In my opinion, the accusation of cannibalism against the Christians is the direct result of undereducated or bias members of society reading the eucharist too literally. The Charges could be explained easily by assuming that Minucius Felix either misunderstood the meaning and background of the eucharist or was simply twisting the meaning to suit his personal agenda. I believe these charges are an absurd exaggeration or fabrication for the purpose of dissuading people from joining the Christian faith. The actual date that the article was written is unclear, but by its context I suspect it was in the late 1st century or early 2nd century, when Christianity was spreading, but was not yet legalized. The variety of vocabulary used in the article leads me to assume that Felix came from an educated background, and was possibly a public or political leader. He likely was using his position of power to try and prevent the spread of Christianity by making the innocent service of the Christian church seem like some wicked and twisted sacrifice. Felix describes communion as an initiation rite where a novice would be presented with an infant covered in meal and senior members would cheer him on in slaying the child after which they would lick its blood and divide its limbs amongst them to be eaten [Fel87]. The ignorant and blatantly incorrect description of communion in this article leads me to believe that Felix was likely making a public service announcement to an entire community with the purpose of discouraging Christianity as a faith. Christianity had a more difficult time reaching the outlying communities and was less accepted the further out you went as strangers were seen as threats, so it is a possibility that Felix was in a more rural community. I also believe that in such an area the inhabitants would have received a poor level of education, and would therefore be easily convinced by Felix regardless of what he was saying due to his cle