The Great Myths 4: Constantine, Nicaea and the Bible

The Great Myths 4: Constantine, Nicaea and the Bible

It seems the “Philosophical Atheism” group on Facebook is going to be the New Atheist bad history gift that just keeps on giving.  No anti-Christian snippet or meme seems to be able to get by this group without it being posted as factual, without any hint of checking its claims.  So the gloriously stupid (and grammatically bizarre) pastiche of nonsense above was posted to “Philosophical Atheism” yesterday, with the group’s followers reverently genuflecting to its mighty historical truth and insight.  The irony of this meme urging readers “Don’t just believe me.  Go look it up.” is particularly amusing.  But okay, let’s “look it up”.

The Myth of the Biblical Canon at Nicaea

This utterly confused meme is referring to the hoary myth that the canon of the Bible was voted on at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and even helpfully includes an image of an icon depicting the Emperor Constantine and key figures from that Council holding a copy of the Nicene Creed formulated by the assembled bishops at Nicaea.  This is the basis of the claim that “Constantine and his bishops voted a bunch of works as the Word of God (325 AD)”.  Of course, there certainly was a council held by the emperor Constantine at his palace in Nicaea between May 20 and around June 19 in 325 AD and at it bishops from across the Roman Empire gathered to vote on several things, including the date of Easter, the role of church law and a number of administrative issues.  The key purpose of the Council, however, was the resolution of the Arian Controversy over the status of Jesus as “God the Son” in relation to “God the Father” in the doctrine of the Trinity. The statement of the Council on this matter formed the Nicene Creed which became the basis of future Christological formulations (and the subject of later disputes on the matter).  

What the Council did NOT vote on or even discuss was the Biblical canon – i.e. which Christian books and texts could be considered divinely inspired and therefore “Scripture”, which were useful but not scriptural and which were actually “heretical”.  Despite this, the idea that the “Bible was created by a vote at the Council of Nicaea” is a pseudo historical myth that has been kicking around for centuries and forms part of several key pieces of pseudo scholarship and pop culture, which reveals the apparently “shocking” but actually rather obvious idea that the Bible was put together by a consensus of human beings.  It certainly formed a key plot element in the schlock pseudo historical thriller The Da Vinci Code (2003) and in its film adaptation in 2006.  Perhaps whoever is responsible for posting this meme to the “Philosophical Atheism” group was living under a rock at the time, but it was one of the claims peddled by Dan Brown as historical that attracted criticism not just from Christians but also from scholars generally.  Agnostic atheist scholar Bart Ehrman was typically emphatic on the subject:


“The historical reality is that the emperor Constantine had nothing to do with the formation of the canon of scripture: he did not choose which books to include or exclude and he did not order the destruction of the gospels that were left out of the canon. …. The formation of the New Testament canon was a long and drawn out process that began centuries before Constantine and did not conclude until long after he was dead.” (Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine)


Even if the “Philosophical Atheism” person was living in a cave in the early 2000s and so missed the memo that this stuff is garbage, even the most cursory fact checking would have at least raised doubts in someone who was a genuine rationalist.  After all, the meme’s bizarre grammar and reference to “Black Ankhwakening” – a crackpot Afrocentrist/Black Revisionist group – should have been a signal that this needed to be checked carefully.  And a quick Google of “Constantine + Bible” turns up a plethora of detailed links debunking the whole idea.  But it seems fact checking is not high on the priority list of the so-called rationalists over at “Philosophical Atheism”.



How the Biblical Canon Actually Developed

As Ehrman notes above, far from being determined by one council and an emperor in 325 AD, the formation of the Christian canon was one of slow development over several centuries.  The whole idea of a “canon” of accepted and authoritative works pre-dates Christianity and began with the development of schools of Greek philosophy.  As works by key philosophers circulated in the decades after their deaths, other works wrongly or falsely attributed to them also found their way into circulation.  So later followers of some philosophical traditions developed rules by which they decided which works were genuine and which were pseudepigraphical forgeries – the word “canon” comes from the Greek κανών meaning “rule”, or literally “measuring stick”.

By the early second century Christianity had a similar problem, with a wide range of texts, letters and gospels in circulation all claiming to be authentic works of the first generation of Christians.  Any given isolated Christian community may well have known of some of them but not others. They may also have had copies of a few of them, but have only heard of others (since copies of any books were expensive and precious). And they may also have used a variety of other writings, many of which did not find their way into the Bible. There was no single, central “Church” which dictated these things at this early stage – each community operated in either relative isolation or intermittent communication with other communities and there were no standardised texts or a set list of which texts were authoritative and which were not at this very early stage of the Christian faith.

Christianity’s parent faith, Judaism, had a similar plethora of religious texts from which it chose a few and considered these to be “Scripture” and especially authoritative as the word of God.  There is evidence that this idea was beginning to be applied to some of the early Christian writings as well, with references to four definitive gospels being made by Irenaeus in the mid second century and a reference to interpretation of the letters of Paul alongside “the rest of the Scriptures” being made as early as c. 120 AD (see 2Peter 3:16).

But it seems that the “heresy” of Marcion was what gave second century Christianity the impetus to begin to define which of these various texts had the status of “Scripture” and which did not.  Marcion was born around 100 AD in the city of Sinope on the southern coast of the Black Sea. After a falling out with his father, the local bishop, he travelled to Rome in around 139 AD. There he began to develop his own Christian theology; one which was quite different to that of his father and of the Christian community in Rome. Marcion was struck by the strong distinction made by Paul between the Law of the Jews and the gospel of Christ. For Marcion, this distinction was absolute: the coming of Jesus made the whole of the Jewish Law and Jewish Scriptures redundant and the ‘God’ of the Jews was actually quite different to the God preached by Jesus. For Marcion, the Jewish God was evil, vengeful, violent and judgemental, while the God of Jesus was quite the opposite. Marcion decided that there were actually two Gods – the evil one who had misled the Jews and the good one revealed by Jesus.

This understanding led Marcion to put together a canon of Christian Scripture – the first of its kind – which excluded all of the Jewish Scriptures that make up the Old Testament and which included ten of the Epistles of Paul and only one of the gospels: the Gospel of Luke.

Marcion tried to get his radical reassessment of Christianity and his canon accepted by calling a council of the Christian community in Rome. Far from accepting his teachings, the council excommunicated him and he left Rome in disgust, returning to Asia Minor. There he met with far more success, and Marcionite churches sprang up which embraced his idea of two Gods and used his canon of eleven scriptural works. Alarmed at his success, other Christian leaders began to preach and write vigorously against Marcion’s ideas and it seems that his canon of eleven works inspired anti-Marcionite Christians to begin to define which texts were and were not Scriptural.

As mentioned above, it was Irenaeus who made the first know defence of the four canonical gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – as the oldest and only scriptural ones, and he did so at least partially on the grounds that these four had always been regarded as the earliest and most authoritative.   Interestingly, after two centuries of sceptical analysis, the overwhelming majority of historians, scholars and textual experts (Christian or otherwise) actually agree with Irenaeus and the consensus is that these four gospels definitely are the earliest of the accounts of Jesus’ life.

Not long after Irenaeus’ defence of the four canonical gospels we get our first evidence of a defined list of which texts are scriptural. A manuscript called the Muratorian Canon dates to sometime in the late second century AD and was discovered in a library in Milan in the eighteenth century. It details that the canonical four gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – along with most of the other books found in the modern New Testament, as well as a couple which are not (the Wisdom of Solomon and the Apocalypse of Peter) are ‘scriptural’ and authoritative. It also gives some approval to other, more recent works like The Shepherd of Hermas, but says they should not be read in church as Scripture.

The Muratorian Canon document accepts twenty-three of the twenty-seven works which now make up the New Testament in the Bible. It also explicitly rejects several books on the grounds that they are recent and written by fringe, “heretical” groups and it specifically singles out works by the Gnostic leader Valentius and by Marcion and his followers.

It seems that the challenge posed by Marcion and other dissident groups caused the early Christians to determine which books were scriptural and which were not. And it also seems that recent works, whether they were “heretical” (like the Gnostic gospels) or not (like The Shepherd of Hermas), did not have the status of works from the earliest years of Christianity. It was only these earliest works which were considered authoritative.

So it’s clear that the process of deciding which texts were canonical and which were not was already well under way over a century before the Emperor Constantine was even born. It also continued for a long time after he died. Constantine’s contemporary, the Christian historian Eusebius, set out to “summarise the writings of the New Testament” in his Church History; a work written towards the end of Constantine’s reign. He lists the works which are generally “acknowledged” (Church History, 3.25.1), including the four canonical gospels, Acts, the Epistles of Paul, 1 John, 1 Peter and the Apocalypse of John/”Revelation” (though he says this is still disputed by some). He gives other texts which he says are “still disputed”; including James, Jude, 2 Peter and 2 and 3 John. He gives other books which are probably “spurious” and then lists others which are definitely considered heretical, including the Gospels of Peter, Thomas and Matthias and the Acts of Andrew and John.
So not only did the process of deciding the canon begin long before Constantine, there was still debate within the Church about the canon in his time.

And it continued. In 367 Athanasius wrote his 39th Festal Letter in which he laid out the current twenty-seven books of the New Testament – the first time this canon had been definitively stated by any churchman. A synod convened in Rome by Pope Damasus in 382 AD also considered the question of the canon and, with the help of the great multi-lingual scholar Jerome, settled on the same twenty-seven books set out by Athanasius. At this stage there was still no central authority which could compel church communities in any way but local councils and synods in Hippo and Carthage in north Africa and later ones in Gaul also settled on the same canon.

These local definitions mean that there was actually no definitive statement by the Catholic Church as to the make-up of the New Testament until the Council of Trent in 1546: a full 1209 years after Constantine died. The full development of the canon took several centuries, though the basics of which gospels were to be included was settled by 200 AD at least.

François-Marie Arouet aka “Voltaire”

The Origin of the Myth

So the central historical claim in the meme is total and complete garbage, but if that’s so, where did the myth come from?  It seems that it can be traced to a quip made by Voltaire in reference to a miracle story of no historical value.  François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), better known by his nom-de-plume “Voltaire”, is still justly famous for his wit, his erudition and for his attacks on the established position of the Catholic Church in the France of his day and his advocacy of freedom of religion and the separation of Church and State.  He made several mentions of the idea that the Biblical canon was decided at the Council of Nicaea in his Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764), noting with amusement the rather silly way the Council supposedly chose the relevant books:


Il est rapporté dans le supplément du concile de Nicée que les Pères étant fort embarrassés pour savoir quels étaient les livres cryphes ou apocryphes de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament, les mirent tous pêle-mêle sur un autel; et les livres à rejeter tombèrent par terre. C’est dommage que cette belle recette soit perdue de nos jours.

(It is reported in the Supplement of the Council of Nicaea that the Fathers, when they had no idea how to determine which were the questionable or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testament, piled all of them disorderly on an altar; and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It’s a pity this nice method has fallen into disuse nowadays.)”

None of the accounts of the Council from the time give so much as a hint about any such event, so Voltaire was clearly working from much later sources.  Some online detective work by Roger Pearse and others has untangled the story of this anecdote, and it appears Voltaire was working from an appendix to the Jesuit scholar Philippe Labbé’s Sanctissima concilia (1671), which is the “supplement” mentioned in the quote above.  But the ultimate source seems to be an anonymous medieval Byzantine work, the Vetus Synodikon , which gave an account of the major synods and councils of the Church up to around 887 AD.  This work became available in western Europe in the early seventeenth century and so seems to be where whole story came from.  And the Synodikon account of Nicaea concludes:


“The canonical and apocryphal books it distinguished in the following manner: in the house of God the books were placed down by the holy altar; then the Council asked the Lord in prayer that the inspired works be found on top and – as in fact happened – the spurious on the bottom.”


This ninth century miracle story is only found in this one work and is not referenced in any earlier material on the Council of Nicaea.  So it appears to have found its way via its publication by the Lutheran theologian Johannes Pappus (1549-1610) to Philippe Labbé’s appendix and thus to Voltaire.  And, thanks to the popularity of Voltaire’s work across Europe, his quip about this miraculous selection of books at Nicaea has given rise to the whole myth.

Constantine’s Bible

Despite the fact that the process of establishing the canon of the Bible began long before Constantine was born and continued after he died and despite him playing no part in it at the Council of Nicaea or anywhere else, the myth continues.  The idea that the Bible was selected by a wicked politician for various nefarious purposes is just too appealing to many people.  And those alleged nefarious purposes include everything from suddenly imposing a divine Jesus on Christianity (according to Dan Brown and his kooky source Holy Blood Holy Grail) to covering up Jesus’ New Age beliefs in reincarnation and Indian mysticism (according to that great scholar, Shirley MacLaine).  But it seems the baseless origins and the crackpot supporters of this silly idea don’t matter to the guys at “Philosophical Atheism”.  Not that any of them checked on this whole thing anyway.

A few of those who are devoted to the whole “Constantine created the Bible” myth have been forced to admit that there is no direct evidence linking the Council of Nicaea to the formation of the canon, so they cling to two pieces of evidence to try to salvage the idea.  The first is a fifth century reference by Jerome in his Prologue to Judith where he notes the Old Testament book of Judith  was “found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures”, which they try to argue means the Council did have some kind of discussion on the make up of the canon.  Unfortunately Jerome is simply noting that Judith was considered scriptural in that it was referred to in the deliberations of the Council.

Alternatively, they point to an account by  Eusebius of Caesarea in his Life of Constantine detailing how the emperor commissioned him to oversee the copying and production of 50 copies of “the sacred Scriptures”.  Exactly which “sacred Scriptures” is not specified, so it’s unknown if this refers to the Old Testament, some canon of the New Testament or both.  But this request (and another one made to Athanasius of Alexandria around the same time) simply reflects the fact that such an enterprise was so massively expensive that it took Imperial sponsorship to fund it and it seems to be one of many acts of patronage of Christianity by Constantine, not some attempt at establishing a canon of his own.  As has already been shown above, the canon was well on the way to being established well before this anyway.
Fact Checking Memes?

So the silly meme posted without the faintest whiff of scepticism or critical analysis by the so-called rationalists of “Philosophical Atheism” is a crackpot myth peddled by New Agers based on an eighteenth century joke and ninth century folk tale.  It’s presented by a Black Revisionist kook, along with other pseudo historical conspiracist nonsense and some appalling grammar and syntax.  The obvious question to ask, therefore, is why the hell “Philosophical Atheism” posted this laughable junk?  Simple – because it’s anti-Christian.  The New Atheist ideologues at “Philosophical Atheism” don’t care about facts, reason, logic or scepticism.  They are just fanatics who post whatever tickles their emotional and irrational prejudices.  Much like many religious believers, ironically enough.

Edit 23.05.17:  After making detailed critical comments on this and other pseudo historical memes on the so-called “Philosophical Atheism” Facebook group I have now been banned from the group, blocked from commenting and all my many detailed comments have been erased.  Thus another great victory has been won for “rationalism” and “free thought”.

82 thoughts on “The Great Myths 4: Constantine, Nicaea and the Bible

  1. Thanks Tim for some good information. While the Catholics affirmed the NT canon in the 1546 as you mention, Wikipedia says "For the Orthodox, the recognition of these writings as authoritative was formalized in the Second Council of Trullan of 692" That seems a little strange to me as they didn't formally split until much later. Do you know anything about that?

  2. It seems the status of the Trullan Council or Quinisext Council was debated in the west and that, overall, it was not regarded as a true "Ecumenical Council" and therefore not binding on Christendom overall. Bede called it a a "reprobate" synod, and Paul the Deacon an "erratic" one. Your reference seems to be to this Council's endorsement of Athanasius' 39th Festal Letter and therefore his endorsement of the twenty-seven book New Testament canon.

  3. Interestingly, the utterances of ecumenical councils like Nicea, are also called "canon's." Probably to signify that they define hopefully core, binding doctrines. This might complicate matters somewhat. Possibly this is a source of some confusion.

  4. it's interesting, too, how close it is to "Baptist history"–Constantine and his dynasty ruined Christianity by making it a capital-C state Church and persecuted all these True Christians ever since (the Baptists naturally say they're the original, Apostolic Christianity, so their absence before the 16th century is proof of their repression, not of total nonexistence)

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  5. It's not just Baptists – the idea that the "true" Christianity was hijacked by the wicked Constantine for political ends and turned into the Catholic Church and that the Reformation just reversed this situation has been a mainstay of Protestant historiography for centuries. It's interesting just how much New Atheist bad history is actually just a repackaging of Protestant historiographical tropes.

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    1. Lots of Protestants want to make the break off point later then Constantine though. Anglicans accept all 7 Ecumenical Councils and most other major denomination accept the first 4.

      I am fine choosing to not care what the Councils said without needing to believe crazy Conspiracy Theories about them.

      Still what people say about Nicea does feel much more accurate when said about Ephesus or the 5th Council.

  6. I tend to agree with the Constantine hijacking idea, not necessarily as his deliberate intention, but simply because christianity, like any ideology, is safer when not allied with political power. Power corrupts and tends to draw people in who want the power without the ideology, and that is certainly true (I believe) of christianity through 17 centuries of "Christendom", but also true of socialism (e.g. the actions of Pol Pot, Stalin, etc, are a long way from the ideals of socialism) and probably other movements as well.

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    1. I would also point out that the somewhat shaky alliance between the Church and Rome also made it possible for Bishop Ambrose to condemn Theodosius’s killing of 7000 in 390.

      Being at least a nominal Christian, Theodosius made himself subject to Church law, and he was forced to repent and do penance. Actually, given he didn’t just have Ambrose beheaded, I suspect he took his religious beliefs seriously.

      I wonder if part of the problem with Christianity allying with political power arose in the 7th and 8th centuries where a fear of Islam, which had conquered much of Eastern Rome, drove the Church into throwing its weight behind Charlemagne, crowning him Emperor of what would be later called the Holy Roman Empire.

      I don’t think it’s possible to have politics without ideologues. Why would any non-ideologue care enough to get into politics. It’s similar to the old saw, that if a division is made between scholars and warriors you will have your thinking done by cowards, and your fighting done by fools.

  7. Sorry, but the "hijacking" idea is seriously bad history, largely because it confuses ultimate outcomes with intent. The idea that Constantine co-opted Christianity for his own nefarious political reasons is nonsense. In fact, if he wanted to choose any sect to use to gain support, stabilise the Empire, harness popularity etc., then Christianity was about the worst one to choose in the early 300s. All the evidence works against the idea that this or anything like it was his intention and his initial actions strongly indicate that he did not want to alienate his pagan subjects and did not want to make Christianity the sole religion or even the state faith. This happened later, but the communal nature of religion in the Roman world and the hierarchical nature of political power, patronage and sponsorship of religion made this fairly inevitable once Christianity got a certain momentum in the mid fourth century.

    I don't disagree about the inherent dangers of power combined with religion, but even today we find negotiating a suitable and workable separation of church and state difficult. Again, once Christianity ceased to be a marginalised and periodically persecuted outsider sect, that entanglement was inevitable. The "hijack" idea is pseudo historical garbage.

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    1. “gain support, stabilise the Empire, harness popularity”
      What’s exactly nefarious about this idea? To me it looks like sound policy. Donald the Clown would be a much less bad president were he more successful striving for these goals. Again – what’s the problem, besides christianity not delivering any of them when it became state religion? Also, given the growing popularity of the various Jesus cults, what other options were realistic?

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      1. Whether it would have been a good policy or not is beside the point. The point is that championing Christianity would not have helped achieve it.

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        1. I am wondering how you can be so confident of the effect of something that didn’t happen? Referring to “championing Christianity would not have helped achieve it.” If I read your “THE GREAT MYTHS 4: CONSTANTINE, NICAEA AND THE BIBLE” correctly, Constantine didn’t do the nefarious deed.

  8. The "hijacking" idea makes sense only to people who believe there is no truth. Do you, personally, look around at all the competing ideas and decide which one gives you the most power, regardless of whether it's true or nonsense, and then espouse that? Or do you decide on what to profess based on what you think is true? Why do you think most people in the world are, or have ever been, any different from you? Of course, thinking something is true doesn't mean that it is true. But deciding that everything is false, or that truth doesn't matter, is not how normal people think (even if some do). Most people either try to determine what is true and follow it, or become enamored with an ideology and interpret everything as if it proved the ideology is true. Truth, or what is believed to be the truth, has always been paramount to most people. Including emperors.

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  9. The "hijacking" idea also fundamentally misunderstands the ancient world and people's relationships with gods. Roman religion was a kind of reciprocal bargain – humans gave the gods honour and worship and got protection and favour in return, a little like the relationship between a patron or sponsor and their client or supplicant in many aspects of Roman society. Constantine seems to have genuinely seen his against-the-odds victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge as a sign of divine favour by the Christian God and so felt obligated to respond with devotion.

    Those who doubt he saw some kind of vision and must have been lying also don't seem to realise that people in the ancient world were constantly on the lookout for signs and omens and so "saw" all kinds of things that they invested with divine significance. This was particularly the case in times of stress, so the idea that he saw something that he took as a vision and a sign from a particular god before a battle he probably didn't expect to win makes much more sense that the idea that he simply made the whole thing up for cynical purposes.

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    1. So what if Constantine has cynical purposes? One of the most beloved presidents of the USA, FDR, lied about his intentions regarding WW-2. How is that any less cynical?
      The question whether Constantine actually saw something, deluded himself, lied or (my bet, because I’m lazy) some combination is irrelevant. It contributes zilch to the crucial questions whether he served the interests of the Empire well and how christianity managed to become state religion. It only betrays a very modern obsession with TRVTH, totally atypical for Antiquity.

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  10. It is also worth mentioning that Geza Vermes covered the Council of Nicaea in his book “Christian Beginnings – from Nazareth to Nicaea AD 30-325” (Allen Lane, 2012). Nicaea was not a big issue for most of the Church; of the 1800 bishops invited, between 200 and 300 attended and only six were from the western Church (Ossius of Cordova was there as Constantine’s chief adviser on Christian matters, but Sylvester of Rome did not attend, sending two priests instead). Vermes says (p 229) “The westerners were not greatly interested in this Oriental row [about Arianism], which they probably did not fully understand.”

    This row actually had echoes down church history, because the filioque clause in the Creed which triggered the schism between Roman Catholic and orthodox churches in 1054, originally came from an attempt in 6th Century Spain to defend the Trinitarian position against Arianism, which had remained popular in Northern Europe.

  11. Finally Britain became a republic under leadership of Oliver Cromwell for 11
    years with no monarchy. The Fourth Crusade was with the instance of Innocent III along with other French
    priests. Am I the only real Catholic totally embarrassed from the recent “coronation”
    of recent bishops to the ranks of cardinals in Rome.

  12. Allow me to present why I think the anonymous synoptic Gospels are late 1st to mid 2nd century writings written to support Christianity.

    Justin Martyr, the most eminent of the early Fathers, wrote about the middle of the second century. His writings in proof of the divinity of Christ demanded the use of these Gospels had they existed in his time. He never mentions them. He constantly quotes the Old Testament and other New Testament books, but never quotes the Gospels. Why not?
    As for the “memoirs of the apostles” he mentions, well, we don’t really know what he meant by that because, as you say, there were many different Christian writings floating around at the time that were all claiming to be authentic. I personally don’t even think the memoirs were available for him to write about, which is why he used apocryphal texts and the Old Testament when writing about Christ’s divinity. The memoirs might have been late 2nd century.

    Another way of supporting the theory that at least one of the Gospels was written in the second century is by looking at what it actually says. Luke, for example, is written to Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, who lived in the late 2nd century.

    If my hypothesis is correct, then the different councils might have had more impact on editing and compiling the synoptic Gospels than originally thought. What I mean is that they didn’t just pick them out, but also actively tampered with them.

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    1. “He never mentions them.”

      Wrong. He refers several times to “the memoirs (ἀπομνημονεύματα) of the apostles” and in one place makes it explicit that these are the gospels, referring to “the memoirs (ἀπομνημονεύματα again) which are also called gospels” (Apology LXVI.3). Justin was generally writing for a non-Christian audience, so he generally used the long established technical term for works memorialising the deeds and sayings of great teachers (ἀπομνημονεύματα, memoirs), rather than the purely Christian term for books about the sayings and deeds of Jesus (εὐαγγέλιον, gospel). But it is quite clear he was referring to the gospels.

      “As for the “memoirs of the apostles” he mentions, well, we don’t really know what he meant by that”

      We do – see above. You just don’t know the material well enough to avoid basic errors like this one.

      “If my hypothesis is correct …”

      It isn’t. It’s based on a false assumption because you don’t know the relevant texts well enough and you have no understanding of the linguistics and its context. This is something I see over and over again with people who have great confidence in their private theories about fringe ideas despite not actually knowing what the hell they’re talking about. See “Dunning-Kruger Effect”.

      1. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see how you can know for sure that the memoirs he mentions are actually referring to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because, as you said in your article, there were so many different works floating around at the time that called themselves Gospels. How can we know? Why doesn’t Justin actually QUOTE the Gospels like he does with other books in the Bible?

        And I take it that since you didn’t respond directly to my theory about Luke being written in the 2nd century that you either agree with it or think it’s too stupid to even address?

        1. “how you can know for sure that the memoirs he mentions are actually referring to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because, as you said in your article, there were so many different works floating around at the time that called themselves Gospels”

          As I have to note regularly, knowing things “for sure” is a luxury we rarely have when it comes to textual analysis and ancient history. So we rely on careful analysis to give us assessments of likelihood. Textual analysis of Justin Martyr has convinced pretty much everyone that Justin knew both gMatth and gLuke as well as a harmonised form of both. There is also reference to a passage known only from gMark. Whether he also knew gJohn is much debated and this remains uncertain. The key scholarly studies on this can be found in A. J. Bellinzoni, The Sayings of Jesus in the Writings of Justin Martyr (Leiden, 1967) and Leslie L. Kline, “Harmonized Sayings of Jesus in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Justin Martyr” in Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentlischen Wissenschaft 66, pp. 223-241, 1975.

          “And I take it that since you didn’t respond directly to my theory about Luke being written in the 2nd century that you either agree with it or think it’s too stupid to even address?”

          If you have some evidence that the “Theophilus” of gLuke’s prologue is the one who was the bishop of Antioch then perhaps I’ll address it. But if the name is all you have, then I won’t bother. There are about five different hypothesis as to who this person may have been, but given the highly generic nature of the name – θεόφιλος, “friend of God”, “beloved by God” – I’d say it’s most likely the author’s way of addressing a hypothetical ideal reader.

          1. Ok, so I’ve done a little bit more research since our last chat and I found this quote “The very names of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are never mentioned by him [Justin]—do not occur once in all his writings.”

            Taken from “Christian Records” page 71.

            Thoughts?

          2. “Thoughts?”

            My main thought is “So?” None of the gospels explicitly claims authorship by anyone, except perhaps in the final sentences of gJohn, which Justin does not seem to have used. They originally circulated simply as accounts of Jesus’ life and were only given their current attributions later in the second century.

  13. “They originally circulated simply as accounts of Jesus’ life and were only given their current attributions later in the second century.”

    Again, weren’t the Gospels originally written in the 2nd century? For example, a passage in Matthew has Jesus saying, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” This might allude to Matthew being a Roman Catholic Gospel, written after the beginning of the establishment of this hierarchy to uphold the supremacy of the Petrine Church of Rome. Combine this with Justin never directly quoting the Gospels and Luke being addressed to Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, it becomes a little too suspicious to be a coincidence. If it was just one factor by itself, it could be dismissed. But when more clues surface that allude to the Gospels being 2nd century writings, it’s a little hard to ignore in my opinion.

    1. “Again, weren’t the Gospels originally written in the 2nd century? “

      No. gMark is generally dated to not long after 70 AD, gMatt and gLuke to the 80s AD and gJohn from 90-120 AD. Only gJohn is possibly early second century.

      “For example, a passage in Matthew has Jesus saying, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” This might allude to Matthew being a Roman Catholic Gospel, written after the beginning of the establishment of this hierarchy to uphold the supremacy of the Petrine Church of Rome.”

      You’ve got that backwards. The much later idea of Petrine Supremacy was based on that line in gMatt, not the other way around.

      “Combine this with Justin never directly quoting the Gospels and Luke being addressed to Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, it becomes a little too suspicious to be a coincidence.”

      Justin clearly refers to material found in gMark, gLuke and gMatt, e.g. in Dialogue with Trypho 101:3; 102:3; 103:6; 104:1; 105:1, 5-6; 106:1, 3, 4; 107:1. And you can’t take the name “Theophilus” and just decide this means gLuke refers to a particular individual with that name just because you want to. This is feeble reasoning.

      “If it was just one factor by itself …”

      None of your “factors” stands up to scrutiny. This is crackpot stuff.

      1. Ok, but what about what Christian scholar Dr. Dowdwell says?
        “We have at this day certain most authentic ecclesiastical writers of the times, as Clemens Romanus, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, who wrote in the order wherein I have named them, and after all the writers of the New Testament. But in Hermas you will not find one passage or any mention of the New Testament, nor in all the rest is any one of the Evangelist named” (Dissertations Upon Irenaeus).

        Theophilus, who lived in the 2nd century, mentions the Gospel of John, and Irenaeus, who wrote a little later, mentions all of the Gospels, and makes numerous quotations from them. In the latter half of the 2nd century then, between Justin and Papias, and the time of Theophilus and Irenaeus, the four Gospels could have been written or compiled, correct?

        1. Dodwell wrote in 1689, so you aren’t exactly referring to cutting edge scholarship. No modern scholar accepts a second century date for the gospels. Ignatius of Antioch quotes from gMatt, gLuke and Acts and he died c. 110 AD. And Polycarp of Smyrna quotes from all three of the synoptic gospels and he died c. 155 AD. So no, they were not written in the second half of the second century.

          1. Ok, but would you at least agree that Christianity did not start out as just one set of beliefs, but many competing ones?

            Irenaeus (130-202CE) listed 20 forms of Christianity that he himself was aware of. Christianity did not start out as a unified movement. We have to remember that the disciples were probably dispersed at a very early time with no fixed formulation on Christian beliefs.

            At least until around the 4th century it was a mixture of doctrines and beliefs, it wasn’t until the more literal interpreters of Christianity got in bed with the Roman state in 312 A.D that they were able to impose conformity. It took and melted a lot of elements of other faiths and philosophies. Alexandria was a important melting pot in that.

          2. Christianity “started out” as a Jewish sect focused on the idea that Jesus was the Messiah. It developed from there and, yes, developed into many and various forms. But no, the form that won out in the end was not the product of “more literal interpreters” and that form of Christianity had become predominant long before they “got in bed with the Roman state”, which is why it was the form adopted by Constantine when he converted. He then imposed much more uniformity, but you are overstating the diversity of forms in the early fourth century. By that stage a lot of the earlier variants were quite small and many others had ceased to exist.

  14. I’m not as concerned by claims about Nicea and the Canon as I am by claims that the Trinity doctrine flat out didn’t exist before. Tertulian’s Trinity doctrine was basically the same as Nicea, he says he was in the minority but that could have been his Western perceptive.

    There were plenty of Pre-Nicene references to Jesus being Divine, and even already debate about “Modalism”.

  15. Thanks for your good work on this myth (and others too) about Christianity. While reading about the stuff on ‘Philosophical Atheism’, I was reminded of a thought by G.K.Chesterton when he wrote in ‘Orthodoxy’,
    “This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves?”

  16. “….. actually agree with Irenaeus ”
    1. The relevance for “philosophical atheism” of the question who actually put together the NT is beyond my understanding.
    2. The questions whether the guy(s) did a good job and which standard we use seem far more relevant to atheist me. Indeed, without being aware of the scholarly consensus, it’s obvious the guy(s) did a fine job picking the stuff that comes closest to early christianity. It seems to me that even JM’s, no matter how silly their quack, should not have any problems with it. So we can confidently say that your favourite Facebook group are even bigger crackpots.

    “Simple – because it’s anti-Christian.”
    I genuinely don’t get how “Constantine decided the canon” can be anti-christian. Why would any christian care even if it were true? Call me naive – I think it’s anti-atheist. I’m reminded of an old Dutch proverb: fire engine nr. 11 also produces mud.

    1. A bit late, but oh well. It’s considered anti-Christian because the claim is usually used in conjunction with the idea that somehow Christianity is just cobbled together Roman philosophy and paganism, and cannot possibly be an authentic religious movement that developed on its own.

      1. Again – why should any christian care? I mean – according to that logic neither physics nor atheism is authentic. As if that makes any difference.

        1. Primarily because it’s not true, and for the reasons I stated above. I think the point that Tim is making is that many Anti-Theists will just believe that the argument of Constantine deciding the canon as true for no other reason that it can be made to use Christianity look bad, or as it usually happens, as rebranded Roman paganism. As if, deciding what books to use somehow changes what the books themselves say. Speaking as a Christian, I care in so far as it gets annoying dealing with the New Atheists randomly pulling the Constantine or Easter is pagan arguments out as a giant, “I win” card when a debate doesn’t go their way.

          1. “primarily because it’s not true”
            Of course. That only increases my surprise. The point is: even if it counterfactually were true it wouldn’t make any difference for christians, just like “atheism isn’t authentic” makes any difference for any atheist or “physics isn’t authentic” for any physicist. I simply don’t see how “not authentic” makes anything look bad – okay, paintings perhaps. It just makes the person who uses it look bad – even if christianity were rebranded pagantry. It’s not an “I win” strategy, it’s an “I lose” strategy. As a staunch unbeliever myself I rather avoid that when discussing the god question.
            So besides the generic “atheists can be as stupid as theists” I don’t get it. At least I understand why many (not most) christians are creationists. I even understand why people advocate a flat Earth.

          2. That’s a good way to look at it. I guess I’m just bothered by the use of misinformation more than thinking about what that misinformation actually does if it is true.

            That is one thing I do like about this blog. It is a good place in general for anyone to research and discuss history rather than pointless flame wars.

  17. Dang, an actual atheist website that writes something pertaining to history that isn’t laughable outright. Very rare indeed. It would be wonderful if the debate was between “Orthodox” Christianity, and actual “rational” atheists, but this is not to be.
    A vast majority of atheists, if they believed what is written here, if they did not believe that Constantine created the Bible, that Jesus wasn’t a “myth”, and that no person believed that Jesus rose from the dead, until they aggrandized his story several decades and centuries later, there would be almost no atheists in America.
    However, most Americans (especially atheist Americans), are utterly historically illiterate, and they base conclusions on their historical illiteracy.

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    1. A vast majority of atheists, if they believed what is written here, if they did not believe that Constantine created the Bible, that Jesus wasn’t a “myth”, and that no person believed that Jesus rose from the dead, until they aggrandized his story several decades and centuries later, there would be almost no atheists in America.

      To be clear, I don’t believe Constantine created the Bible, nor that Jesus is a mythical person, nor that it took decades after his death for people to believe in the resurrection. I’m still an atheist. I believe you have causation reversed here. People who are already atheists latch on to silly ideas to justify to themselves. People don’t get talked into being atheists based on bad history.

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    2. Really? When I rejected Christianity, I’d never even heard of Mythicism, let alone the absurd theory that Constantine invented the whole story and retconned it into history. I still believed Jesus was a historical figure, that the NT was composed by the early Church in the late 1st/early 2nd centuries, and that belief in the Resurrection arose within a few years of the events. I imagine there are some apostates who were motivated to question their faith by Mythicists, but I’d like to see hard statistics before I believe it’s that influential.

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  18. Interesting article and discussion. I’m an atheist because I find no evidence for any gods, Christian or otherwise. I’ve never believed. The bible is simply a collection of stories, man trying to make sense if the world. Some of it references real events. Jesus was most probably a real person, but deeds attributed to him (miracles) are most likely recycled, misinterpreted or simply made up. So much of it has been shown to be flawed/contradictory/untrue that I see I ought not base my life on it. Niceae or not, the adoption of Christianity by the Romans over time probably had a huge impact on how it developed.

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  19. I would suggest the following emendation to your translation of Voltaire. (It has no consequences for your argument.)

    “It is reported in the Supplement of the Council of Nicaea that the Fathers, when they had no idea how to determine which were the questionable or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testament, piled all of them disorderly on an altar; and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It’s a pity this nice method has fallen into disuse nowadays.”

    Also, the French text should probably read thus: “…que les Pères, étant fort embarrassés…”

  20. Hi Tim,
    I was reading the comments on this article, and as one of them mentions the confrontation between Emperor Theodosius and Ambrosius of Milan, I wanted to ask what you think about this episode? Is it historical, or a Christian legend? Does is prove that Theodosius sincerely aknowledged the moral authority of the church?

    1. There is no reason to think it didn’t happen. And Theodosius was clearly a devout believer, so it makes sense that he would behave as a devout believer of the time would behave to be readmitted to the congregation. This was before the Church developed the mechanics of penance and confession that turned into a sacrament in later centuries, so a sinner had to undergo this kind of ritualised public atonement in this period.

  21. Even if it wasn’t compiled by imperial politicians, that doesn’t give much comfort in trusting the established canon.
    First, if a work is false, it should be clearly false enough that the early church wouldn’t burn it. Book-burning is basically admitting that they are afraid of the text, and don’t trust HS to keep the Bible clean. They took it into their own hands. The Jews did this to the books of Enoch, despite the NT clearly referencing it, and the Septuagint, which we used for 1500 years until Luther decided to toss it, and several NT books because they contained doctrines he didn’t like. I have little reason to believe the Bible was immune to that if done by a majority long ago. The fact the NT doesn’t quote the apocrypha means nothing, since it didn’t quote Ruth and many of the minor prophets either.
    Second, they sicced the Emperor on heretics, dishing out exactly what they suffered years earlier. That sort of monstrous cowardice implicates the Nicaean church of having become thoroughly corrupt by 300.
    Majority or historical approval mean nothing to me: the way is narrow. The Nicene church became the monster it was attached by 10 times earlier.
    The Bible is sufficient, I’m sure, but by no means complete or inerrant. The fact that some fundamentalist professor has to write a 400 page book makes inerrancy indefensible in itself. They worship the Bible, and not the God who commissioned it.

    1. I have no idea what any of that rant has to do with me or anything I’ve said. Perhaps you should go find a Christian blog and make these comments there. They have nothing to do with my article above.

          1. I have to say, I love the implicit reasoning behind Cornelius Pomponius Pisces’s reasoning:

            If ‘Christianity good’, but Constantine do bad thing, then Christianity no good!

          2. Do sincere Christians murder their families? Do sincere Christians make political alliances with people who murder their families?

          3. No further questions. You’ve just said everything about post-Establishment Christianity the world needs to know.

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          4. Okay. Why should I care about that? And what exactly is “post-Establishment Christianity”?

  22. Have you seen Joe Rogans interview with Peter boghossian episode #735? It’s from I think 2015 so maybe Joe has been corrected but, at around the 70 minute mark he starts a rant in which he says the bible was written by Constantine and a bishop. Here’s a clip https://youtu.be/y5nyyupLskI

  23. It seems that the New Testament canon did indeed evolve over time but what about the Old Testament canon? Josephus mentions the 22 books that would eventually become part of the orthodox Jewish canon but was that uniform in his time or were there still debates about the Hebrew Bible canon?

    1. Yes, there were lots of debates. The works in the LXX that were rejected in the de-hellenization of Judaism by the rabbis as a response to the temple’s destruction and the rise of Christianity.
      Esther meets no qualifications for canonicity and no marks of inspiration, and even contradicts 1 Samuel 15, but was added anyway, yet 1 Maccabees was rejected despite being the most historically backed story in the Bible by far. The Wisdom of Solomon was rejected by Jews because it was written down in Greek. Protestants reject it because it depicts Wisdom as a mode/aspect of God the Son. Baruch and Tobit were rejected gratuitously despite have no more errors than the other books.
      Bear in mind, Luther himself tried to move the book of James to an appendix (Antilegomena) in the back of the Bible like he did with his selection of Apocrypha.

  24. I’ve just discovered this blog and is truly interesting and enlightening. Even as an atheist, I must say that I felt for those myths too.

    About Voltaire… When I was young, I was an active part on the Catholic church and that same story was what we were being told about how the four books became canonical. That’s how far that story is spread in our society. So, evidently, not having internet and being the church a source of authority, I always believed that to be the nonsensical true story.

  25. Hello. I am a Christian from Turkey. I have just read a rebuttal into this writing, the rebuttal I found successful. (I am not going to cite the link, because 1) that maybe considered, by the author, an ad 2) the site may have policy of not publishing comments including links.) I have some questions (that emerged from that rebuttal). Can you answer them, please? Here are they:
    1) Why is this “myth” attributed to New Atheists while the post was published by those who aspire to be PHILOSOPHICAL Atheists, not New Atheists?
    2) Why is this “myth” attributed to those aspirants only and not the Muslims who originated this myth? If the author allows, I can cite the link and share ACADEMIC papers from MUSLIM THEOLOGIANS that acknowledge that the myth was spread by Muslims.

    Waiting to hear from you, Sincerely, Mert.

    1. There’s no problem with posting a link to this so-called “rebuttal”.
      To answer your questions:

      (i) The term “New Atheist” applies to any anti-theist activists – any atheists who are actively arguing against belief in God. The Facebook group who calls itself “Philosophical Atheism” is a New Atheist group.
      (ii) I don’t attribute the myth to that group. On the contrary, I note it is an old myth and trace its origins back to Voltaire. No Muslims originated this myth, they have just picked it up and repeated it.

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  26. The Council of Nicea story I like to tell (even if it is also very likely highly suspect) is the one where a certain Bishop Nicholas supposedly got into a heated debate with either Arius himself or one of his disciples and supposedly, again, punched said Arian when Nicholas found the latter’s words too offensive to tolerate.

    1. About everything around this bishop is suspect – he lives on in The Netherlands as Sinterklaas, who arrives every December not from Turkey but from Spain. Still nobody doubts that hé is (based upon) a historical character.

  27. So…, you are saying that Constantine ordered a book to be made with absolutely no idea what that book should look like or its contents to spread the ABSOLUTE authority that would eliminate any text suggesting that of a view or Valintiunus or Marcion origin and outright denial of Gnosticism and its earlier text… but Constantine didn’t do anything…

    What kind of blind writing is this made-up website anyway…

    The Muratorian Canon can’t even be authenticated to pre-Constantine origin, the one who is not looking into this is you, this whole article is a logical fallacy at best. Making up a fairytale to outright deny what could easily be explained as “I don’t really know how they picked them but the idea seems to be constant until X” , this is what I don’t like about “Internet Christian “historians””

    1. Constantine was a general and politician. He left the selection of what texts to include in the collations he financed to Eusebius. No, that selection did not set the canon, as can be seen from how Eusebius’ views on what texts were canonical differed from the canon that came to be accepted later in the fourth century. No Gnostic works were being considered by this stage, so that’s fantasy too. And an overwhelming majority of scholars date the Muratorian Fragment to before the fourth century.

      I have no idea what a “made up website” is. This site is based on the work of leading scholars and historians. And if you want to complain about “internet Christian historians” you should go find one and talk to them. I’m an atheist.
      Your comment is pretty stupid and hostile, so I doubt any more from you are going to be seen here.

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