This was in response to an apologist trying to use Christian Persecution to refute the Alexandrian Hypothesis for Christian origins:
DM Murdock wrote:Firstly, what "persecution" are you talking about? And who said that Rome created Christianity? That's a straw man.
I have laid out the steps as they were taken, one after another, over a period of decades to centuries. There is no "gaping hole."
The stories of "persecutions" are largely apocryphal - as I most definitely do spell out in my books, especially The Christ Conspiracy, in which I pretty much covered all bases. There is no evidence of the massive martyrdom claimed later by Christian apologists. During the first century, Christians were barely heard of, and the Neronian persecution is a myth unsubstantiated by any evidence.
It is not until the second century that we start hearing about Christians who are fanatical about their faith, writing long apologies and polemics. Naturally, the Pagan priesthood got its hackles up and shot back, and some Christians were evidently attacked for their "atheism." But still there were no real persecutions as depicted in dramatic Christian tradition.
Christianity was created largely at Alexandria by Jews/Therapeuts, not Romans, but was becoming a concerted effort in the loosely knit brotherhood throughout the Mediterranean. The Roman elite factored into the picture as part of a general effort to combine Judaism with Paganism, as apparently exemplified by Vespasian and his wealthy compadres. You can be sure that this elite faction was being opposed by many others within the Roman government both in Italy and elsewhere, including Egypt.
To see a "gaping hole" you would need to have the erroneous concept that Vespasian or some other wealthy influential person just woke up one day and decided to create a new religion, and then everyone went along with it. As I show in great detail in the long chapter in my book Christ in Egypt about Alexandria, there were many factions within this widespread brotherhood that extended around the Mediterranean. Many of these factions wanted to be top dog; hence, they jockeyed continually for position. The numerous conflicts between Orthodox and Gnostic Christians during the second century demonstrate this point - as well as the prominence of the Christian effort, without so-called persecutions. Many of these individuals were leaders of the Church, which was already powerful and had bases around the Mediterranean, such as I also clearly spell out in my books.
The notion of a widespread persecution of Christian peasants by the nasty Roman hierarchy is a myth that goes along with the purported supernatural genesis of Christianity from a Jewish messiah in the backwater of Judea. It didn't happen. If you're talking about the immediate apostles of Christ, such as Peter, purportedly dying for their faith, there is no credible evidence that any of them existed, and Peter, for one, appears to be a remake of the Roman god Jupiter. The god with the 12 was a common motif long prior to the common era, and there pantheons of 12 gods in both the Greek and Roman religions.
As I also spell out in my books, some of the "Christians" (brotherhood members) who were "persecuted" were likely assailed because they were blabbing the mysteries, the revelation of which to the vulgar populace constituted a capital offense.
If the scenario of poor, powerless Christians being attacked and stifled by the all-powerful Romans were true, how do we explain the prominence of Justin Martyr and all the rest of the early Church fathers, whose works we possess to this day, while their Pagan competitors' writings are all lost?
In order to understand the dynamics of this development, you must disabuse yourself of the Christian tradition of supernatural genesis as depicted in the New Testament and movies, followed by the dramatic depictions of people willing to die for their faith shortly after Christ's death, as well as the extraordinary springing up of churches all over the place, as in Paul's epistles. As I've demonstrated, this scenario is entirely unsubstantiated. The fact that there were so many "churches" already by Paul's time is indicative of the brotherhood's preexistence, as well as its wealth and power.
The struggles between factions came about significantly with the historicizing and Judaizing efforts, which were opposed by other factions, such as Gnostics like Marcion. Marcion was certainly persecuted - possibly even murdered - for his attempts at stopping these particular efforts within the Christian movement. But his persecutors were other Christians. In fact, Marcion was essentially the head of the Roman church for a time, producing the first New Testament. His effort was wrestled away and redacted to produce the Gospel of Luke, and, by the end of the second century, the rest of the canonical New Testament.
