I never tire of finding free audio material to listen to while I clean, drive or exercise. Fortunately, I came across a course on Ancient and Medieval Church History, in podcast format, from Covenant Theological Seminary.

One of the interesting facts I learned in the first few episodes is that the Jews of Judea were not forced to worship the Emperor. Supposedly, this was partially a result of Judaism being largely limited to Judea.

Could this be evidence contrary to the Jesus Movement theory -- that the early church shared a nearly identical theology with Judaism? If Rome was already persecuting Christians in 64-68 A.D. (as testified by extrabiblical sources), perhaps there were fundamental theological differences between the two faiths... Or, maybe Nero needed just needed a powerless social group on which to blame the empire's troubles...
- posted by onceuponapriori @ 3:09 AM