judge

Do you have reference for this?

DrZoidberg

Yes, I mentioned my reference in the post. Churches would buy as many as they could, but backwood churches out in the country had to make due with what they could get their hands on. Most churches were not found in metropolises. And all books were punishingly expensive.

mountainman

The archaeologists have not found any pre-Constantinian churches.
Neither have they found any "church-houses". City or country. Period.

DrZoidberg

Ok. I'm not sure what the significance is.

bacht

The Jewish canon wasn't officially closed until the rabbis sat down after the fall of the temple and decided what to keep in. Generally they stuck to Hebrew material (as opposed to Greek) datable before Hellenistic times. The Septuagint had been widely used in the 1st C but fell out of favour once the Christians adopted it.

The idea of a Christian canon may have been invented by Marcion, a heretic in the mid-2nd C. His collection of writings may have spurred a Catholic reaction which led to the first "official" NT collections.

steve_bnk

I did some reading late last night in my references.

The Hebrew canon was not formaly agreed on until the first century CE. The Christians were using the Greek bible which did nor exactly match up with the Hebrew list of books.

There were no real organized Christians, people got together, read sciptures, talked in tounges, and sang. Paul made references to offshooots early on that were drifting in differnt directions and addresses some congregations directly on issues.

There were many sects. the most notable were the Gnostics who believed both the Hebrew and Christian writings that developed in the first centuries were misleading and not pointing to the what they considered the real truths.

From my long past phil of religion class, up through Nicea there was a strong mystical contingent in Chrtisianity, not unlike how we would view eastern mysticism, meditation, fasting, asceticism, chanting, and the like. The prof I had for several classes specialized in Christian mysticism and had spent time in seminary before bailing for secular philosophy.

This side of Christianity got trumped by the rise of the Catholic dogmatic theology. As the story goes, Constantine had a pre battle vision of a cross in the air or something close and attributed a victory in battle to Chrtisianity.

Constantine needed an orthodoxy/theolgy that could be imposed as a control element. Even today the rulling elite in the RCC are all academic PHD types with the faith being reduced not to spirtual practices, but to debating the dogma and protecting it from cracks and attacks.

I see it as similar to Henry 8 who needed a bible and a theolgy that justified his position as king, as head of the faith in England, and supporting his well know personal needs, his need for a healthy male successor.

Politics and political power shaped the canons of the bible more than anything else. the protestant idea that people could read and interpret the hible for themselves politicaly was an atomic bomd for both the RCC and the European rulng elite. Relgious orhtodoxy and dogma are power.

Nicea defines who is and who is not a Christian, and indirectly what was scriptural canon. Up till then Christianity was wide open.

What was narrowed down and became what we have as the recognized NT canon originated with Constantine.

To the point Constantine knew what he wanted in a theolgy and got it.

mountainman

The supremacy of Constantine and the councils
of Antioch and Nicaea was a boundary event for
Alexandrian based Hellenistic civilisation.

A new Logos and its academy was called into being.
Constantine was the first person in recorded history
to have bound the new and old elements of the bible
together. The lavishly produced Constantine Codices
- reportedly fifty in number - must have been put
together under the editorship of Eusebius.


By the sword.

judge

I've just been re-reading a bit of metzger on the topic and came across the following interesting snippet.

So here leading up to and into the beginning of the 5th century, we have the peshitta canon apparently being used and promoted from the important centre of Antioch.

Doug Shaver

It is consistent with mountainman's theory that Constantine invented Christianity. Or that he ordered Eusebius to invent it. Whatever.

DrZoidberg

Who thinks that? That's a cooky conspiracy theory if there ever was one. If Hu Jintao has problems keeping the Chinese in line after fifty years of brainwashing with access to all the latest information technology... what ability would Constantine have to force a religion down peoples throats? I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think you need to to back it up with some sociology/anthropology theory that sounds even remotely plausible.

All evidence seems to point at Christianity being a bottom up phenomena and Constantine was just being politically savvy, by harnessing its potential to give the state increased control and power.