When Saint Paul was brought to Rome as a prisoner to stand trial before the Court of Caesar, his Christian supporters were faced with the need to explain why they were worshipping someone who had been condemned to death by crucifixion, a particularly...
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When Saint Paul was brought to Rome as a prisoner to stand trial before the Court of Caesar, his Christian supporters were faced with the need to explain why they were worshipping someone who had been condemned to death by crucifixion, a particularly ignominious form of punishment, generally meted out to hardened criminals and rebels against Rome. The gospels were by all indications a response to an urgent need to defend Paul at his trial, for what was at stake was not just the life of one individual, but the fate of Christianity itself.
It is the contention of the authors of the present work that the gospel narratives of the arrest, trial, execution, burial and resurrection of Jesus were based on a dramatic performance that had the form of a Roman tragedy. On stylistic grounds its author can be identified as the Roman philosopher and playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca. The evidence suggests that at least two of the gospel writers saw a performance of the play, but only one, the aut
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