The birth of Jesus (6-4 BCE) is set in the Gospel of Luke (2:1-2) during the reign of Emperor Augustus when Quirinius was governor of Syria, and in Matthew (2:1) in the time of King Herod, who died in 4 BCE. As reported in the Gospels, Jesus died some thirty-five years later by crucifixion, a particularly heinous form of torture. It was borrowed from the Phoenicians and reserved by Rome for slaves and foreigners, mostly political enemies. Neither Jesus nor the religion named for the Christ emerged from a cultural vacuum. Beginning with Christian documents in the New Testament, the story is immersed in the Roman culture and cannot be understood apart from Roman political, social, and religious history.

In the first three centuries of the common era, Christianity exploded from a small, sometimes persecuted, Jewish sect to become the dominant religion of Rome. Starting from a counter-culture movement to becoming the imperial religious establishment. It’s the story Michael Walsh wrote, The Triumph of the Meek (1986). The role of religion in the Roman system, the unique character of Christianity among Roman religions, the effect of Roman persecution on Christian expansion, the political history of Rome, and the rationale for religious establishment are necessary issues in understanding Christian beginnings.