Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code: what Christians believed in 112 AD, according to Pliny, the Roman governor of Bithynia, in Turkey
Pliny ('Pliny the younger') was the governor of the Roman province of Bithynia, in present-day Turkey. In about 112 AD, he wrote (in Epistles X.96) to the emperor Trajan, asking for advice on how to deal with the followers of Christ in his province, because he was executing so many of them. Pliny wrote:
They were in the habit of meeting before dawn on a fixed day. They
would recite in alternate verse a hymn to Christ as to a god,
and would bind themselves by a solemn oath, not to do any
criminal act, but rather that they would not commit any fraud,
theft or adultery, nor betray any trust nor refuse to restore
a deposit on demand. This done, they would disperse, and then
they would meet again later to eat together (but the food
was quite ordinary and harmless.)
Notice from what Pliny says that:
- By the beginning of the second century, there was already a Christian community in Bithynia large enough to come to the attention of the Roman governor.
- They worshipped Christ as a god.