Q: Dear Professor Elder, My wife and I have been enjoying your columns, especially those about ancient history. I have a suggestion for a future column: the terrific struggles that early Christianities went through before the emperors stepped in to enforce orthodoxy. In my experience this is a subject that few people know about.

A: This would depend entirely on how one defines “Christianities” and how one defines orthodoxy, I suppose, but your professor will do his best.

Of course, the biggest problem which Christians faced in the first three centuries was not so much a doctrinal one, but a practical one, that is, how to deal with persecutions in the Roman Empire.

As many have heard, there are a number of modern writers who have attempted to argue that the first Christians were not re

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