Can someone explain the joke?
The Romans were supposedly in the habit of executing prisoners with captured lions in their arenas. When Christianity was still a minor cult it was at one point technically treason to deny the Emperor was a god, and so being a Christian was technically a crime against the state by default. In these arena matches you’d throw some ill-equipped criminals against something they had no hope of beating and call it justice when they get mauled to death in the “trial by combat.”
Anyways, the Christians with persecution complexes really like focusing on these few centuries of history with their millennias old church. This is a joke about both sets of prisoners signing up for the for “match” like it was a casual sporting event.
You can be a Christian and still believe in other gods. Those people chose to deny the emperor’s kintype, if they really did so at all.
No. The Bible makes it clear that you can only believe in one God and the first line of the Nicene creed is “We believe in one God”
No, Christians believe in only one g*d. They would be extremely offended at the notion of other people declaring belief in other g*ds or themselves a g*d. It’s the best way to piss off both an atheist and a christian at the same haha, at least according to me (atheist) and a (Mormon) friend I have. Before there were Christians, you had people believing there were multiple g*ds and then the Christian g*d clearly says he is a jealous g*d and he is the only one that can be worshipped according to Moses and the ten commandments.
That seems unlikely in mainstream, especially pre-protestant, Christianity. Typically festivals survived a culture turning Christian, but not the gods
