The Separation of Early Christianity from Judaism
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The Separation of Early Christianity from Judaism By Marianne Da ...

Chapter 1:  The Spread of Christianity
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only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue. First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race. And derision accompanied their end: they were covered with wild beasts’ skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night. Nero had offered his gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition in his Circus, mixing with the crowd in the habit of a charioteer, or mounted on his car.38

The second-century Christian writer Sulpicius Severus (Chronica 2.30.6, 7), who may carry a certain pro-Christian bias but is probably dependent on Tacitus, writes that Titus had urged the destruction of the temple in order ‘to extirpate the religion of both the Jews and Christians, which, though mutually hostile, sprang from the same source. As the Christians derived from the Jews, the extermination of the root would easily cause the offspring to perish’.39 This text does not prove Titus was aware of a distinction between Jews and Christians in Jerusalem.

Impact of Persecution of Jews

Philo details persecutions of the Jews in Alexandria under Flaccus, who was persuaded to declare that the Jews were aliens who had no citizenship rights, thus stirring up a violent attack.40 Eventually, Flaccus was arrested and sent to Rome, and the new Emperor Claudius explicitly reaffirmed Jewish rights in the year 41 CE, but hostilities still smouldered, the Jews staging a rebellion in the year 115 CE against the Greeks, in the latter days of Trajan. This was completely suppressed by the Romans in the year 119 CE.41 The outcome of the rebellion exacted a terrible cost in Jewish lives as talmudic references indicate.42 The community in Alexandria never regained its former glory when, according to Philo, it numbered no fewer than a million in the first century.43