"jeff" wrote in message
...
Dave wrote:

I understand that watching Christians being fed to the lions was a very
popular spectator sport in Rome at one time, and that the sponsors of
those
events were wildly popular.

There is no evidence that this ever happened. There was relatively little
persecution of the early Christians, and most incidents involved
individuals who were deemed enemies of the state for political, not
religious reasons.

If nothing else, the extremely small number of Christian in the First
Century and shortly thereafter made them hardly worth bothering with. The
is a saying amongst Biblical scholars (probably hyperbole) that "In the
year 100 there were 100 Christians."

And in the year 2009, there might actually be 2009 of them. I've seen scant
evidence of them, though.