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Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, of course, after the death of Jesus around 33 AD, moving from a persecuted minority in the time of the Roman emperor Nero in 64 AD (blamed for Rome’s most famous fire), to state religion with the Emperor Constantine’s victory in 312 AD. But how — and how much — the early church grew in that time-frame remains a mystery, Schor notes, one that scholars have solved in widely divergent ways, starting in 1997 with sociologist Rodney Stark’s book, The Rise of Christianity, with similarly conflicted answers. Full Story