PASSAGE 1: Rome in the time of the first Christians
From the beginning, Christianity faced two major opponents: Romans and traditional Jews.
The Romans tolerated outside religions, however, they would only tolerate these faiths if they weren't a
threat to the Roman government or Roman religion. Most of these religions believed in the worship of
many gods. Since the Romans were also polytheistic, this was not a concern for the Romans. The
Jews were a monotheistic group. The Roman leaders were always suspicious of this fact. It is easy to
see why a popular Jewish teacher like Jesus, whom many believed to be the messiah and healer,
would cause the Roman government to be worried. After Jesus' death, his followers would be abused
for their refusal to worship other gods, though this eventually ended with the adoption of Christianity as
the official religion of the empire around 300 years later,

Jews also felt threatened by Jesus due to his unique explanation of Judaism. Under the rule of the Greeks, the Jews had freedom to practice their religion without interference, but Roman rule changed that. These limits on Jewish worship caused a lot of problems in the Jewish community. Discussion focused on how to respond to Roman rule and how strictly they should practice their faith in the face of Roman abuse. Referring to the holy texts of Judaism, Jesus on love and loving loyalty to god instead of the many traditions and rituals of the Jewish faith. This angered some groups fighting for control. One group of Jews believed that tradition would save them from the romans, and actually helped turn Jesus in to authorities so that he could be executed.

Since the Christian religion didn’t form until after Jesus’ death, It is important to remember that the first Christians were not called “Christians”, but would have been Jews that practiced Judaism according to the teachings of Jesus (“followers of Christ”). When we talk about the beginnings of Christianity, this is why we can break this history down into two parts: the actual ministry/teachings/stories of Jesus when he was alive, and the creation of the Christian religion after his death. Though Jesus and his followers eventually changed the focus of their ministry to also focus on non-Jews, Jesus’ early death created a power vacuum that needed to be filled, or else the religion would have died out.

Questions:
1. What is the passage mostly about( Topic)?

How roams didn’t really like the idea of the Christians.

2. Two things they really didn’t like the ways of the followers.

They later on followed their beliefs