Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. We're trying to avoid that hell here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That opinion itself is quite a shockingly revisionist statement, to simply wave a broad brush like that at a rather complex time period and then apply modern political coloring to ancient history.

I see no attempt at nuance here, so taking this at face value, are we then to simply dismiss Pliny the Younger's writings to Trajan about persecution? Should we ignore Hadrian's note of slanderous attacks on Christians? Was Tacitus writing also 'myth' in saying that Nero blamed Christians for the fire in Rome?

  ...To get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Chrestians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

— Tacitus' Annals 15.44

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_t...

This was a complex period in history, I would be wary of anyone making sweeping judgements or applying modern political coloring which acts to cloud issues rather than to illuminate history.

This wikipedia article is based on 20th century sources. Will be very nice when such an article will be based on original sources rather than biased interpretations and extrapolations 2000 years later. As Frank Herbert said: History is written by historians.

I must say, "20th century sources" isn't exactly a phrase that comes to mind when discussing Tacitus. But pray tell, what's your translation of the original Latin? It's not particularly difficult to find the original text here:

https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/tacitus/tac.ann15.shtml

Rome was remarkably flexible; until you say you don't want a statue of Jupiter or the deified Augustus in your Temple...and of course, nobody named Julian the Apostate would ever have an axe to grind against Christians.

If the writings of Porphyry, Emperor Julian, et al are to be believed, early Christianity was indeed the ISIS of the time. They were reported to systematically destroy temples, kill priests and at regular gatherings they would report their exploits to encourage each other in doing so.

If we look at 20th century newspapers we can see that a lot of political enemies are categorised as terrorists.