In what is shaping up to be a five-part book analysis series, here in Part 4 of my look at Candida Moss’s book, The Myth of Persecution, I will be looking at her Chapter 5 (“Why Did the Romans Dislike Christians?”) and Chapter 6 (“The Myth of Martyrs”). Warning…I get a bit snarky in this post.
Chapter 5: Why Did the Romans Dislike Christians?
The simple answer to that question is that Christians were viewed as weird. They didn’t acknowledge the Roman gods and thus were considered atheists. After all, they didn’t have any idols! They didn’t sacrifice to the emperor and thus were considered unpatriotic and possibly subversive. They condemned accepted Roman customs and practices as immoral—gladiator games, exposure of infants, temple prostitution, etc. Simply put, they were an afront to the entire Roman culture. That’s why.
Of course, Candida Moss, after acknowledging that Romans didn’t like Christians, and that some Christians were put to death for merely being Christians, says, “Before we judge the Romans too harshly, we should approach the issue from their perspective” (163). Yes, let’s try to see things from the perspective of people who force women into prostitution, send human beings to their deaths for sport, demand worship of a totalitarian leader! What Moss emphasizes about trying to see things from the Roman perspective is basically that, well, the Romans were just brutal. When Nero had Christians burned alive (if he really did that, because we can’t trust Tacitus!), that might shock us, but that was just par for the course for the Romans.
In fact, if we compare the Romans to, let’s say, the Seleucids, “the Romans were very tolerant and accepting rulers” who made it a point to tolerate and adapt foreign deities (166). Yes, if we compare Hitler to Stalin, Hitler comes out looking like a choir boy—he only killed six million people, while Stalin killed over twenty million people! And yes, the Romans did integrate foreign deities and were very tolerant…as long as you also sacrificed to the emperor.
Moss goes on to say that if the Romans did target Christians, it was just par for the course. They did it with the Druids and the worshippers of Bacchus—and the reason they did it was because they were considered brutal superstitions that were a threat to Roman peace. It was all about imperial stability. The imperial cult simply “served to unify all members of the empire behind its figurehead leader” (172). Refusal to participate was just seen as not just a religious act, but a political one as well. So, can we really blame Roman authorities for cracking down on groups that threatened the stability of the empire?
It wasn’t like they were persecuting Christians for their beliefs. They were simply prosecuting them for threatening imperial stability: “If the Roman emperors had a problem with Christians and Christianity, it was because they threatened the stability of the empire and appeared to make divisive political claims. Roman emperors did not take issue with nonthreatening things like baptism or hymns; they had problems with those aspects of Christianity that sounded like treason or revolution” (174).
Let’s think about that magnificently absurd statement. First, who in their right mind beliefs Rome was torturing and killing Christians because they practiced baptism or sang hymns? Yet Moss claims that Rome was trying to kill Christians for 300 years straight because…of their baptisms and hymns? Who can take this seriously? Second, Moss fails to see that the “political reason” why Roman emperors had a problem with Christians is that Christians refused to say the emperor was a god. That’s the reason they were persecuted (or in Moss’s hair-splitting, “prosecuted”). That’s the point. The times of persecution occurred because the Roman emperors demanded they be worshipped as gods, and Christians refused.
The crazy thing is that Moss acknowledges this…and then takes the side of the Imperial Cult: “For the Romans, Christians’ nonparticipation in the imperial cult was threatening. Their stubbornness was not just disrespectful and iconoclastic; it could potentially bring down the empire” (176). Imagine if Moss’s argument was applied, let’s say, to the Nazis. “Sure, there was ‘antisemitism’ in Europe for hundreds of years; sure some Jews were tortured and killed, but there really was only like ten years of actual German policy and legislation directed against the Jews. Besides, let’s try to see things from Hitler’s perspective! The Jews were viewed as a threat to the stability of the Third Reich.” Somehow, I don’t think that argument would go over too well.
For the rest of the chapter, Moss highlights how Christianity was seen as a subversive superstition and how there were rumors of cannibalism and incest. She then concludes with throwing out a caricature of the “Christian story” that Christian martyrs hid in the catacombs, met in secret, and were mercilessly arrested, tortured, and killed for their “religious beliefs.” Moss calls this a “macabre fairy tale.” In reality, Moss claims, Christians were prosecuted for things like sedition. On top of that, “They were rude, subversive, and disrespectful. Most important, they were threatening. Even if the actions of the Romans still seem unjust, we must admit that they had reasons for treating Christians the way they did” (186). And again, “This was not blind hatred or mindless persecution. Christians posed a threat to the security of the empire” (187). Basically, the Christians deserved it. They had it coming. There was no “persecution,” just reasonable prosecution to save the stability of the Third Rei–, I mean, empire.
Chapter 6: Myths About Martyrs
Chapter 6 is simply mystifying. It is all over the place. It has no discerning main point. At best, it is a mishmash of miscellaneous and unacademic takes on history. The first peculiar take involves the Donatist controversy in the 4th-5th centuries. Donatism has traditionally been understood as a heresy that deviates from Apostolic Tradition. Moss, though depicts the two groups as (A) the Donatists as a having a better claim on the North African brand of Christianity and (B) what she calls “European-style Christians like Augustine.” Never mind that it was all part of the Roman Empire, and that there really was no clear “Europe vs. Africa” distinction back then, it’s clear why she characterizes each group in the way she does. She wants to present Orthodox/Catholic Christianity as some kind of European colonialist imposition on Africa.
In any case, she notes that there was a Donatist group known as the Circumcellions who were the “vigilante wing” of the Donatist church who were essentially terrorists who attacked and killed their Catholic opponents. Amazingly, even though she shows disgust for such actions, she almost excuses by saying the Christians the Circumcellions killed “played no part in their oppression and marginalization” (190). So, on one hand, Moss says such barbarism was wrong, but on the other hand she suggests that the Donatists were simply being oppressed and marginalized, so it was a shame that some of them got violent with innocent Christians (Implication? Not the ones who oppressed them). Then again, she muses, maybe the Circumcellions were just victims of bad publicity on the part of church historians.
After that, she turns her attention to the early Church condemnation of “voluntary martyrdom.” Having earlier dismissed the condemnation of voluntary martyrdom in The Martyrdom of Polycarp as being a later invention in the “pious fraud” of an account, she wrongly says that the first mention of this was the late 2nd-early 3rd century Father Clement of Alexandria. She further notes that many scholars think Clement was speaking out on the practice of voluntary martyrdom encouraged among the Montantists. She questions, though, whether or not the Montanists actually pushed voluntary martyrdom, because after all, all we have are condemnations that come from Orthodox Christians who were clearly trying to marginalize the Montantists! Besides, Clement had fled Alexandria in AD 202 to avoid arrest. He was clearly a coward, so he had to invent a doctrinal reason to justify his actions!
From there, Moss spends considerable time discussing the problematic “violent language” used by Christians in the martyrdom accounts. What kind of “violent language” you may ask? Well, the language that involves Christians battling Satan and the demons! You know, like the language we see in the Book of Revelation, where the Beast (understood to be the Roman emperor) is an offspring of the Serpent (i.e. Satan), and where Christ and the martyrs battle and overcome through their sacrifice. That’s bad, according to Moss, because violent language promotes violence, and it labels certain people as evil and completely dehumanizes them. Sure, Moss admits, these people inflict horrors on martyrs of Lyons, but they’re still human beings—calling them evil agents of Satan…well that’s just a bit much!
Strangely, though, after condemning the “violent language” that the martyrdom accounts use to describe those who tortured and killed Christians, Moss turns around and warns against the idea of redemptive suffering. She says such a notion that “suffering is personally redemptive—an idea that lies at the heart of Christian ideas about martyrdom” (202)—(i.e. if you suffer for Christ, you will be vindicated) “has had and can have a damaging impact in the lives of many” (202). What does she mean? Well, like putting up with the oppression of racism and sexism. The Christian martyrs were not passive, Moss says. They may have accepted death, but they didn’t accept oppression. But then, Moss turns around again and says, “The violence of the martyr’s confession is problematic, but it is a powerful antidote to the idea that the downtrodden should be content with or even embrace their lot” (203).
So…Roman killing of Christians was regrettable, but Christians were subversive; but when martyrs used “violent language” and characterized their oppressors as satanic, that’s bad, because Valerian was still a human being; but the Christian notion of redemptive suffering can justify abused women not getting help; but then again, that violent language of martyrs is a good antidote to passivity. WHAT?
But there’s more! Moss notes that in a lot of these martyrdom accounts, when Christians speak of enduring their temporary agony, they also speak of the “eternal flames” their persecutors will have to endure if they don’t repent. Well, says Moss, that doesn’t sound too forgiving. In fact, it sounds a lot like a “revenge fantasy.” …and that’s bad.
In any case, at the end of the chapter, Moss argues that the first-generation Christians didn’t have a completely well-developed notion of the torments of hell because they were all expecting Jesus would return within their own lifetimes. “The understanding that the end of the world would arrive within their own lifetimes meant the first generation didn’t have to give too much thought to the question of what would happen…between death and Judgment Day” (208). In this respect, she echoes the sentiments of scholars like Bart Ehrman, as well as others. I wrote a few posts on this here and here and here and here and here. Simply put, it is a completely horrible reading of the relevant New Testament texts.
Moss ends Chapter 6 by saying, “Christian martyrs are commonly portrayed as having a blend of humility, courage, determination, love, and selflessness. We are led to believe that they do not instigate their own arrests, offer themselves for death, commit acts of violence, or behave in ways at odds with modern teachings about suicide. One of the things that it thought to make Christian martyrs better than other martyrs is that their actions are motivated by goodness and love. They do not have any interest in or expectation of reward in the hereafter. They die as meek lambs out of love for Jesus” (213).
Such a picture is oversimplistic, Moss says. In reality many martyrs, by modern standards, were suicides. Christian martyrs used violent language and engaged in fantasies of vengeful justice for those who oppressed them.
Well, talk about oversimplification and overgeneralization. I don’t know what to say to that. As is par for the course, Moss throws out a caricature that martyrs were essentially cute, Precious Moments figurines, and then “dispels” that notion (that doesn’t reflect the actual historical understanding of the martyrs anyway) by throwing out the equally absurd notion the Christian martyrs were suicidal, violent maniacs who salivated at the thought of their oppressors engulfed in flames in hell, like a beef patty on the grill in the middle of a grease-fire at Burger King.
But then again…I thought Moss was arguing that the very idea of Christian martyrdom and persecution is myth. So, if it never happened…hardly at all…what’s she talking about? It’s not a “revenge fantasy,” but it certainly is a fantasy that is not connected to reality.
