Were Christians really burned for lighting by Nero?
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In the book The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City.' (Da Capo, Cambridge, Mass, 7 September 2010). author Stephen Dando Collins puts forward the theory that the people persecuted by Nero were not Christians, but an Egyptian sect (the priests of Isis).
Part of the reasoning is that Christians were few at the time and relatively unknown, thus providing a poor scapegoat to divert attention away from himself. The Isis followers were more common and not well liked.
Also, the burning and covering with skins at torn by dogs was apparently very unclean to Isis followers (say like wrapping current-day Muslims in pigskins). There's nothing in these punishments that plays on Christian doctrine for sick amus*m*nt as opposed to any other Roman.
The theory is that later copyists interpolated Christians back into the text because legends had grown up about Nero's Persecutions.
It is a plausible bit of revisionism in an interesting book.
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