Duvduv

I have long wondered why there are so many writings concerning the heretics and that it was so hard for the "orthodox" faction to eliminate them if the "orthodox" were the predominant and eventually the official faction.

One would assume that the entire eventual power of the Empire's legal and coercive abilities would have been unleashed and able to extinguish these apparently small and insignificant groups, some of whom were presumably different from the "orthodox" in only abstract and intangible doctrines and it should have been relatively easy to finish them all off.

If the empire's political, legal and enforcement power was unleashed on behalf of this official church from the days of Constantine until the days of Justinian, what was going on such that these groups continued existing or popping up all the time.

These difficulties make more sense if:

a) the powers of the empire were NOT available to destroy competing groups as alleged. Evidence of this is the continued existence of Nestorian sects and other sects;

b) the "orthodox" faction was NOT the predominant one during much of that period, because if it were, they could have eliminated their enemies relatively easily;

c) opponents such as Arians who were identified soley on the basis of obscure and abstract ideas must have also been identifiable on a geographic or other identifying basis, because otherwise how could one know who believes what among the masses of clergy or the population at large?

Toto

To us, these appear to be insignficant theological differences, but they were important at the time.

Look at the conflicts among Marxist-Leninists about equally abstruse points about class struggle.

Duvduv

Correct, but how long did it take to extinguish the Trotskyites in Russia? And of course in ancient times there was probably no way of knowig who was an Arian to arrest a person.....

Toto

Trotskyites continued to flourish up until recently. In America, some turned into neo-cons and became quite influential.

In former Yugoslavia, there was no way of telling Serbs from Croatians, other than which way they crossed themselves. There was still a bloody civil war.

sotto voce

Clergy are by definition heretical, are the tools of social forces, and are protected by those forces. Those forces provide land, buildings and other appurtenances to facilitate the operation of clergy in controlling populations, and clergy must therefore always be highly identifiable. Their purpose was and remains to ensure heresy, and to stamp out orthodoxy except where it was and is in agreement with their particular scheme.

It was not that heresy per se found objection. Just as today, there was acceptance provided one was wrong, somewhere. But if the empire was to take full control, it had to have uniformity; it could not be seen to be divided. So it determined a particular set of heresies and eventually forced these on all. These were, as one would expect, the same heresies that had obtained under the old pagan deities, with mere changes of nomenclature.

Duvduv

Sure, but my point was that it was going on for a long time according to the dating of all these events.

Especially from the fourth to sixth centuries. They had all the coercive power of the Empire at their disposal, yet we see book after book, council after council, condemning here, condemning there, eradicating here, eradicating there, those pesky minor "heresies" for such a long time.

Perhaps it was actually the official religion that was actually in the minority with all its councils, books, etc.......Perhaps the "orthodox" were supported by imperial elements, but in actuality it was the Arians who were the majority, and other "heresies" were also actually larger than we are led to believe.

After all, why dedicate SO MUCH time to writing and to holding councils if you had the coercive power of the State on your side to wipe out small unimportant sects in the name of uniformity UNLESS in fact the State was not uniformly on the side of the writers and councils, and the opposition to the heresies often went ignored?!

Chili

Yes and that is why hierarchy is needed with only one God at the top as there is only One, and its counterpart is split in factions.

If then God is truth (such as we encounter everyday in life), it will draw us to this 'perception' that we call God and befriend it if it us, or hate it if it is not.

sotto voce

But they weren't pesky. They were just the thing for the dupes taken in by them. 'Let sleeping dogs lie' was doubtless the motto, for about as long as the dogs stayed asleep. And of course, the imperial clerics looked like heroes for standing up to 'bad' clergy.

I don't think so. The process of corrupting the church was already well developed by the time of Constantine, and along the lines that were eventually to be adopted by the imperial power. It was the real church that had ensured that. The number of favoured 'bishops' was greater than the number of disfavoured ones.

Arianism was in the majority far from Rome. And it was allowed to persist for a long time because, theologically speaking, it was not really very different from the imperial version. To the ordinary guy in the street, it was doubtless all rather academic.

Publicity! Merely the action of publicising its hierarchy served the imperial purpose, quite apart from any decisions taken by it.

mountainman

Practically all of the orthodox before Nicaea, and all of the orthodox at and after Nicaea were heresiologists. The writings of the heresiologists characterize the entire phenomenom of "Early Christian Origins".



The key element in the battle between the heretics and the heresiologists were the books that both parties authored and preserved. We are dealing with an epoch in which the codex was the high technology of the preservation of written Greek literature. The evidence indicates that the authorship and thus original preservation of the canonical books by the heresiologists, and the authorship and preservation of the non canonical books by the heretics, was in Greek.



It did. The Greek codices and writings of the heretics was almost utterly erased from the face of the planet, while the greek codices and writings of the heresiologists were preserved in the imperial basilicas and scriptoria.



Physical books in Greek were inspected by the heresiologists, who maintained an index of "Prohibited Books", which were the subject of search and destroy missions by the army (See "Vita Constantini") since at least c.324/325 CE and the so-called "Council of Nicaea". (See Constantine's Letter to the "Bishops")



The nature and the scale of the controversy has been purposefully underplayed by the orthodox heresiological victors. I think the controversy was over the sudden and unexpected appearance of the Constantine Bible.


I think that when the orthodox heresiologists destroyed the Greek originals, the heretics eventually commenced to attempt the preservation of the non canonical books by physically taking them outside the empire AND/OR translating them to other languages that would not be so conspicuous to the Greek literate heresiologists, such as Syriac (Nestorius) and Coptic (NHC) and in some cases Manichaean.




I agree here.


The evidence indicates clearly that the heretics were primarily identified by means of the books that they preserved. The preservation of the non canonical books was the original outlawed and illegal heresy, aside from their original authorship.

The evidence indicates that the Arians preserved non canonical books, and these may have included the books authored by Arius of Alexandria about the time of Nicaea.

The battle between the heretics and the heresiologists was a battle over which books were to be considered superior and which books were to be considered inferior. We must not forget that the entire phenomenom of the canonical and non canonical books seems to explode with the sudden and unexpected appearance of Constantine in the Eastern empire with the Constantine Bible as the "Holy Writ" in service to a centralised imperial state monotheistic religious cult.

The appearance of this Bible coincides with the commencement of the destruction of the pagan temples and their networks, and the prohibition of their use with effect from Constantine's military victory over Lucinius c.324 CE.

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that the pagans were not very happy with the axing of their cultural traditions at Nicaea. The pagans are the elephant in the room of christian origins. At Nicaea the pagans officially became heretics, and the heresiological games commenced. They have been running ever since.

mountainman

There is very little claimed evidence for the appearance of non canonical books before Nicaea. Eusebius, the master heresiologist of the Constantinian era, cannot be trusted to represent his enemies the heretics, in matters of chronology.



They were enough to give Constantine apoplexy (See his letter to Arius c.333 CE). They were enough to have Eusebius play the Holy Blasphemy Card. (See his report on the appearance of the "Acts of Pilate".)

But perhaps my favorite exhibit on the pesky nature of these noncanonical books of the vile heretics is Photius, from a later century, who stumbles on a compendium of heretical books in Bagdad. It may have been - in effect - a heretics bible, consistent of noncanonical books. Here is how Photius reacts to reading these works ......