A Jewish tombstone from the Roman Empire with Greek writing and menorahs (Vatican Museum, Rome) From the end of the Second Jewish Revolt and the Diaspora, around 130 AD, the Jews lived more or less quietly in the Roman Empire. They settled in cities all around the Roman and the Parthian Empires. Many Jews also moved to the trading cities of the Arabian [...]
The Roman emperor Trajan (A.D. 98-117) in the Vatican. By the time that Trajan was the Roman Emperor, around 100 AD, Christianity was definitely illegal. We have some letters written by Pliny, the governor of Bithynia (in Turkey) to the Emperor Trajan, asking for advice about some Christians Pliny had found in Bithynia. Pliny understood that if the Christians confessed they [...]
An early Christian house church at Dura Europos, in Syria (200s AD) Christian persecution pauses During the forty years between 261 AD and 303 AD, the Roman government did not officially persecute the Christians. The emperors were busy with the worst of the Crisis of the Third Century. Maybe they were following the example of [...]
The Roman emperor Nero In the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero, during the night between the 18th and the 19th of July, 64 AD, there was a great fire in the city of Rome. It started in a very poor area downtown called the Subura (suh-BOO-rah), and at first none of the rich people cared very [...]
Manichaean painting (Turfan, western China, ca. 900s AD) The prophet Mani in the Sassanian Empire In the 300s and 400s AD many Christians turned to believing in Manichaeism, a form of Christianity. A man named Mani started this movement in the late 200s AD. Mani lived in the Sassanian Empire, where lots of people were Zoroastrians. So Zoroastrianism [...]
The Roman emperor Domitian, the last of the Flavian emperors After the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, we don't hear anything definite about the Christians for forty years. There's nothing that's for sure about Christians until the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan, about 100 AD. But during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, in the 90s AD, some [...]
The Roman emperor Diocletian, who organized the Great Persecution of Christians The Roman Emperor Diocletian came to power in 284 AD. Diocletian was an army general, and he felt that a lot of the empire's problems could be solved by not allowing so much freedom, but instead having everyone do the same thing, the right way [...]
Sacrifice certificate on papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, in Egypt, dating to the Decian persecution (about 3 inches wide) About 249 AD, the situation of the Christians took a sharp turn for the worse. The year 247 AD marked 1000 years since the founding of the city of Rome: the Millennium. A lot of people were frightened and thought this might mean the end of [...]
The Roman emperor Constantine becomes a Christian - the first Christian emperor In 312 AD, the Great Persecution was still going on in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire (though not really in the West). But then Constantine became a Roman Emperor. He had had a vision which made him convert to Christianity. Constantine becomes a Christian As [...]
Takht-i Bahi, a Buddhist monastery in eastern Pakistan (about 50 AD) where Buddhist monks could study Holy men and women While Gautama Buddha was still alive, about 500 BC, he had many followers. Some of these men and women in India wanted to be extra good Buddhists. So they decided to try to live as purely as they [...]
