Vidqun
Christianity is an offshoot of the Jewish religion. A great percentage of early Christians were Jews. So, most Christian practices would have followed those of the Jews and not those of the Greeks. The Jews would not have tolerated the above, neither would the Christians for that matter. Just read what they thought of such practices in their writings. Here I give the Bible writers, especially those of the Christian Greek Scriptures or NT, the benefit of the doubt.
mP:
And you base of all of this on what ? What proof have you got of what early xians said or did outside the Bible ? Even if we examine the pauls writings, they are hardly good. We have stories of Xians with slaves. Apparently life was soo good for these slaves, that they ran away and then Paul tells the slave to return ... Here is an opportunity to do the roight thing, but as we can see the early xians in pauls writings are the same as their neighbours. Some are selfish, greedy, cruel, kind. They arent different.
You might want to also check your history of what the jews were up to in the 1st century. They were killing hundreds of thousnads simply because they were gentiles. They wree anything but good neighbors. If xians were no different from their jewish brethen, then yur argument is completely wrong. They were bigots and evil opportunists when they had the oppotunity in the OT. This attitude continued until the 1st century.
V:
Early Christians did stand out for being exemplary, and that's why they were persecuted. That you can read in Roman historical works and letters.
mP:
Have you actually examined the proofs that xians even existed in any numbers in the 1st century ? You do realise that all these persecution stories are mosty traditions from the RCC. The same RCC that tells us Peter was martyred in the 60s and yet he is still alive 40+ years late rto write 1 & 2 Peter .
In what way were 1st xians exemplary ? Were they good ebcause they kept slaves and treated women as equals ?