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Notes -
Notice in this story that he didn't already know what to do and, iirc, was basically told by Trajan to not go looking for problems just handle them when they came up.
But you're right. I was thinking that the systematic persecutions came much later under Diocletian which long postdates the Gospel's likely dates (and that at the time of their writing the Romans were just hostile towards Jews in general and had no reason to pick apart their endless ideological debates*), which is true. But forgot about Nero's opportunistic behavior. That shows they were at least known and/or distrusted by pagans as well.
* Which explains some of their conciliatory gestures.
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