It is a secure fact of history that after the Romans crucified Jesus of Nazareth circa AD 33, his followers met weekly to worship him as Lord.
Pliny, governor of the Roman Black Sea province of Bithynia, reported to the emperor Trajan early in the second century that the Christians met on a ‘fixed day of the week’ and chanted hymns to Christ ‘as if to a god’ (Epistles 10.96). Pliny’s friend the historian Tacitus, governor of the adjoining province of Asia, wrote that Pontius Pilate had executed Christ during the reign of the emperor Tiberius.
These two famous Romans were quite negative about the new movement. Between them, however, they not only tell us where and when the Romans executed Christ (in Judea, between 26 and 36), but also that his movement had grown worryingly and its members were expressing worship to this executed criminal ‘as if to a god’.
