Date—
A.D. 64 to 68—Persecution under Nero.
95 to 96—Persecution under Domitian. Banishment of John.
96 to 104—Time of peace.
104 to 117—Persecution under Trajan. Martyrdom of Ignatius.
117 to 161—Time of peace. Apologies of Aristides,
Quadratus and Justin Martyr were written.
161 to 180—Persecution under Marcus Aurelius. Martyrdom
of Polycarp and the martyrs of
Lyons.
164—Justin Martyr was put to death.
Statistics concerning the sufferings of the first Christians show that they were in great earnest. Eternity alone will reveal the true number of the martyrs. They all suffered and died just as we would expect, in case they knew the facts of our religion. Twenty-two books of the New Testament were written before the martyrdom of the Apostles Paul and Peter. Infidels often boast, in their ignorance, that the books of the gospels were not written by those whose names they bear.
If Matthew, Mark, Luke and John did not write those books which bear their names, then are they false in fact? and if so, what did the authors die for? The sufferings of primitive Christians were great; the persecutions which they endured were outrageous, cruel and inhuman in their character. Such is the universal verdict of ancient history. Of the persecution under Nero, Tacitus, a celebrated Roman historian, who was born in the year 56, just twenty-three years after Pentecost, writes, that Nero "laid upon the Christians the charge of that terrible conflagration at Rome of which he himself was the cause." He says, "A vast multitude were apprehended. And many were disguised in the skins of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs, some were crucified, and others were wrapped in pitched shirts and set on fire when the day closed, that they might serve as lights to illuminate the night. Nero lent his own garden for these executions, and celebrated at the same time a public entertainment in the circus, being a spectator of the whole in the dress of a charioteer, sometimes mingling with the crowd on foot, and sometimes viewing the spectacle from his car." (Annals of Tacitus, 15: 44.)
Juvenal, the coarse and bitter satirist of the same time, writes of the martyred Christians as "those who stand burning in their own flame and smoke, their head being held up by a stake fixed to their chin, till they make a long stream of blood and sulphur on the ground." (Juv. Sat., 1: 155.)
Seneca also refers to their fearful sufferings: "Imagine here a prison, crosses and racks and the hook, and a stake thrust through the body and coming out at the mouth, and the limbs torn by chariots pulling adverse ways, and the coat besmeared and interwoven with inflammable materials, nutriment for fire, and whatever else beside these cruelty has invented." (Seneca's Epistles, 14.)
One of Diocletian's coins commemorates the blotting out of the very name of Christian: "Nomine Christianorum deleto." But the age of martyrdoms ended with the accession of Constantine to the Roman empire, and to-day there are more Christians in the world than ever before. Skeptic, take one long look at the unbelieving, bloody, persecuting hosts, and choose your future associates.
Strauss says: "No man knows who wrote the Gospels." Can he mean that they are anonymous books? Does he mean that they are not biographies—books containing, in their historic matter, an account of the authors themselves? Who does not know that those books are and have been called the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? And who has, in all the past centuries, produced evidence showing that those are the wrong names. No one. Insane men might say such a thing. Infidels don't like to say that; they just say you can't prove your religion, nor show that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote those books. Will any sensible man affirm that they are the wrong names? How do we judge and believe respecting the authorship of other ancient books? Why do we believe that Cæsar wrote the Commentaries on the Gallic War? And why do we believe that Virgil wrote the Æneid? No sane man ever doubted the authorship of those writings. Preoccupancy during the ages past is considered by infidels themselves a sufficient ground for belief. The fact that those books exist has certainly been known from the age of the apostles to the present time, for men quoted extensively from them in the second century. The names they bear were in the possessive case then, and it is but fair to consider them the true owners.
Why are skeptics and infidels so partial among ancient books? They doubt the authorship of no ancient books unless they are written in favor of the religion of Christ. Will some wise one tell us why this strange inconsistency? O, it is an evidence of a wicked heart—that's all! all!!—ALL THERE IS OF IT!!!
Here are the dates of the books of the New Testaments, along with contemporary landmarks: