Note 17 — Chapter VII · POST-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS

Renan (L’Antéchrist, p. 511, and note 1) gives a passage, which he thinks is from Tacitus, showing that Titus aimed at the suppression of the Christians as well as the Jews. Doubtless many Christians perished in the punitive measures taken in the Ist century against the Jews in Antioch and elsewhere. Cf. Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Bk VII. c. 3; Eusebius, H. E. Bk III. cc. 12, 17, 19, 20. It was the persecution by the fanatical Jews that compelled the flight of the Christians to Pella shortly before the siege. See Eusebius, Bk III. c. 5; Epiph. Haer. XXIX. c. 7, p. 239, Oehler. The episode of the “Woman clothed with the Sun” of the Canonical Apocalypse is supposed by some to refer to this.