Which emotion was strongest for the apostles, fear for their lives or mourning for Jesus after the crucifixion?
Fear was probably strongest at first as they were human. But later they would have said they were given courage by their God. There is no doubt that they were persecuted. Cornelius Tacitus, one of the most reliable source historians of first-century Rome, wrote in his Annals a year-by-year account of events in the Roman Empire under the early Caesars. Among the highlights that he reports for the year A.D. 64 was the great fire of Rome. People blamed the emperor Nero for this conflagration since it happened “on his watch,” but in order to save himself, Nero switched the blame to “the Christians,” which is the first time they appear in secular history. Careful historian that he was, Tacitus then explains who “the Christians” were: “Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus”. He then goes on to report the horrors that were inflicted on the Christians in what became their first Roman persecutio
