The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom is a 2013 book by Candida Moss, a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. In her book, Moss advances a thesis that:
The traditional idea of the "Age of Martyrdom", when Christians suffered persecution from the Roman authorities and lived in fear of being thrown to the lions, is largely fictional.[1] Here she follows the work of G. E. M. de Ste. Croix.
There was never sustained, targeted persecution of Christians by Imperial Roman authorities. Official persecution of Christians by order of the Roman Emperor lasted for at most twelve years of the first three hundred of the Church's history.[2][3] Moss writes: "This does not mean, however, that there were no martyrs at all or that Christians never died. It is clear that some people were cruelly tortured and brutally executed for reasons that strike us as profoundly unjust."[4]
Most of the stories of individual martyrs amassed by the early modern period are pure inventions. She agrees with Bollandist scholar Hippolyte Delehaye that most martyrdom literature developed in the fourth century and beyond.[5]
Even the oldest and most historically accurate stories of martyrs and their sufferings have been altered and re-written by later editors, so that it is impossible to know for sure what any of the martyrs actually thought, did or said.[3][6]
^ Moss 2013, p. 139
^Moss 2013, p. 159
^ abLarison, Daniel (18 February 2013). "Persecutions and History". The American Conservative. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
^ Moss 2013, p.125
^ Moss 2013, p.234
^Dreher, Rod (18 February 2013). "Were The Martyrs Real?". The American Conservative. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
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