[7]: 25  She draws upon the work of scholars like Glen Bowersock and Jan Willem van Hentern to show that there were examples of martyrs among earlier Jews, Greeks and Romans, they were just not called by that term.

[7]: 77–78  In her book, Moss examined the oldest and generally agreed to be most authentic of the martyrdom accounts: the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Acts of Ptolemaeus and Lucius, the account of the trial and death of Justin Martyr and companions, the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, the story of Perpetua and Felicity, and the Persecution in Lyon involving the bishop Pothinus, Blandina and several others.

Moss notes that the letter begins by saying that the events are "worthy of undying remembrance" and she observes that the phrase was also used by Eusebius in both the Church History and his Martyrs of Palestine.

"[7]: 129 Moss holds that the Romans interpreted refusal to burn incense and make sacrificial offerings to an image of the Emperor as seditious and a sign of possible treason.

"[9] New Testament scholar Greg Carey, writing for The Christian Century, wrote "Grounded in ten years of research on martyr traditions.

Though early Christian texts assign martyrdom a constitutive role in the church's story, non-Christian sources refuse to corroborate this picture.

Here historiography meets real life, as Moss's exposure of the martyrdom myth opens a path to a new way of seeing the world and our neighbors.

"[10] James F. McGrath the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair of New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University writes on his blog "Moss does a fantastic job of illustrating points about ancient evidence and rhetoric by using modern examples and illustrations – from doubts about a widely-circulated version of the dialogue that allegedly preceded the murder of Cassie Bernall, to baseball as a “religion,” to the function of appealing to the Founding Fathers.

"[11] In the National Catholic Reporter, Maureen Daly said "Moss, scholar of the early church and martyrs, contends persecution was rare and the duration brief.

'The myth of Christian martyrdom is not only inaccurate; it has contributed to great violence and continues to support a view of the world in which we are under attack from our fellow human beings,' she writes.

"[12] Kirkus Reviews said "The myth of martyrdom—and the expectation of huge rewards in heaven—was effective in organizing a cohesive early Christian identity, which involved the notion of being 'under attack' and justified a violent reaction...she provides an intriguing venture that begs for more research and focus.

Her framing chapters on the dishonesty and dangers of 'persecution' claims by contemporary conservative political voices and religious leaders easily identify her bias."

Radner also accused Moss of having simply reframed the theories of Edward Gibbon's multi-volume work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.