Originally Posted by 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.

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

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

Originally Posted by PLOINY

...However there was a heavy accretion of pagan fables because the Jews laughed at Paul's ignorant and amateur efforts in Aramaic - the earliest versions. So he translated it into Greek - which the Jewish masses could and would not read - and the pagans and eventually Constantine et al began to accept it as a higher form of morality.
Innumerable gospels and books of miracles and messianic figures existed. Paul included a few gospels that contradicted one another least - heavily laced with ancient pagan myths of immaculate birth, cruxifiction, resurrection, one god in several combined forms - some human etc etc...

Originally Posted by DrZoidberg

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.

Originally Posted by THE GLOATING EUSEBIUS

Eusebius VC 56:
Destruction of the Temple of Aesculapius at Aegae.

FOR since a wide-spread error of these pretenders to wisdom concerned the demon worshiped in Cilicia, whom thousands regarded with reverence as the possessor of saving and healing power, who sometimes appeared to those who passed the night in his temple, sometimes restored the diseased to health, though on the contrary he was a destroyer of souls, who drew his easily deluded worshipers from the true Saviour to involve them in impious error,

the emperor, consistently with his practice, and desire to advance the worship of him who is at once a jealous God and the true Saviour,

gave directions that this temple also should be razed to the ground. In prompt obedience to this command, a band of soldiers laid this building, the admiration of noble philosophers, prostrate in the dust, together with its unseen inmate, neither demon nor god, but rather a deceiver of souls, who had seduced mankind for so long a time through various ages.

And thus he who had promised to others deliverance from misfortune and distress, could find no means for his own security, any more than when, as is told in myth, he was scorched by the lightning's stroke.

(2) Our emperor's pious deeds, however, had in them nothing fabulous or feigned; but by virtue of the manifested power of his Saviour, this temple as well as others was so utterly overthrown, that not a vestige of the former follies was left behind.



Eusebius VC 57:
How the Gentiles abandoned Idol Worship, and turned to the Knowledge of God.

HENCE it was that, of those who had been the slaves of superstition, when they saw with their own eyes the exposure of their delusion, and beheld the actual ruin of the temples and images in every place, some applied themselves to the saving doctrine of Christ; while others, though they declined to take this step, yet reprobated the folly which they had received from their fathers, and laughed to scorn what they had so long been accustomed to regard as gods.


Indeed, what other feelings could possess their minds, when they witnessed the thorough uncleanness concealed beneath the fair exterior of the objects of their worship? Beneath this were found either the bones of dead men or dry skulls, fraudulently adorned by the arts of magicians, (1) or filthy rags full of abominable impurity, or a bundle of hay or stubble. On seeing all these things heaped together within their lifeless images, they denounced their fathers' extreme folly and their own, especially when neither in the secret recesses of the temples nor in the statues themselves could any inmate be found; neither demon, nor utterer of oracles, neither god nor prophet, as they had heretofore supposed: nay, not even a dim and shadowy phantom could be seen.

Accordingly, every gloomy cavern, every hidden recess, afforded easy access to the emperor's emissaries: the inaccessible and secret chambers, the innermost shrines of the temples, were trampled by the soldiers' feet;

and thus the mental blindness which had prevailed for so many ages over the gentile world became clearly apparent to the eyes of all.


Eusebius VC 58:
How he destroyed the Temple of Venus at Heliopolis, and built the First Church in that City.


etc, etc, etc ...

Originally Posted by DrZoidberg

ok, then. *slowly backing away*