countjulian

But the problem with the hypothesis that the Christians were at this time being persecuted for their name alone is that in all of the martyr acts the legal system laid out by Pliny is ignored. There are no accussers at the trials and the acts themselves go to length to point out that the Christians were being "sought out."

As for the apologists, we must remeber that all of our evidence comes to us through Christian lenses. Until Decius, no Roman ever makes clear why the Christians are suppossedly being persecuted. Although Justin, Athenegoras, Melito (According to Eusebius anyway), and Tertullian may have thought that Christians were being sought out for name alone, but I seem to doubt that this is how the Romans saw it. Tertullian in particular had a bit of a tendency to overreact.

In fact Tertullian mentions that Christians were on police rosters along with drunkards and other troublemakes. I think that the Christians who copied works of antiquity have left us a very selective list of info on the persecutions.

Chris Weimer

"Name alone" is probably accurate, for what's in a name? The American army is fought the Taliban in Afghanistan, right? Anyone who called themselves the Taliban were probably fought against there. Same with Christians. Christianity was a superstitio and was outlawed for being a secret club. Thus anyone who called themselves Christians were guilty of being part of a secret club.

Enda80

Didn't some people leave their families when they joined the cult?

countjulian

One of my points is that the Christians might have been doing things that made the name worthy of suspicion, and more than just "impiety" and "not worshipping the gods."

Edit: And no one has explained to me why all of the martyr acts blatently ignore Roman legal procedure.