CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN PLINY AND TRAJAN PLINY’S LETTER TO TRAJAN AND THE EMPEROR’S “RESCRIPT”--GENUINENESS OF CORRESPONDENCE INTRODUCTORY A flood of light is poured upon the early history of Christianity in the correspondence which passed between the Emperor Trajan and his friend and minister Pliny the Younger, who had been appointed to the governorship[18] of Bithynia and Pontus, the district lying in the north of Asia Minor. The letter of Pliny, containing his report of the trial and inquiry into the matter of the accused Christians of his province, and asking for direction, was written to the Emperor Trajan in the autumn of A.D. 111; and the reply of Trajan, which contained the famous _rescript_ concerning the Christian sect--an ordinance which regulated the action of the government of Rome towards the disciples of Jesus for many long years--was dispatched a few months later. The correspondence was quoted and commented upon at some length by the Latin Father Tertullian before the close of the second century. Eusebius again refers to it, translating the quotations of Tertullian from a Greek version of the celebrated Christian Father.[19] For various reasons, some critics have thrown doubt upon the genuineness of these two famous letters. The main cause of the hesitation in receiving them is the strong evidence contained in the correspondence bearing upon the existence and influence and great numbers of the Christian sect at the beginning of the second century. That a _pagan_ author should supply us with the information--and especially a pagan author of the rank and position which the younger Pliny held--the adversaries of the Faith misliked. These very doubts, however, as in other cases of doubt respecting the authenticity of some of our Christian and pagan writings bearing on the facts of very early Christianity, have established the genuineness of the pieces in question, the doubts requiring an answer, and the answer involving a careful and thoughtful investigation. It is singular, in their scarcely veiled hostility to the religion of Jesus, how some scholars attempt to discredit all the references to the Christians in early heathen writers. In this case the investigation has completely proved the genuineness of the correspondence in question. Bishop Lightfoot, in the course of his thorough and scholarly examination, does not hesitate to write that the genuineness of the important Letters “can now only be questioned by a scepticism bordering on insanity.”