Personally, after reading the documents, I think that the textbook account should be re-written. Textbooks usually sugarcoat any historic event they write about. If they do this, then they are not really writing history, or teaching history because they are not including all the important details. When I read the excerpt from the textbook, I didn’t feel the pain and suffering that Christians felt around that time. After I read it, I didn’t think that Christian persecution was all that bad because the textbook failed to include the specific punishments that the Romans would put Christians through. The textbook just mentions that “some rulers came to see Christianity as a threat and began persecuting those who practiced it” (Document A). This …show more content…
Not only were Christians arrested for “the crime of hatred against human kind”, but they were also torn and eaten by dogs, crucified (nailed to crosses), and thrown into to flames to be burnt alive (Document B). In document C, we can see that Professor Cassel included gruesome, but affective examples of why Christians were persecuted that the textbook failed to mention. According to Cassel, Christians were persecuted by the Romans due to a false understanding of the Christian Scripture and liturgy. Romans thought that Christians were cannibals and that they married their own mothers. Romans thought this because the New Testament encouraged Christians to refer to others as their brothers and sisters, even if they were married. Romans also thought this because Christian religious services were only open to baptized Christians, which was secretive. Another reason of why Romans perceived Christians in such a bad way was because they misinterpreted the words of the Eucharist (in which Jesus told his followers to take his body and eat it) for a literal, cannibalistic way since they did not understand the