The Myth of Persecution
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The Myth of Persecution

Candida Moss

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The Myth of Persecution

Candida Moss

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About This Book

In The Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss, a leading expert on early Christianity, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the dangerous legacy of a martyrdom complex is employed today to silence dissent and galvanize a new generation of culture warriors.

According to cherished church tradition and popular belief, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the fourth century, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints, Christianity's inspirational heroes, are still venerated today.

Moss, however, exposes that the "Age of Martyrs" is a fiction—there was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches.

The traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school classes, celebrated in sermons, and employed by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get Christians and, rather, embrace the consolation, moral instruction, and spiritual guidance that these martyrdom stories provide.

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Information

Publisher
HarperOne
Year
2013
ISBN
9780062104540
Topic
Theology & Religion
Subtopic
History of Christianity

CHAPTER ONE

Martyrdom Before Christianity

WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IN England we had a religious studies class—rather piously called “divinity class”—in my school. It was something of a throwaway class that involved drawing illustrations of biblical concepts as much as it did learning about the Bible or anything that could strictly speaking be called “divine.” I was, then as now, a history nerd, and my enthusiasm for the subject irritated both my teacher, who preferred not to answer tough questions, and my classmates, who preferred that class end on time. One day I asked the teacher how we knew that Christianity was true, given that the Bible contradicts itself and there are all these other religions that also claim to be true. She thought for a minute and responded, “Why would Jesus’s followers have been prepared to suffer and die for him, if he had not, in fact, risen from the dead and if Christianity was not, in fact, true?”
That stumped me, I must confess. This was before the advent of suicide bombers, and we had skipped over martyrdom in other religions altogether. So instead of pointing out that lots of religions have martyrs, I found myself convinced, enamored with these early Christians, and greatly admiring the dedication and courage of the early church. How could I question a religion founded and fed by such heroes? Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and filed out of class.
My divinity teacher is in good company. The claim that Christians and Christians alone are martyred has its roots in the earliest days of the church. It was a point of pride among ancient Christian teachers and writers. Justin Martyr, a second-century Christian teacher who taught and died in Rome, wrote in his defense of Christianity that in his own time only Christians were persecuted for their name, “Christian”; that heretics were not persecuted; and that the only ones the Jews ever persecuted were the Christians.1 Justin’s declaration is slightly nuanced and has clear rhetorical aims—he skewers his intellectual opponents and the Jews with one thrust—but his claims have been rehearsed by generations of Christians from antiquity to the present day. Even modern Christians will assert that real martyrdom is unique to Christianity and serves as proof of the authenticity and truth of the Christian message.
This view is not unique to believers; many scholars argue something similar. The majority of biblical scholars and early church historians acknowledge that Christians used ancient stories of heroic death to develop their own understanding of martyrdom, but they at the same time argue that martyrdom was peculiar to Christianity. Glen Bowersock, a noted classicist and historian of religion, is typical when he says:
Martyrdom was not something that the ancient world had seen from the beginning. What we can observe in the second, third, and fourth centuries of our era is something entirely new. Of course, in earlier ages principled and courageous persons, such as Socrates at Athens or the three Jews in the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, had provided glorious examples of resistance to tyrannical authority and painful suffering before unjust judges. But never before had such courage been absorbed into a conceptual system of posthumous recognition and anticipated reward, nor had the very word martyrdom existed as the name for this system.2
Prior to the rise of Christianity, Bowersock and others argue, there was no such thing as martyrdom. He admits that there are precedents for martyrdom in the ancient world, but says that, because there was no system of posthumous rewards (heaven, hell, etc.) and no concrete word for this kind of death (“martyrdom”), these were not martyrs in some true sense. The argument goes that those individuals who died for king, country, nation, God, or on principle died what scholars call “noble deaths,” but these deaths are not martyrdom. It’s truly this idea—the notion that martyrdom is unique and special to Christianity—that forms the centerpiece of martyrdom’s power in Christianity today.
But is it true that there were no martyrs before Christianity? Did Christians invent the idea of martyrdom?
In order to get at why people think that martyrdom is limited to or different in Christianity, we have to first establish a working definition of “martyrdom.” It’s really only once we know what we’re looking for that we can ascertain to what extent Christianity is or is not unique with regard to it.

Definitions

WHEN PEOPLE USE THE term “martyr” today, they do so to refer to lots of different ideas and concepts. Even the straightforward use of the title is applied not just to saints like Joan of Arc, who died (at least on the surface) for religious causes, but also to political or activist heroes like Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Yitzhak Rabin, and Matthew Shepard. The application of the term “martyr,” which carries religious overtones, to an assassinated civil rights activist or a political figure colors either death with a touch of the religious. For example, although Martin Luther King Jr. was ordained and utilized religious imagery and language in his speeches and self-understanding, he was assassinated not because he was Christian, but rather because he was a rallying point and leader in the civil rights movement. Calling Dr. King a martyr blurs the line between his religious vocation and his political activism. This blurring is probably an accurate description of how Dr. King saw his own work, but it also demonstrates how using the title “martyr” changes the character of a person’s actions. When it comes to dying a meaningful death, the distinction between religious and political principles is not clear-cut.
It’s not even the case that the application of the title “martyr” is always a positive thing. The title is sarcastically applied to those who seem to delight in and seek attention for rather mundane forms of suffering. The phrase “She’s such a martyr” is often unflatteringly used of women who are perceived as wallowing in the sacrifices they make (or think they make) for others. In a similar vein the term is humorously applied to marriage. Many people I meet, upon learning that I study martyrs, jokingly inquire if their marriages “count” as acts of martyrdom. Even in English, then, the word has a great deal of fluidity. It can be a religious title, a political rallying point, or a derogatory insult. This fluidity isn’t limited just to the word “martyr”; there are lots of titles that can be used technically, metaphorically, or sarcastically depending on the context. The weightier the word, the more susceptible it is to these multiple interpretations.
The ambiguity surrounding the use of the term in the modern world is matched by its changing use in antiquity. The English term “martyr” comes from and is a direct transliteration of the Greek word martys. The original, pre-Christian meaning of this Greek word was simply “witness” in the sense of a legal witness, someone who presents evidence in a trial.3 In its pre-Christian use, therefore, the term carried connotations of courtrooms, truth, and formal testimony. Just like today, people could give true or false witness, and there was some discussion about how to tell the difference between them.
When Christians were arrested and tried, they acted as witnesses at their trials; they were asked to state whether they were or were not Christian. Initially, then, they were legal witnesses in the original technical sense because, much like today when a defendant testifies at his or her own trial, they gave testimony. When Christians did admit to being Christian, they could be executed as a result. The fact that giving accurate testimony in court meant that Christians could be executed resulted in a gradual shift in the meaning of the word martys. In Christian circles, martys first came to mean a Christian who admitted to being a follower of Jesus and was executed as a result and, then, a person who was executed for being Christian. This process of changing terminology took place over several hundred years. Some scholars have tried to argue that there was a radical shift in the meaning of the term in the middle of the second century, but this is difficult to prove. The problem is that even if some Christians started to use the term differently during the second century, there was no uniform shift in the meaning of the word. Moreover, the older meaning of “providing testimony in a courtroom” continued to be accurate (as Christians still were witnesses in courtrooms) and thus continued to resonate in the minds of people in the ancient world.
It’s much the same with the change and spread of terminology in the modern world. The launch of the social networking application Twitter in 2006 led to a change in the way that the term “tweet” is used. The recognition of the new use and supplementary terms like “retweet” or “tweeter” was gradual and grew with the number of Twitter users and cultural awareness about the phenomenon. Nonetheless, the term “tweet” can still be used to refer to the sound birds make, and there are undoubtedly lots of people who are completely unaware of any other meaning.
In scholarship on martyrdom a great deal of the argument that Christianity invented martyrdom is related to the origins of the word “martyr” and this shift in the meaning of the term martys, as is evident from the Bowersock quote above. Bowersock argues that because there was no term for martyrdom before Christianity, there was no such thing as martyrdom. In 1956 Norbert Brox, a German Catholic Bible scholar, published an influential book called Zeuge und MĂ€rtyrer [Witness and Martyr], in which he argued that it was in the middle of the second century, with the publication of a story called the Martyrdom of Polycarp, that the meaning of the term changed from simple witness to martyr.4 The book was essentially an enormous word study of the term martys in the ancient world. He tried to show that, gradually and through use, the meaning of the word shifted, so that it came to mean someone who died for Christ. Christianity, in other words, redefined the term. From this, Brox, and many modern scholars since, concluded that it was Christians who developed the language of martyrdom and thus Christians who are responsible for martyrdom in the modern sense of the word.
It is certainly true that Christians should be credited for coining the word “martyr” as we now use it. Moreover, it doesn’t seem to have been the case that ancient Jews, Greeks, or Romans had their own technical terms for people who died for their religious beliefs. They were heroes who died good deaths. In creating or, perhaps better, developing terminology to describe people who died for Jesus, Christians were doing something new. The development in the meaning of this particular term is not due to some self-conscious effort on the part of Christians. It is tied to the fact that Christians acted as legal witnesses (the original sense of martys) and were subsequently sentenced in actual courtrooms.
At the same time, however, we have to ask whether the existence of pre-Christian martyrdom hinges on ancient people having words for things. I would argue that it does not. There are lots of concepts for which there aren’t English technical terms that have meaning for English speakers. Take, for example, the French phrase dĂ©jĂ  vu. There is no English equivalent for the sense of having already experienced something before, but everyone, from an early age, knows the feeling. Or take the German word Schadenfreude, which generally refers to the satisfaction one experiences in the failure of others. We don’t need to know German or even the word itself to be familiar with the concept. Concepts can exist even if one’s native language doesn’t provide a single definitive word for them. It’s a mistake to say that because Christians adapted the term “martyr,” they also get credit for coming up with the idea.
Another way to think about the origins of the concept of martyrdom is to think in terms of ideas rather than words. The Oxford English Dictionary describes someone who dies as a martyr in the Christian church as someone who “chooses to suffer death rather than renounce faith in Christ or obedience to his teachings, a Christian way of life or adherence to a law or tenet of the church.” If we take this widely held definition of a martyr, rather than the word itself, as our starting point, then the evidence starts to look different. Embedded in this definition are certain principles: (1) that individuals have a choice to either live or die, and (2) they prefer to die, because they value either a way of life, a law, a person, or a principle more highly than their own life. In order to find out whether the origins of martyrdom do lie in Christianity, we have to look at the evidence for these principles both prior to the advent of Christianity and among Christianity’s religious contemporaries.

Death in the Ancient World

IN COMPARISON TO TODAY, the ancient world was saturated with death. The vast majority of serious diseases and medical ailments were fatal, because ancient medicine was unable to provide antibiotics or antiseptics. More than one-third of infants died before the age of five. The realities of battle meant that almost all of the injured died of their wounds or subsequent infection. For those unable to go to war themselves, gladiatorial conflict and dramatic reenactments brought the bloodshed to them. Capital punishment was administered publicly for a wide variety of crimes. No one in the Roman world—young or old, aristocratic or plebian—would have been personally unacquainted with death.
One of the results of this dangerous death-filled world was that, unlike today, death was not pushed to the margins of the ancient consciousness. Instead of death being placed out of mind or considered taboo, ancient philosophers, orators, politicians, and poets theorized about it on a regular basis. This wasn’t just an aristocratic pastime, however. Given the realities of the human condition and the fact that death was so pervasive, every corner of ancient society paid a great deal of attention to questions of how to die well, with honor, with purpose, and for causes outside of and greater than oneself.

The Heroes of the Trojan War

THE WESTERN LITERARY TRADITION traces itself back to Homer’s Iliad, and it is in the myths that surround the Trojan War that we find our first characterizations of noble death and how to die well. Homer’s poetry describes neither the beginning of the war nor its conclusion, but focuses instead on the heated conflicts of the battlefield and the personal journey of Achilles. In an epic poem about duels between sword-wielding young soldiers, there is ample opportunity to contrast the courageous and the weak, the good soldiers and the cowards.
Throughout the poem, assumptions about death and what constitutes a good or honorable death linger close beneath the surface of the rhyme, only to puncture the veneer of the story as each hero falls. The Homeric heroes, it is clear, fight for glory, honor, and everlasting fame. Death is a fact of human existence; the important part is how you choose to die. Death should be taken like a man, with head held high, steady resolve, and manly courage. In an encounter with one of the less remarkable Trojan princes, the easy victor Achilles is disgusted by the defeated prince’s desperation. As the Trojan begs for his life and promises Achilles that he will fetch a hefty ransom if spared, Achilles dismisses him as sniveling and girlish. He instructs the prince to “face” his death and not to be so “piteous about it”; they must both bravely greet the death that comes to all.5 Those who do not embrace glory and death are elsewhere called “women, not men.”6 This view is typical in a text and world in which courage and manliness are essentially the same word—andreia. The problem here is not death, which is natural and expected; the problem is failing to secure glory and conducting oneself in a manner that is womanly and shameful.
The narrative pretext for the Iliad, the whole reason for the poem, is Achilles’s clash of wills with King Agamemnon, the leader of the allied Greek forces. A somewhat petulant Achilles refuses to fight and returns to the field of battle only after the death of his beloved friend Patroclus. Achilles’s willingness to swallow his pride and reenter the fray is an act of humility born out of heartache. Yet in returning to war more was at stake than merely his bruised ego and pride, for in rejoining the battle Achilles chooses an early death. Achilles tells Odysseus of a prophecy of his own eventual fate:
For my mother the goddess, silver-footed Thetis, tells me that twofold fates are bearing me toward the doom of death: if I abide here and play my part in the siege of Troy, then lost is my home-return, but my renown shall be imperishable; but if I return home to my dear native land, lost is my glorious renown, yet shall my life long endure, neither shall the doom of death come soon upon me.7
The prophecy presents Achilles with a choice—a glorious but brief life that will be rewarded with immortal fame or a long comfortable life in anonymity. The already weighty choice is further burdened with the ramifications of his decision for the outcome of the war: if Achilles fights, then Troy will fall; if he leaves for his homeland, the Greeks will be defeated. Achilles’s death is intricately interwoven with the fate of his people. Death pro patria (“for country”) was the ultimate act of patriotism. At the same time, the choice, as set by Achilles, is not just between victory and defeat, life and death, but between immortal glory and mundane existence. There is personal advantage for Achilles in dying young in that he will have glory and an immortal name. Even if Achilles does not weigh present life against future reward in terms of a heavenly afterlife, he still has in mind a different kind of immortality—the manner in which he will live on (or not) in the memories of others.
For people wel...

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