What I THINK I LEARNED ABOUT EARLY CHRISTIANITY.
A few years ago, I took a course on early Christianity taught by a retired professor of philosophy and religion. We used Lost Christianities, by Dr. Bart Ehrman as a text, but the instructor added several insights gleaned from his own vast readings on the subject. What follows is a brief summary of what I learned about early Christianity, at least as told by Dr. Ehrman, and by the instructor, both of whom have spent their whole lives studying it. What I learned was in sharp contrast to the things I was given to believe as a student in a 1950s Catholic high school. I was taught that:
From the death of Jesus until the Council of Nicaea, there was just one set of Christian beliefs, except for a few heresies and minor disagreements, which were eventually settled at the council of Nicaea. And although some heresies kept coming back over and over, Christianity was mostly a single trunk that split into two main branches only after the Great Schism, (and many more branches after the Reformation.)
Sects and Violence
What appears likely is:
1. Even during Jesus’ lifetime, his disciples often were confused by the things Jesus said. After his death, they began to argue about who Jesus really was, what his mission had been, and to whom his mission had been directed.
2. Though St. Paul wrote at least 7 of the Pauline epistles, none of the 12 disciples personally wrote a gospel that survives today. None of them were literate, and none of them spoke Greek, the language in which the entire New Testament was written. But any one of the disciples may have dictated some kind of account that was later used by others to write such a gospel. The books of Mathew, Mark, and Luke, though they were not written till nearly 100 AD, by which time all of the original disciples would have been dead, are probably based on writings indirectly linked to one or more disciples. The synoptic gospels, Mathew, Mark, and Luke, closely agree on many so points that they were probably partly copied from a common source, called the “Q material” by bible scholars. The Gospel of John was written a generation later, by someone who was probably not even Jewish.
3. All surviving Gospels show a strong Greek philosophical bias because most literate Jews would have been literate only in Greek, and would have had a background in Greek philosophical concepts. And of course, a lot of Jewish religious ideas can’t even be written in Greek, as there are no exact Greek words for them.
4. Every gospel, including any of the dozen or so “apocryphal” gospels, is equally likely to have an apostolic source--even though many are obvious forgeries. That is, even forgeries may be partly based on a source that was originally traceable to an apostle. And all surviving gospels were probably altered from their original form, early on, to suit the purposes of whoever was copying them. The most obvious example is that no surviving gospel even mentions the total destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, even though they were all written after that event. Some claim that Luke: 21.20 obliquely refers to this. But the Romans killed every man, woman, and child in the city, destroyed the temple, and hauled off its sacred treasures as trophies, which could easily be seen as the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophesies. So is it conceivable that these Jewish followers of Jesus wouldn’t even mention it? They probably all mentioned it, in great detail. But the Roman church, very early on, would have cut that part out as a way of downplaying the brutality of Rome. History is written by the winners.
5. The “proto-orthodox” faction, the group that later came to dominate the church, did not even exist until the late third century, though it grew out of a movement started by Paul, (whose version of Christianity was generally rejected by those who had actually known Jesus.)
6. Constantine’s motives for making Christianity the official religion of Rome were largely political. The empire was coming apart, and having a common religion that would transcend ethnic divisions would hold it together—but only if Christianity could first heal its own divisions.
7. In the year 325, he convened the council of Nicaea, and all Christian bishops were required to attend. He charged them to agree among themselves, once and for all, just what Christians believed. By 329, they had reached no agreement whatsoever. There were over 200 bishops, each one with his own scriptures, each with two hundred years of tradition, and each believing that his own group was the true Christian church. There were four main factions.
8. The Ebionites were simply Jewish Christians. They accepted some of the Book of Mathew, and they still considered themselves Jews. They were circumcised, and they followed the Law of Moses, just as Jesus had done. They accepted Jesus, not as God, but as the Messiah. They were found both in Palestine and in Diaspora. The apostles themselves had belonged to that kind of community. And they would all have considered the idea of a divine Jesus as blasphemy.
9. The Marcionite sect, which rejected all things Jewish, was started by Marcion of Sinope, born in Asia Minor early in the second century, the son of a bishop. He had come to believe that the god of the Old Testament (who he believed was a nasty, ruthless god) and the god Jesus talked about, (a loving, compassionate god,) could not possibly be the same. So he concluded that there were two gods: The old, nasty god who had created the universe, including man, and the kindly god who had sent Jesus to rescue us from the old one, by his apparent sacrifice. (Marcionites did not believe that Jesus had really died on the cross, because they believed that he had no real physical body—only the appearance of one. But the “old god,” they believed, was fooled into accepting the sacrifice anyway, and man was set free.) Marcionites believed there were two gods—but Jesus wasn’t one of them. Marcionites rejected the Old Testament, but embraced most of the writings of Paul, most of the Book of Luke, and Marcion’s own writings, particularly The Antithesis, which is a repudiation of the Old Testament. By 325, most of Syria and Asia Minor was Marcionite. We can see why such a religion would have appeal in that part of the world. At one time, under the Persians, this area had been Zoroastrian, with a belief in two deities locked in mortal combat. Old ideas die hard.
10 The Gnostics were not a single sect, but a diverse group of sects that probably broke away from apocalyptic Judaism, and were well established before Jesus. But Jesus was the most apocalyptic of Jewish teachers, so at his coming, some of the Gnostics seized upon Jesus as their own prophet, and became the Gnostic Christians, giving Christianity their own Gnostic interpretation. These Gnostics believed that Jesus had not really died on the cross; they believed that he was purely spirit, and could not suffer or die. They believed that Jesus had come to save all mankind, not by dying on the cross, but by communicating some secret knowledge—the Gnosis. They believed that Jesus was not divine but was an aeon, (something like an angel) a spiritual being less than divine but more than human. They believed that all material existence was evil, or at least miserable, and they also believed that some malevolent deity, probably the god of the Old Testament, had created this miserable material world and trapped humans in physical bodies-- but that humans were originally intended to be spirits. The Gnosis would show us how, by denying the flesh, we could escape our bodies and be free again—free of the material world---and spend eternity with a far superior god than the one who created this stupid material world. Gnostics were found throughout the Greek Christian world, including major Hellenistic centers like Antioch and Alexandria.
11 Note: At this point, we have considered three main groupings of early Christians, and none of the three thought Jesus was divine--and only one of the three thought he was truly human. (Even today, Armenian Rite Christians deny the humanity of Jesus.)
12 The fourth and smallest faction was mostly a Roman faction. They accepted several gospels and the writings of Paul, and believed that Jesus was divine, had come to save all mankind, and was also human. For Romans, this was no contradiction. For a Roman, being divine was no big deal. Emperors were often proclaimed divine after their death, and Caligula proclaimed himself to be divine. So being divine and human was easy--in Rome. This group had no special name, but scholars call it the Proto-orthodox faction, and at the council of Nicaea, they eventually prevailed. They were the smallest faction, but they enlisted the support of Constantine, who saw a political advantage in such a belief set. Why? Firstly; for any Roman, to be required to join a religion started by someone who wasn’t even divine was an insult. Secondly, Constantine had already claimed the authority to appoint all bishops, and was about to require all bishops to accept the Bishop of Rome as the head of the church. So he planned to control a church whose leader claimed to speak for Christ on earth. But if Jesus was just a man, what would this gain? Constantine did not want to rule a debating society; he wanted to hold the reins of a church that claimed to speak with the authority of God.
13 Today, nearly every Christian church, except the Roman Catholic, accepts that Jesus had two brothers— his twin brother, Thomas, and also James. And most Protestants believe that James was the eldest. (Thomas’ full description is Didimis Judas Thomas; Didimis is Greek for twin, and Thomas is Aramaic for twin. So his name was Judas, but they just called him “the twin” so as not to confuse him with the other Judas, Judas Iscariot. But Athanasius made a concession to those who thought that the Messiah must fulfill the prophesy that “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” (Note: In some cultures, the word for “virgin” is used to mean any unmarried young woman.) His creed, in accordance with Mathew and Luke, agreed that Mary was a virgin--probably over the outraged opposition of the Ebionites, who maintained the Jesus was just a plain flesh and blood human, born of the sexual union of man and woman.
14 When I was in high school, a priest recommended a book entitled Athanasius Against the World. This book details the struggle between Bishop Arius and Bishop Athanasius at Nicaea. As explained by the priest, the book made the following claims: That Arius was then the most respected Christian scholar in the world; That Arius maintained that Jesus was not divine-- and about 85% of the delegates agreed; That Athanasius led the minority faction that argued for a divine Jesus. As the council wore on, Arius won additional support, and eventually Athanasius alone argued for his point. Then, according to Athanasius Against the World, Athanasius prayed a lot and through the power of the Holy Spirit, everyone was converted and they all signed the document which Athanasius had written, now called the Nicaean Creed.
15 The previous paragraph is not really controversial, except for the last line. What really happened is that Athanasius did eventually make one convert—Constantine, and that was all he needed. Constantine surrounded the hall with soldiers and announced that no one would be allowed to leave until they signed the creed. Eventually, they all signed. Constantine was not trying to be a bully, but he faced a problem. It had become obvious that there would never be any one creed that all delegates would agree on voluntarily. Yet uniformity was needed if his plan for unifying the empire was to work. If a creed were “shoved down their throats” the bishops would be pretty unhappy about it. But no one particular coerced creed would be any more or less loathsome than any other. So if he had to choose a creed and force everyone to sign it, he felt he may as well choose one that would work for Rome. And Athanasius convinced him that his own plan was just such a creed.
Athanasius had made a good faith attempt to craft a creed that all could stomach, but this was not easy. The Romans insisted that Jesus was God—the Ebionites insisted that Yahweh was God, and the Gnostics really felt that the only true god was the Holy Spirit. But that left three gods, which outraged the Ebionites, who, being Jews, were strict monotheists. Athanasius proposed the idea of the Holy Trinity, but he not only failed to convincingly defend such an idea, he couldn’t even explain it. So he said, “It’s a mystery— just believe it.” I don’t mean to give the impression that the idea of “The “Trinity” was original with Athanasius. That Idea had been around a long time, at least since the late second century, especially among the Coptic Christians. And both Arius and Athanasius would have been familiar with it because, as young priests, they had worked together in Alexandria, the queen city of Egyptian Christianity.
Christianity had been brought to Egypt by St. Mark, so I suppose that some may conclude that the doctrine must have come from St. Mark, but I would doubt that. Mark would have been a devout Jew, and as such, would have regarded the idea of a divine Jesus as blasphemy—as did the Ebionites and all other Jewish Christians. More likely, Mark would have told them about Jesus praying to his heavenly Father, (Yahweh) and also told them about the power of the spirit of God, (Yahweh’s spirit) and about the special mission of Jesus, the Messiah (Yahweh’s adopted son.) Remember John: 1, For to so many as received him, he gave the power of becoming Sons of God.” What do you suppose the term “Sons of God” means, if everyone who accepts baptism becomes a “Son of God?” None of this would suggest a divine trinity—Just one god--who had a very powerful spirit and a very special adopted son.
But sometime after Mark died, the Egyptians probably evolved a message that would suit Egyptian expectations, and began teaching “The Trinity.” How did they reconcile this doctrine with the concept of “one god?” They didn’t have to—unlike Mark, they weren’t monotheists. They had always believed in many gods, but three main ones: Isis, her divine son Horus, and the river god, Osiris. So they already had a divine trinity--for hundreds of years, and that’s what they wanted to keep. Apparently, Arius never bought into the trinity, but Athanasius did. That may have been the original cause of the end of their friendship. By the council of Nicaea, they were at least arch rivals, and perhaps bitter enemies. When 85 % of the delegates accepted the Arian version of Christian doctrine, Athanasius must have been consumed with jealous rage. Whether his passionate attempt to undermine Arius’ support was motivated by jealousy or by sincere faith--we can never know. Athanasius lived long after Nicaea, and in 367, performed the final editing of the Christian cannon of scripture.
But just because you have silenced a man does not mean that you have convinced him. After the creed was signed and everyone went home, the bishops went back to teaching and practicing as they always had, each according to his own conscience. But old bishops died and new “orthodox” ones were appointed, and eventually a degree of orthodoxy prevailed in most parts of the empire, but probably not until a few dissenting congregations were slaughtered by roman armies. And in areas off the beaten path and outside the power of Rome (places like present day southern France, or Transylvania,) bishops continued to teach as they liked.
And that’s where “heresies” come from. If you look at all the heresies throughout the ages, none were new ideas. They were all forms of early Christianity which, in certain remote regions, had never been completely stamped out, even though the church and its military allies made numerous bloody attempts to do so. The modern Unitarian movement, for instance, seems to trace from 16th century Transylvania. But though the word “Unitarian” did not exist until the 16th century, Arian Christian communities have existed in Transylvania for many centuries. Congregations which do not accept “The Trinity” have been called “Arian Christians” only since the council of Nicaea. But in Transylvania, such congregations have probably existed since the 2nd century and still exist today, in spite of occasional bloody attempts at repression.
To sum up: Christianity, as we know it today, did not exist until the 4th century, and was the invention of a bitterly contentious committee whose final report was negotiated and signed only under duress. Thus far the words of today’s unholy gospel.
If I have misrepresented the views of either the instructor or Dr. Ehrman, my most abject apologies. Such misrepresentation is not deliberate, but the inevitable result of the over-generalization required in so brief a treatment of so complex a subject. Summing up the entire course in five pages is a bit like making a mosaic tile rendering of the Mona Lisa using just eight tiles.
Heretically Yours, The Cat
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