Excerpt from the book's description: In The Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss, a leading expert on early Christianity, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the dangerous legacy of a martyrdom complex is employed today to silence dissent and galvanize a new generation of culture warriors . . . While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church.

When I scrolled down to get more info on the author, I was honestly expecting an atheist or vehement anti-Christian. Perhaps she is both. However, Candida Moss is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame.

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Persecution ... 0089LOOF4/

Her thesis is hotly contested, to put it mildly.

https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/first ... ersecution
More links in the article. Suffice to say that the book is something you'd find where a horse has been.

What I found most disturbing is that people like this are allowed to teach at a Catholic university. I know it's commonplace these days, but it doesn't make it any less disturbing.

She teaches at Notre Dame, so there's really no issue of her being allowed to teach at a Catholic university.

Nemo repente turpissimus.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles ... ay_fr.html

This is correct.
Signed,
HalJordan- ND Class of 2000

Moss is a whackjob, but the book is one big straw man. I haven't read it, but to my understanding, she basically claims there was no sustained, systematic, targeted, empire-wide persecution in the time of pagan Rome. Once you tack on all those qualifiers, it's a pretty non-sensical topic for a book. In her marketing for it, I did hear her claim that Christians aren't being persecuted now, which makes her either a liar, insane, or incredibly stupid.

Not only that, but it is a non-controversial claim, Christian scholars have acknowledged for centuries that the persecution of Christians in pre-Constantine times was sporadic and regional and that the periods when there was massive, empire-wide persecution of Christians were of comparatively short duration, which is why Christian historians of the era refer to 'the first persecution', 'the second persecution' etc. There are no serious Christian historians who hold to the idea that there was nothing but endless persecution, everywhere in the empire, from the moment that Christ died until the conversion of Constantine 300 years later.

If these are the kind of professors they're hiring, someone ought to write a book about it, The Myth Notre Dame Is A Catholic University.

Ahh, someone already wrote a book about it. Looks interesting.

Dr. Charles Rice died a few years ago. He was a great man.