this course I feel there was a sterotype that Christians were widely persecuted with the view that they were ‘thrown to the lions’ and faced other such punishments. Is this a heavily exaggerated view of things? To what extent were Christians actually punished?
Welcome to the Pagans, Heretics and Christians course blog.
Each week I would like you to post at least one question or comment relating to the reading that you have done that week. This will then be used to structure that week’s seminar.
These could be questions relating to the reading you have been doing or the lectures or seminars you have previously been attending. As I said, you are not restricted to writing questions - you could simply comment on something that you found particularly interesting, difficult, funny etc. The point is to show that you have engaged with the topic and to allow me to respond to that engagement in the seminar.
Please feel free to comment on each other’s posts and to add tags to those that you feel are particularly relevant.
This blog links directly to our course del.icio.us site so that you can move between the two easily. See the right hand pane for this link.
You can also use this site to make brief comments on the primary and secondary sources that you have been reading in preparation for the seminars, essays and exams. Also, please feel free to raise any general issues that you are having with the course, the material or the technology…
3 comments:
I had this stereotype as well, i thought christians were one of the most marginalised groups in the Roman Empire. After the lecture last week it seems like persecution was kind of sporadic and not that intense, more depending on the whims of the emperor at the time; i thought it was interesting that christians were used as scape goats when the empire was facing difficulties. Christians were punished to the extent that they were executed though, so maybe there is some exaggeration over the number who died but not the forms of punishments?
Is this the same for Jews ? or did anti-semitism develop later on? Romans seemed more willing to embrace judaism in the 3rd century than christianity is this true?
Talking of scapegoats, Constantine’s convertion to Christianity was said to be, according to pagans, the reason why the Empire was going through a particularly difficult time.
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