Before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christians were subjected to brutal punishments, including death, under nine Roman emperors. In this Opening Up the Textbook (OUT) lesson, students explore accounts from a present-day textbook, a Roman historian in 116 CE, and a professor of theological studies in 1998 to answer the question: Why did the Roman Empire persecute Christians?
Image: The Good Shepherd, painted c. 250-300 CE, in the Catacomb of Priscilla. From the Wikimedia Commons.
