Martyrdom Before Christianity: Book Analysis

Candida Moss argument and contribution to the scholarship of this book is that in previous decades and in today's decade, Christians are known to be prosecuted by the Roman empires. Also, she argues that, the myth of Christian persecution is imprecise, and that Christianity makes a contribution to violence among the world while being under attack by human beings in which is a fiction as she introduces us to the "Age of Martyrs".

In chapter one "Martyrdom Before Christianity", it is argued that individuals who have died for a king, country, nation, God, or on principle died what some scholars are called noble deaths. It is given that; these deaths are not martyrdom, but it is given that the term martyr carries religious overtones. According

According to chapter two, dying for Christ in the manner in which he himself died has become the ideal for generations. This is where it appears that Jesus demonstrates as being "weak". The cause for this is that no one could mistake him for being the only divine. It is argued in chapter two that the death of Jesus appears as a kind of philosophical martyrdom but in the aspect of where Christians are borrowing Jewish and pagan martyrdom traditions. For instance, Jesus comes into comparison with Socrates in references to be a philosopher according to Luke. With this, Luke wants us to understand the importance of Jesus death. In fact, understand it as the heroic death of an emboldened philosopher. From this chapter, we get that when an individual is asked to die for Christ, he or she is also asked to die for Socrates and the Maccabees. There were Christians who are known for being martyrs who were intentionally portrayed as being like Socrates. From this chapter, we learn that the connection between Christian and pagan martyrs happen to be problematic. The inspiration for killing Christ by these executions of Greek idols became argument within this chapter. This is where the idea of all martyrs was accepted. However, the reason for them being accepted was they died for Christ and followed in his