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  1. The attitude of Romans toward Christianity was largely one of ignorance. I don't think we can blame tactius and Dio for that alone. The Romans saw a monotheistic faith that deliberately excluded other spiritual beliefs, something that their superstitious mindset found diifficult to appreciate. For instance - To the Romans, a river was more than just a flow of excess water. It was also the manifestation of a spirit of some kind, either one of their own or a local being. If you upset that being, the river would claim you. Now I'm sure there were Romans who paid lip service or scorn to such ideas, there always is, but that was a prevailing opinion. What the Christians were saying was that this river spirit did not exist or was not worthy of consideration. Therefore, this was an insult to the being concerned, and so making river crossing a much riskier affair. Of course we also know that gossip about christian practice made things difficult. They heard of cannabalistic and vampiric rites that were very un-Roman. Worse still, the Christians refused to accept the divinity of the Emperors cult. That, above all else, was tantamount to sedition. I'd have to say that the pagans probably did ignore the books that would later make up the New Testament. Christianity was not a unified sect and one that held meetings in secret. Their writings were not common knowledge, and since there were occaisional persecutions, I hardly think they were going to shout about their books. Once we reach the reign of Constantine there is a drive to unify the church. With the Emperors support, the Christians are creating links and Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that "The roads were filled with galloping bishops". Although Constantine had made religion free of suppression by the Edict of Milan, under his reign the politicisation of religion he sponsored would lead to factional rivalry. I suspect then there were many versions of christian texts floating around (even after the Council of Nicaea which was supposed to thrash out what was or wasn't christian). After all, Ulfilas, a gothic convert and missionary, founded his own sect and may have assisted the Arian heretic Emperor Valens to spread Arianism to the Tervingi north of the Danube, part of the peace settlement for the three year war won by Valens against the Goths of Athanaric. Ulfilas wrote his own bible and translated it into Gothic, and this was something done (40 years?) after the Council of Nicaea. I would say then, that there might have been many books with minor distribution, hence the pagans may not have stressed them.
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