We also know that the remote and rather rural province of Bithynia in northwest Asia Minor was for a time in the early second century a center of unusual growth. Pliny, the governor of the region, wrote a letter to the Emperor Trajan in the year 112. In it he expressed his dismay over the rapid spread of the Christian faith. He spoke of “many in every period of life, on every level of society, of both sexes . . . in towns and villages and scattered throughout the countryside.” What was he to do with them? Pliny was afraid that the shrines of the pagan gods would soon be completely deserted. We
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