著者

島 創平

出版者

東洋英和女学院大学大学院

雑誌

東洋英和大学院紀要 (ISSN:13497715)

巻号頁・発行日

no.11, pp.1-9, 2015

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Nero, the 5th Roman emperor, has often been regarded as a "tyrant". He was the first persecuter of Christians in A.D. 64 when a major fire broke out in the City of Rome. Tacitus, the Roman historian, reports that in order to deny the rumour that Nero himself had orderd the fire to be set , Nero ascribed the crime to Christians and punished them cruelly. However, Tacitus also says that Christians were convicted not so much on the count of arson as for "hatred of the human race" (Annales, 15.44). To consider the question why Christians were persecuted by Nero, we must depend mainly on the descriptions of Roman historians ─ Tacitus and Suetonius. These historians lived in the early part of the 2nd century, when the distinction between Christianity and Judaism had became more apparent. But in the days of Nero's reign, the middle of the 1st century, the distinction was not so apparent. Christianity was regarded as a sect of Judaism. In The Acts of the Apostles, Christianity was called "the sect of the Nazarenes" by an anti-Christian Jew (Acts, 24.5). On the other hand, early Christian missionary work caused division and discord among Jewish people and often provoked disturbance between people who accepted the Christian faith and those who rejected it. In the reign of Claudius, Jews were expelled from Rome because they often created disturbances at the instigation of "Chrestus" (Suetonius, Claudius, 24.4). The Christian people of the Neronian days were thus regarded as a Jewish splinter group and troublemakers who often caused disturbances. Therefore, it is more accurate to view the persecution of Christians by Nero as persecution of a particular Jewish sect ─ "the sect of Nazarenes".