Quote of the Day

Martin Hengel:

The ‘folly’ and ‘madness’ of the crucifixion can be illustrated  from the earliest pagan judgment on Christians. The younger Pliny,  who calls the new sect a form of amentia (Epistulae 1o.96.4-8), had heard from apostate Christians that Christians sang hymns to their Lord ‘as to a god’ (quasi deo), and went on to examine two slave girls under torture. Of course the result was disappointing:

I discovered nothing but a perverse and extravagant superstition.
(nihil aliud inveni quam superstitionem pravam immodicam.)

It must have been particularly offensive for a Roman governor that the one who was honoured ‘as a god’ (quasi deo carmen dicere) had been nailed to the cross by the Roman authorities as a state criminal.

Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, 2.

B”H