steve_bnk

The first paragraph, The Nicene Creed, sets forth the first Christian dogma under which a denier faced punishment from the state. It settled the debate as to the divinity of JC, and by default defines scriptural orthodoxy and authority.



Go a little deeper.

http://www.kencollins.com/bible-c1.htm

When you look ar a web site relating to Christianity you have to try and discriminate between those which attempt some level of obkective analysis and those that support a parttcular Christian view, such as the divinity of JC existing as from the begining and not being a later addition.

Kapyong

Gday,

Nothing to do with the canon of the Bible.
The CoN did NOT decide the books of the Bible.
Did you READ the canons I cited?
The actual decisions made bu the CoN?
Did you notice none of them referred to the books of the bible?


This site does NOT say the CoN decided the books of the Bible.
Because they didn't.


Look - I just wanna make ONE simple point clear :
The Council of Nicea did NOT decide the books of the NT.
It's just NOT true.

But it's endlessly repeated on the 'net.



Kapyong

Toto

Here is the thread:

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=82050

The readers can decide for themselves if judge's characterization is at all accurate.

steve_bnk

Ok..you win.

judge

Richard Carriers lame excuse that he is blindly following Metzger will not do when he makes unsupported assertions like the following.

Richard either needs to back this up with evidence or withdraw it. This will be particularly difficult considering his definition of Syria, but impossible whichever way he slices it.

The problems are these.

1. Richard Carrier cant demonstrate , with evidence the above assertion.

2. We have evidence of Aphrahat quoting the peshitta before Rabbula or Theodoret were on the scene. If Rabbula and Theodoret are not somehow relevant then why did he even mention them.

There are even more problems with that section of the article (I wont go into them all now) but have a look at the following quote.


A fairly awful typo here.

Richard has Rabbula and Theodoret alive and doing this in the early 4th century! He means the 5th century.

As Aphrahat is quoting the peshitta early in the 4th century, it becomes pretty much irrelevant what Rabbula and co did early in the 5th century, if one is trying to say that the peshitta wasn't used by "Syrian" churches.

But again the first thing that needs to be withdrawn is the unsupported assertion noted above.
If we expect religious people to provide evidence for their assertions then shouldn't freethinkers have to do the same?

Secondly that typo needs to be changed it should read 5th century. Theodoret and Rabbula

Toto

You have Carrier's address and his invitation to correct any errors. Please email him with the corrections and this thread's url.

mountainman

When Constantine ordered Eusebius to manufacture
fifty copies of the first bound codices containing the
bible who decided which books of the NT were to be
included in that edition? We have no council between
this publication event and Nicaea. Eusebius was on
all accounts quite obviously the editor.

judge

So Richard Carrier, asks that I show that the following generalistion, written By Carrier himself (although a summary of Metzger) is false, and then he will, presumably, remove it.


Firstly this claim is unprovable, unless one knows what was used in every "Syrian church" at all times prior to Rabbula (presumably).
As this statement is unprovable it should not even be there in the first place.

There are many ways to show this is wrong, but maybe the simplest place to start (although it is a little old) is to quote another scholar on Aphrahat, who lived approximately 270CE-345CE, about 100 years before Rabbula.

If anyone wants to present any evidence that Aphrahat does not quote the peshitta I would be very interested

What is misleading is that the article claims to tell us about the developement of "eastern canons". It pruports to tell us what was happening in "Syrian churches" , but really it is telling us what possibly happened in a limited number of syrian churches.

That is whay in the original thread I politely pointed this out. What was happening in other syriac speaking areas is surely relevant. That they were using the peshitta must be relevant.

Which is why the unprovable, misleading and sweeping generalisations should be removed. And they should definitely be removed if there is disagreement from other scholars

DrZoidberg

I think previous posters have way too much belief in consistency of old. In the book Lost Christianities Bart Ehrman has a different view of it. That the NT cannon is pretty random.

The bishop of Alexandria (the Bishop with the largest number of churches and members in the world at the time) kept getting questions from priest which gospels were the most important ones. At this time the bible was just loose pages and people bought the bible one gospel at a time.

Since a church rarely could afford more than one gospel it became crucial they didn't waste their money on any of the least important ones. This was before the Apocrypha had been defined. There where a hell of a lot more gospels than what finally made it into the Bible.

At this time Christianity was a pretty wild creature with no orthodoxy. The various priests in the different parishes kept having arguments about teachings. The Bishop of Alexandria wanted a more streamlined church. But Bibles were expensive and he didn't want to tell any of his priests to throw away any of the Bibles they had already bought.

So the Bishop of Alexandria tallied which gospels where already used by the churches, and compiled a list ranking them in the order he thought was the most important to have and ordered his priests to buy them in that order. This became the order of the gospels in the Bible.

Later when Constantine wanted to create an orthodoxy he turned to the Bishop of Alexandria since he was the only one who had done any work on this. By using his system they at least saved the trouble of changing any bibles in Egypt.... which would have been an extremely costly affair.

So saying that it was Constantine or the Bishop of Alexandria decided on which books to include is making it extremely easy for yourself. They only adopted the canon that would be the easiest to adopt. The truth is that it was decided by economic factors and the theological opinions of the majority of priests in Egypt.

But Christians tend to equate random with "the will of God", so I doubt and Christian will be deterred by this.

David B

I still have the idea that Irenaeus was influential in what formed the canon. Perhaps the real biblical experts here will confirm or refute this.

Anyway, I've had a little google search for sources that might have given me this impression, and find http://www.ntcanon.org/Irenaeus.shtml

Bizarre!! but it does seem to me that it is from this sort of raving, rather than as the result of the will of the putative Christian God, that the Bible became what it is.

David B