From the PBS website...also good Roman history stuff there too..
http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/life/life5c.html
Early Christians
After the death of Jesus, word of his teachings spread to Jewish communities outside Palestine, but soon Paul and other apostles and missionaries began to preach to non-Jews as well.
Keith Bradley: It would've been very difficult for Christianity to spread as dramatically and quickly throughout the ancient world as it did had Paul not been able to draw on the framework of communications that was there as part of the Roman imperial system. It was possible to travel throughout the ancient world fairly quickly... And it was possible for Paul to follow Roman roads and to go to Roman towns and Greek towns and communicate his message in a way that was probably impossible under any other previous imperial system.
For the next thirty years, Paul traveled some ten thousand miles across territory ruled by Rome. He preached in the empire's great cities — Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, Athens and others — cities that enjoyed imperial grandeur, but cities teeming with the poor and desperate subjects of Rome. They made eager audiences for Paul's message of eternal life. Like Jesus before him, Paul spoke to people in their homes and synagogues. But while Jesus had preached only to Jews, Paul believed his message should be taken to non-Jews: to the Gentiles of the Roman Empire. And that meant relaxing timeless Jewish laws about food and circumcision. It was a radical slap at Jewish tradition... and the key to the spread of this new faith.
Karen King: There was a lot of variety in the early Christian movement. There weren't just twelve men, but there were a wide variety of men and women who were responsible for the formation of Christianity. We can chart in some ways some of the issues that were central to the formation of this group. And certainly one of those has to do with circumcision and food laws. These are taken up very directly by the letters of Paul. What's at stake? What's at stake in the question of whether when you become a follower of Jesus the Messiah, the Jewish Christ, you should take up circumcision and food laws or not.
As the movement began to accept non-Jewish members, and began to move farther away from the strict religious requirements of Judaism, it grew into a separate and distinct religion.
Christian Persecution
The Great Fire of Rome, in 64 AD, which lasted for six days and seven nights, destroyed all but four of Rome's fourteen districts. Countless temples, homes, and shops were destroyed. When the fire burnt itself out, Nero surveyed the smoldering ruins. He opened public buildings — even his own property — to the homeless.
However well intended, his relief measures were in vain, because rumors began to arise among the people that Nero himself had started the fire to clear land for a new palace. These rumors were so widely believed that the Emperor decided to divert attention away from himself by offering up a scapegoat in Rome's strange new religious sect: the Christians.
Jesus had been crucified barely thirty years before. His followers were actively spreading his word, but the number of Christians in Rome was still very small — and already viewed with suspicion.
Keith Bradley: From a Roman point of view, the Christians at Rome in the middle of the First Century were a completely oddball, bizarre group of religious people. Their practices were very strange. Their central and most important ritual involved... what could only be regarded as a cannibalistic practice, that is drinking blood and eating flesh. That was simply unacceptable from a Roman point of view and had to be repressed. They also placed a heavy emphasis on an idea such as the brotherhood of man, which they celebrated through activities that were called love feasts... It seemed as if they were engaged in incestuous behavior, doing something that was sexually just not permissible. So it was easy for Nero, as a consequence of these misconceptions… to turn public opinion against them and claim that they as anti-social deviants had set fire to Rome.
Nero rounded up all the Christians in the city, and they were hideously tortured and executed in a grand public spectacle. Some were crucified, others were thrown to wild animals, and still others were burned alive as living torches. Despite its brutality, Nero's persecution of the new Christian sect was short lived, and it was not repeated in other parts of the Empire in the first century. Trajan, responding to a question from Pliny on how to deal with Christians in the Asian provinces, ordered that they should not specifically be sought out, but could be punished if they were denounced and refused to recant.
In time, Christian church leadership strengthened and solidified both the church government and its influence throughout the Empire. Local Christian groups were at first led by a Council of Elders, but were eventually ruled by bishops known as the Episcopus. An official Christian creed was being written and adopted by the end of the 2nd century AD, and in 313 AD Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan accepting Christianity. It became the official religion of the Roman Empire at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.
Sincerely,
District Overbeer
