"For the first 250 years following the birth, ministry, and death of Christ, the Roman Empire was not an especially nice place to be a Christian. Romans had traditionally been enthusiastic collectors of gods, including the Olympian pantheon and various mystery cults from the east. So to begin with, there was little enthusiasm for this odd Jewish sect, whose members sought to keep alive the memory of the carpenter’s son who had caused a brief stir in Jerusalem during the governorship of Pontius Pilate. The first generations of Christians were scattered among the cities of the Mediterranean, in sporadic communication with one another but in no position to grow their numbers. Ardent believers like the apostle Paul (Saint Paul) traveled far and wide, preaching and writing famous letters to all who would listen (and some who would not), describing the miracle of Christ’s sacrifice. But in an empire that made gods of everything from the sun and planets to its own emperors, and liberally borrowed from the religious practices of those whom it conquered, men like Paul were nothing new; there was little indication during his lifetime in the first century A.D. that his enthusiastic wanderings and writings would eventually plant Christ’s name in the hearts of literally billions of people during the next two thousand years of world history. In A.D. 112, Pliny the Younger wrote to the emperor Trajan to describe a legal investigation he had undertaken in Bithynia (modern Turkey) following complaints against local Christians. Having tortured a number of them, including young girls, Pliny wrote, he had only really been able to establish that they followed a “bad . . . and extravagant superstition” that “is spread like a contagion.”"