"Today Christianity has been so important for so long that one is apt to assume that it must have appeared important to educated pagans who lived AD 50-150; and that if they fail to discuss Jesus' historicity or the pretensions of his worshippers, their silence must be attributed to their consciousness that they were unable to deny the truth of the Christian case. In fact, however, there is no reason why the pagan writers of this period should have thought Christianity any more important than other enthusiastic religions of the Empire." G.A. Wells, Did Jesus Exist? (Revised edition, London: Pemberton, 1986), p. 15.