>But also, while there were certainly anti-Christian informants, the
>Romans could easily check the informants' reliability with a very
>simple test:
Which is immaterial to the existence of people earning a living full-time by ferreting out Christians and denouncing them to the authorities to obtain a portion of their estate. Jeff, insofar as I understood his arguments, implied that such people should not exist among the Lunars.
Another parallel is Xerxes who suppressed religions for their infidelity to Ahura Mazda "And among these countries [in rebellion] there was one where, previously, daevas had been worshipped. Afterward, through Ahura Mazda's favour, I destroyed this sanctuary of daevas. Let daevas not be worshipped. There, where daevas had been worshipped before, I worshipped Ahura Mazda." Now the circumstances of this suppression are not known (the target seems to be the Babylonian Cult of Marduk) but the rhetoric does support attempts to extirpate the worship of the Daeva cult entirely.
Lastly in China, the Taoists did instigate anti-Buddhist persecutions under a few emperors.
--Peter Metcalfe
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