When Christianity had completely secured its position, it managed to destroy most of the expressions of this hostile laughter. A few traces, however, survive in the quotations and summaries of Christian apologists. Some of the jibes were common to all of Christianity’s polemical enemies—Jesus was born in adultery, his father was a nobody, and any claims to divine dignity are manifestly disproved by his poverty and his shameful end—but others bring us closer to the specific strain of mockery that surged up from Epicurean circles, when they encountered the messianic religion from Palestine.
