Pliny the Younger to Trajan (Epistles 10.96)

Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, wrote to Emperor Trajan asking how to handle accused Christians. He reports that they "were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and to bind themselves by an oath, not to some crime but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, nor to deny a deposit when called upon to return it."

Here is independent, hostile, early-second-century Roman confirmation that Christians were already worshipping Jesus as God and living by a strict ethic — which quietly refutes the claim that Jesus' deity was somehow invented centuries later at Nicaea in AD 325.

• Philippians 2:5-11
• John 1:1
• John 20:28
• Acts 16:25
• Acts 11:26— Pliny calls them "Christians" and describes their worship of Christ as a god.
• Revelation 2:10— Pliny describes Christians refusing to curse Christ even under threat of death.

• ·Pliny, Epistles 10.96
• ·Van Voorst, R.E. (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament

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  History

  Tacitus, Annals 15.44

  Another Roman source on Christians

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  History

  Suetonius on "Chrestus"

  Another Roman source on Christians