Johnny Skeptic

http://www.tektonics.org/af/davincicrude.htm

James Holding

Did Constantine decide the canon? How did the process work?[17]. Constantine was not the decider of the canon, and played in fact no role at all in its assembly; the church at large was the party responsible. The process of canonizing the New Testament was based on a model that had existed for centuries whereby various religions chose a collection of normative sacred books. It is likely that Paul himself began the process by collecting his own letters, or that one of his friends like Luke or Timothy did so. Far from being an arbitrary process, or one decided upon by Constantine much later, the formation of the canon was the result of carefully-weighed choices over time by concerned church officials and members. Later votes on the canon were merely the most definitive steps taken at the end of a long and careful, sometimes difficult, process. Biblical scholar Robert Grant, in The Formation of the New Testament, writes that the New Testament canon was:

...not the product of official assemblies or even of the studies of a few theologians. It reflects and expresses the ideal self-understanding of a whole religious movement which, in spite of temporal, geographical, and even ideological differences, could finally be united in accepting these 27 diverse documents as expressing the meaning of God's revelation in Jesus Christ and to his church. [18]

To claim that Constantine was behind the canon, or was responsible for destroying Gospels he did not approve of, is a ludicrous distortion of history. In fact, Constantine convened the Council at Nicea, paid the travel expenses of those who attended, and provided his summer lake palace for the site, but he had no ecclesiastical authority at all. The information we have on the Council is fascinating and in no way supports the idea of a pagan Roman’s overthrow of “early Christianity” or any conspiracy. A good introduction to the facts about the Council is available in the Summer 1996 issue of Christian History magazine, “Heresy in the Early Church,” at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/51h/.

Johnny: What is the difference between "carefully-weighed choices" and choices that are not carefully-weighed? Regarding "...not the product of official assemblies or even of the studies of a few theologians. It reflects and expresses the ideal self-understanding of a whole religious movement", there is most certainly no credible evidence that the choices of the assemblies represented the views of "a whole religious movement". 1 Corinthinas 1:11-13 say "For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?"

The words "contentions" and "divided" most certainly do not indicate agreement among a whole religious movement. As Elaine Pagels has aptly said, "The victors rewrote history, 'their way'".

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/9-19-2003-45623.asp

Bart Ehrman

The wide diversity of early Christianity may be seen above all in the theological beliefs embraced by people who understood themselves to be followers of Jesus. In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians who believed in one God. But there were others who insisted that there were two. Some said there were thirty. Others claimed there were 365.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that God had created the world. But others believed that this world had been created by a subordinate, ignorant divinity. (Why else would the world be filled with such misery and hardship?) Yet other Christians thought it was worse than that, that this world was a cosmic mistake created by a malevolent divinity as a place of imprisonment, to trap humans and subject them to pain and suffering.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that the Jewish Scripture (the Christian "Old Testament") was inspired by the one true God. Others believed it was inspired by the God of the Jews, who was not the one true God. Others believed it was inspired by an evil deity. Others believed it was not inspired.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that Jesus was both divine and human, God and man. There were other Christians who argued that he was completely divine and not human at all. (For them, divinity and humanity were incommensurate entities: God can no more be a man than a man can be a rock.) There were others who insisted that Jesus was a full flesh-and-blood human, adopted by God to be his son but not himself divine. There were yet other Christians who claimed that Jesus Christ was two things: a full flesh-and-blood human, Jesus, and a fully divine being, Christ, who had temporarily inhabited Jesus’ body during his ministry and left prior to his death, inspiring his teachings and miracles but avoiding the suffering in its aftermath.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that Jesus’ death brought about the salvation of the world. There were other Christians who thought that Jesus’ death had nothing to do with the salvation of the world. There were yet other Christians who said that Jesus never died.

How could some of these views even be considered Christian? Or to put that question differently, how could people who considered themselves Christian hold such views? Why did they not consult their Scriptures to see that there were not 365 gods, or that the true God had created the world, or that Jesus had died? Why didn’t they just read the New Testament?

It is because there was no New Testament. To be sure, the books that were eventually collected into the New Testament had been written by the second century. But they had not yet been gathered into a widely recognized and authoritative canon of Scripture.¹ And there were other books written as well, with equally impressive pedigrees—other Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses claiming to be written by the earthly apostles of Jesus.

The Lost Scriptures

The Gospels that came to be included in the New Testament were all written anonymously; only at a later time were they called by the names of their reputed authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But at about the time these names were being associated with the Gospels, other Gospel books were becoming available, sacred texts that were read and revered by different Christian groups throughout the world: a Gospel, for example, claiming to be written by Jesus’ closest disciple, Simon Peter; another by his apostle Philip; a Gospel allegedly written by Jesus’ female disciple Mary Magdalene; another by his own twin brother, Didymus Judas Thomas.

Someone decided that four of these early Gospels, and no others, should be accepted as part of the canon—the collection of sacred books of Scripture. But how did they make their decisions? When? How can we be sure they were right? And whatever happened to the other books?

When the New Testament was finally gathered together, it included Acts, an account of the activities of the disciples after Jesus’ death. But there were other Acts written in the early years of the church: the Acts of Peter and of John, the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Paul’s female companion Thecla, and others. Why were these not included as parts of Scripture?

Our New Testament today contains a number of epistles, that is, letters written by Christian leaders to other Christians, thirteen of them allegedly by Paul. Scholars debate whether Paul actually wrote all of these letters. And there are other letters not in the New Testament that also claim to be written by Paul, for example, several letters sent by "Paul" to the Roman philosopher Seneca, and a letter written to the church of Laodicea, and Paul’s Third Corinthians (the New Testament has First and Second Corinthians). Moreover, there were letters written in the names of other apostles as well, including one allegedly written by Simon Peter to Jesus’ brother James, and another by Paul’s companion Bamabas. Why were these excluded?

The New Testament concludes with an apocalypse, a revelation concerning the end of the world in a cataclysmic act of God, written by someone named John and brought into the New Testament only after Christian leaders became convinced that the author was none other than John the son of Zebedee, Jesus’ own disciple (even though the author never claims to be that John). But why were other apocalypses not admitted into the canon, such as the apocalypse allegedly written by Simon Peter, in which he is given a guided tour of heaven and hell to see the glorious ecstasies of the saints and, described in yet more graphic detail, the horrendous torments of the damned? Or the book popular among Christian readers of the second century, the Shepherd of Hermas, which, like the book of Revelation, is filled with apocalyptic visions of a prophet?

We now know that at one time or another, in one place or another, all of these noncanonical books and many others were revered as sacred-, inspired, scriptural. Some of them we now have; others we know only by name. Only twenty-seven of the early Christian books were finally included in the canon, copied by scribes through the ages, eventually translated into English, and now on bookshelves in virtually every home in America. Other books came to be rejected, scorned, maligned, attacked, burned, all but forgotten—lost.³

It may be worth reflecting on what was both lost and gained when these books, and the Christian perspectives they represented, disappeared from sight. One thing that was lost, of course, was the great diversity of the early centuries of Christianity. As I have already pointed out, modem Christianity is not lacking in a diversity of its own, with its wide-ranging theologies, liturgies, practices, interpretations of Scripture, political views, social stands, organizations, institutions, and so on. But virtually all forms of modem Christianity, whether they acknowledge it or not, go back to one form of Christianity that emerged as victorious from the conflicts of the second and third centuries. This one form of Christianity decided what was the "correct" Christian perspective; it decided who could exercise authority over Christian belief and practice; and it determined what forms of Christianity would be marginalized, set aside, destroyed. It also decided which books to canonize into Scripture and which books to set aside as "heretical," teaching false ideas.

And then, as a coup de grace, this victorious party rewrote the history of the controversy, making it appear that there had not been much of a conflict at all, claiming that its own views had always been those of the majority of Christians at all times, back to the time of Jesus and his apostles, that its perspective, in effect, had always been "orthodox" (i.e., the "right belief") and that its opponents in the conflict, with their other scriptural texts, had always represented small splinter groups invested in deceiving people into "heresy" (literally meaning "choice"; a heretic is someone who willfully chooses not to believe the right things).

What Christianity gained at the end of these early conflicts was a sense of confidence that it was and always had been "right." It also gained a creed, which is still recited by Christians today, that affirmed the right beliefs, as opposed to the heretical wrong ones. Relatedly, it gained a theology, including a view that Christ is both fully divine and fully human, and a doctrine of the Trinity which maintained that the Godhead consists of three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—distinct in number but equal in substance. Moreover, it gained a hierarchy of church leaders who could run the church and guarantee its adherence to proper belief and practice. And it gained a canon of Scripture—the New Testament—comprising twenty-seven books that supported these leaders’ vision of the church and their understanding of doctrine, ethics, and worship.

These gains are obviously significant and relatively well known. Less familiar are the losses incurred when these particular conflicts came to an end. It is these losses which we will be exploring throughout this book. It is striking that, for centuries, virtually everyone who studied the history of early Christianity simply accepted the version of the early conflicts written by the orthodox victors. This all began to change in a significant way in the nineteenth century as some scholars began to question the "objectivity" of such early Christian writers as the fourth-century orthodox author Eusebius, the so-called Father of Church History, who reproduced for us the earliest account of the conflict. This initial query into Eusebius’s accuracy eventually became, in some circles, a virtual onslaught on his character, as twentieth-century scholars began to subject his work to an ideological critique that exposed his biases and their role in his presentation. The reevaluation of Eusebius was prompted, in part, by the discovery of additional ancient books, uncovered both by trained archaeologists looking for them and by bedouin who came across them by chance, other Gospels, for example, that also claimed to be written in the names of apostles.

mountainman

Eusebius was appointed by Constantine circa 330 CE
to physically bind together the new testament and
the old testament and form what is generally known
as "The Constantine Bible". Fifty copies were thus
ordered in writing.

Obviously, Eusebius decided its canon.

It is likely that all the surviving major codexes
are copies of one of the surviving 50 Constantine
Bibles. If this is the case, essentially Eusebius,
in the reign of Constantine, and under the direct
sponsorship of Constantine, did what he was told.

L36:
(333AD) Letter of Constantine to Eusebius
on the preparation of the copies of the Scriptures.

Synopsis: Orders fifty copies with directions as to style.

“VICTOR CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Eusebius.
“It happens, through the favoring providence of God our Savior,
that great numbers have united themselves to the most holy church
in the city which is called by my name.

It seems, therefore, highly requisite,
since that city is rapidly advancing in prosperity in all other respects,
that the number of churches should also he increased.
Do you, therefore, receive with all readiness my determination on this behalf.

I have thought it expedient to instruct your Prudence
to order fifty copies of the sacred Scriptures,
the provision and use of which you know
to be most needful for the instruction of the Church,
to be written on prepared parchment in a legible manner,
and in a convenient, portable form, by professional transcribers
thoroughly practiced in their art.

The catholicus of the diocese has also received instructions by
letter from our Clemency to be careful to furnish all things necessary
for the preparation of such copies; and it will be for you
to take special care that they be completed with as little delay as possible.

You have authority also, in virtue of this letter,
to use two of the public carriages for their conveyance,
by which arrangement the copies when fairly written
will most easily be forwarded for my personal inspection;
and one of the deacons of your church may be intrusted with this service,
who, on his arrival here, shall experience my liberality.
God preserve you, beloved brother!”.

(Preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Life of Constantine 4:36, Theodoret’s Ecclesiastical History 1:15, and Socrates’ Scholasticus’ Ecclesiastical History 1:9)

Context: Letters of Constantine

Please explain.

Johnny Skeptic

Hi, I always enjoy reading your posts. What do you mean by "please explain"?

mountainman

It is a "please explain" for J. P. Holding who appears to have
overlooked the priority of the Constantine Bible in the binding
of the christian canon (circa 330 CE).