Pliny → Trajan → Roman legal scholarship

Episode 2 — The World of the First Christians

Before we can understand what happened to the first Christians, we need to understand the world they lived in.

Christianity did not appear in a vacuum.

The first Christians lived within the Roman Empire, a world shaped by Judaism, Greek culture, Roman religion, temples, sacrifice, political loyalty, and the growing importance of emperor worship.

So what did everyday life look like for the people who first followed Jesus?

What religious traditions surrounded them?

What did Romans believe about the gods?

Why were sacrifices so important?

And what did it mean to refuse participation in the religious practices that were woven into Roman public and civic life?

In this episode, we ste ...