TGE

Modern Christianity (Christianity of Roman roots) seems to incorporate many aspects of religions and cults that were contemporary to Constantine (Apollo, Dionysis and in particular Mithra - who shares the same virgin birthday, day of death, day of resurection, moral position and savior role as Christ).

In addition to standardising the Bible (setting an official interpritation of the life of Jesus as opposed to the many versions floating around at the time) did the council of Nicea seek to draw paralells between Christiainity and traditional Roman religions in order to make the conversion of the Empire easier?

Tercel

The council of Nicaea did not standardise the Bible. (That was the councils of Laodicea 363, Rome 382, Hippo 393, Carthage 397 etc)

To answer your question: Not that I am aware of. But you're welcome to go and read the decisions of the council yourself. (use the "> page" button at bottom to scroll through the various canons)

Jabu Khan

There was also a council set up for the King James version is that the Council of Nicea? I remember reading they had battles over interpretations and some of the members may have been assassinated by others.

Tercel

The council of Nicea in 325 was on the subject of Arianism (the teaching that Jesus was not fully of the nature of God but was a lesser, created being) which it condemned with an almost unanimous vote of about 313 Bishops against 5. It also standardised the date for Easter. The question of whether Easter should be celebrated on the 14th of Nisan (the day the Jews celebrated Passover) on whatever day of the week that date happened to fall, or whether should it be celebrated on the following Sunday since Sunday was the Christian day of worship and corresponded to the day of Christ Resurrection. The council also dealt with a number of other fairly trivial matters.
But not anything to do with the Bible.

The KJV was not produced until 1611AD, some one and a half millennia later.
I have no idea what you are talking about.

Roger Pearse

The idea about the first Council of Nicaea is a common myth which does the rounds. I got interested in the idea a while back, and looked up every bit of ancient evidence on what did or did not happen at Nicaea. It's all available or linked to from

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/nicaea.html

as I didn't want to have to look it all up twice.

As far as I could tell, the earliest form of the legend appears in a 9th century Byzantine document, the Synodicon Vetus. (Relevant section is online) and was embroidered from there.

The stuff about fist-fights etc is likewise no part of the historical record, but later legend. I've not tried to find out when that started to appear. It's important to remember that civilisation entered the Dark Ages after this period, and the natural human love of folk-tale replaced the by then defunct discipline of history, particularly in the Syriac east. This loss of knowledge is part of the reason it's called the Dark Ages. (And not just because part of the lost knowledge was how to change a light bulb! )

Don't be too misled by the mention of lists of canonical texts in 4th century councils. The ante-nicene fathers work with very much that set of works too, although some works are known only in certain geographical areas. Mention of canon usually means only that forgeries are circulating. For a monster version of such a thing, look at the Decretum Gelasianum:

http://www.tertullian.org/decretum.htm

For instance, St. Augustine mentions somewhere in his Retractions (I couldn't find it, tho) that he picked up old gnostic gospels on the stalls of the second-hand book-dealers, down on the quays in Carthage in bygone days. Since he was the organiser for the local council in 394, probably that list reflects that discovery.

One thing I wondered: how *did* the canon of scripture become the universal legal rule? It's incredibly hard to find out. It's all very well referring to the canons of those local councils, but local councils don't set the dogma of the universal church. There is nothing, as far as I could see, that shows the canon of scripture becoming legally a canon. It just growed, out of the books apostolically founded churches started off with, or so the fathers seem to suggest.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Secular Pinoy

The Council of Trent maybe?

Tercel

I don't understand your question. What do you mean by "universal legal rule", given that not all churches use the same canon? (eg Roman Catholic vs Eastern Orthodox vs Syrian vs Ethiopian etc)

As far as I can gather the various churches and writers used what seemed best to them and little effort was made to officialise anything until the fourth century. Though the things considered scripture by early writers largely agrees with what we have now. (And undoubtedly contributed to why we have what we have now)

The fourth century saw a number of declarations on the subject. Firstly (perhaps) the council of Laodicea in 363. Athanasius in his regular Letter on the date of Easter took the opportunity in 367 to include a list of canonical books. His letter would probably have been widely considered authoritative since he was Bishop of Alexandria. As far as I can tell, all further declarations on the subject in the Western church concurred with Athanasius' letter with regard to the New Testament Canon. The Council at Rome in 382 seems to have agreed with Athanasius' New Testament, but also included the Apocrypha (and Ester) in the Old Testament. I understand that Pope Damasus in 384 issued a letter announcing that council's decision. All subsequent councils and declarations I am aware of in the Western Church (ie Council of Hippo 393, Council Carthage 397, a letter of Pope Innocent 1 in 405, another council of Carthage 419, Council of Florence 1441, Council of Trent 1556) agreed with this decision.

Roger Pearse

This is really a different issue. You can still ask the same question of each subgroup -- how does the canon become law -- and this was the point I was making.

Nevertheless, this seems anachronistic to me. All these churches were in communion in 400 AD. In what respect does the Orthodox canon of the New Testament differ from the RC one? Likewise, the Syriac, or Ethiopic?

I think this must be broadly correct, but we should be aware that we are not well informed about councils in the second and third centuries, and so must beware of arguing from silence. The persecution under Diocletian probably destroyed a lot of the documents.

True.

Not sure about this -- not at the time, outside of Egypt. I don't think that Athanasius' authority would count for much until later -- remember he spent most of his time in exile during the Arian controversies.

The Decretum Gelasianum is supposed to record the decisions of the council under Damasus, but is actually a 6th century document, or so it seems (it is hard to date).

I think so too. Nevertheless, none of these were general councils, the medieval ones aside, so they most likely reflect an existing position rather than create one, and don't create law for the universal church.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Tercel

The Orthodox and RC New Testaments are the same. The East-Syrian Nestorian church's New Testament omits 2 Peter, 2&3 John, Jude and Revelation. The Ethiopic canon seems to be a mess - and that's an understatement. The best explanation of it I am aware of is here.

As far as I can determine, despite his repeated exiles, he was in Alexandria at the time he wrote the letter in 367. It makes no sense otherwise either: As I understand it an "Easter letter" was written every year by the Bishop of Alexandria to the other churches to inform them what the date of Easter would be, since the astronomers at Alexandria were considered most authoritative. Hence it would seem that Athanasius must have been Bishop of Alexandria at the time of the writing of the 367 Easter letter.

As far as I can understand the power of the apostletic sees in the ancient church, the Bishop of Alexandria appears to have had an authority not far short of that of the Bishop of Rome. Hence it seems likely to me that a letter such as this, from the Bishop of Alexandria to all the churches, would have carried quite a large amount of authority.

So is it the canons of the Council of Rome in 382 that are suspect, or the letter of Pope Damasus c384, or both?

Hmm. I suppose I would have to agree with the idea you mentioned earlier with the example of Augustine: That the church probably didn't bother to have a council on the subject unless heresy abounded.

I would guess anyway, that in light of the numerous declarations on the subject of the canon around the turn of the 5th century, that most churches probably got the hint and changed their canon to conform to those declarations if it didn't already. There would be little need for a universal council on the subject if all the churches already used the same canon.

Metacrock

Meta => That shows a real misunderstanding about how the canon came to be. All of that was in place long before Nicea. So there's really no influence form Nicea to the Bible! Mithra doesnt' share a birthday with Jesus in the Bible, it never says what Jesus' birthday was in the Bible. That did come as an influence from Rome, because think about it! If you changed religion wouldn't you still want Christmass? No bigie.