Toto

Read it with the next verse Matt 23:3

NIV

So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.

Jesus is telling his followers to obey the Mosaic religious laws as interpreted by the Pharisees, but not to follow their example.

I'm not sure what this has to do with diversity in early Christianity, except that some early Christians were evidently observant Jews.

Sheshbazzar

And the Patristic writings indicate that the orthodox, or rather the faction of Christianity that became The Orthodox, quite utterly despised the 'diversity' of these Sabbath and Law observing Christians.
To what ever degree these various groups, Ebionites, Nazarenes, Nazoraeans, Carpocratians, etc. observed the Torah Laws, it created communal divisions.
There were also strong divisions over exactly what Books, and what doctrines were acceptable, or were required to be a 'true' Christian.

Christian groups were excommunicating and killing their fellow Christians right and left over this, that, and and another thing. Back then, that was how religious disputes between opposing factions were settled, the only way minority groups could survive was to stay as far clear of, and have as little contact with those of other persuasions as possible.
In the 4th century Christian 'diversity' became increasingly difficult, with the Roman Legions hunting down and executing the 'heretics' to the ends of the Empire.
With the rise of the 'Trinitarian' battle, of how God the son was related to God the father, and of when and what 'substance' he was made out of, the requirement became one of exact conformity of detail down to the letter, and required recitation of a 'Creed'.
Any 'diversity' of Christian belief or practice was now subject to a requirement to 'recant', or suffer the death penalty.
And for all that, men's conscience being what it is, diversity remained, with many choosing to die for their beliefs rather than knuckle under and bow down to Orthodox Church 'authority'. Ages of bloodshed followed. Possesion of the 'wrong' Gospels, or of the 'wrong' books could easily get one killed.

Now days, if there is a disagreement over doctrine or authority, a schism often leads to the disaffected to form a new church. Sometimes relations remain amicable and continue in sociable behaviour, and sometimes not.

mountainman

But precisely which "hundred years" is universally conjectural and totally unknown.
They did a good job. How are we going to work this out?
Could this mob have fabricated and perverted history?
The answer is yes. The evidence suggests that this is what happened.
So the "which hundred years" should not necessarily be the 1st or 2nd or 3rd.



Nevertheless archaeologists can and have analysed all forms of shit including bird shit. At the granular level, within the pile of evidence, the careful observer would immedately notice the presence of the universally employed "nomina sacra". These Greek codes, abbreviations for over a dozen specially reserved words including "Jesus" and "Christ" appear to enjoy a consistent and universal presence throughout not just the earliest canonical manuscripts in Greek, but also in the non canonical manuscripts in Coptic.

So the bird was fed food which included this universally used "nomina sacra" abbreviations. Whoever invented these "nomina sacra" was extremely successful in getting everyone to follow their lead.

Now we can either hypothesise that this redactor was the apostles themselves and Paul, who through they were writing from different times and different geographical locations, invented the same series of codes, or that the books of the new testament were edited by a later redactor who implemented the codes in each of the books, and this novelty was then universally employed through to the 4th century.

Some have conjectured that Paul implemented the nomina sacra, others have their own theories. My own theory is that these "nomina sacra" are a 4th century invention in the presentation of the books of the NT Canon by the rightful and lawful "Pontifex Maximus" who had the right to publish the name of the most highly regarded concepts. The presence of the same nomina sacra in the heretical gnostic gospels that were written after 4th century date is then explained by the authority of the "Pontifex Maximus" over the priests and scribes and educated and literate section of the Greek populace, who then used the same codes to create their own renditions of "acts and gospels". And I explain the fact that the Greek papyri fragments that have been taken from the earth at Oxyrhynchus, all of which exhibit the "nomina sacra", are actually dated from the mid 4th century, and after Nicaea, and that the paleographers have made a small mistake in their assessment. These codes are universally present in the bird shit. They HAD TO HAVE BEEN introduced and preserved from the earliest point of excretion onwards in an almost universally adhered to process.

MAINSTREAM

Logically if they were introduced in the 1st century, when everyone thinks that they did, then it implies that they must have been preserved exactly and without variation for centuries and centuries through to the waiting hands of Constantine and Eusebius. I reject this as being highly improbable, especially with the "heretics" using them as the evidence clearly reveals.

The most likely explanation IMO is that they were implemented late under the centralised authority of the Constantinian scriptoria, and followed by everyone after that day (including the gnostic heretics) because the Pontifiex Maximus had the legal right and the necessary power to establish such a codification over his "sacred colleges", especially regarding "special names".