Constantine and the Bible
The historical myths surrounding the emperor Constantine, his conversion to Christianity and the claim he created the Bible at the Council of Nicaea are persistent and continue to be propagated in popular culture, despite being total nonsense. Unfortunately, leading atheists also perpetuate these silly ideas, with everyone from Richard Dawkins to Joe Rogan insisting that Constantine was not really a Christian, that he pretended to convert for political reasons and that it was he who set the canon of the New Testament. It is a sad testament to the poverty of these atheists’ historical knowledge that their understanding is stunted at the level of the airport thriller, The Da Vinci Code.
In this latest video on the History for Atheists video channel, I look at the actual historical evidence and show how the caricature of history presented by these public anti-theists is hopelessly wrong.
Further reading
David L. Dungan, Constantine’s Bible: Politics and the Making of the New Testament (Fortress: 2007)
Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, (Simon & Schuster: 2018)
Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, (Penguin: 1986)
Peter J. Leithart, Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (IVP Academic: 2010)
Paul Stephenson, Constantine (Quercus: 2009)
24 thoughts on “Constantine and the Bible”
Blast from the past! Brings back memories of discussing the DVC (which was garbage) back in the day…
Some publishers in your references are not scholarly; like Simon & Schuster. Others are wellknown for apologetics; like Fortress.
Could you include a few more scholarly references?
I included books for the general reader who wanted a introductory biography on Constantine (Stephenson) and books on how Constantine is seen by Christian traditions today and down the centuries (Leithart). Duggan’s book is on the historiography of the idea that Constantine created the Bible and is an excellent book, so dismissing it because it’s published by Fortress is stupid. And Ehrman is a leading scholar who writes both academic works and trade press books for a wider audience. The one I list is one of the latter and gives a brilliant overview of the socio-political background to Constantine’s conversion. So I’m pretty comfortable with my selection thanks. Try reading books instead of dismissing them for stupid reasons.
Textbook ad hominem argument, and poorly done at that. The idea seems to be that only books by certain approved publishers count, regardless of the authors or, for that matter, the substance of the book. The idea that trade presses never publish books with rigor is simply ignorant.
As for Fortress Press publishing “apologetics,” if you mean the word in the sense of “systematic argumentative discourse” I have to wonder why this is a bad thing. If you mean “a branch of theology devoted to the defense of the divine origin and authority of Christianity,” it may be that Fortress sometimes publishes such works, but even if true it does not follow that this is all it publishes.
Even putting aside everything you say here, the idea that if he only converted on his deathbed, that means he wasn’t really a Christian, never made any sense to me. If he was only pretending to be Christian, there would be no point to it; what political advantage could he have gained while he was dying?
Yes, the whole idea is pretty incoherent.
It’s strange how no one ever seems to suggest that all the things that cast doubt on his conversion might have been him cynically pretending to be a pagan…
Good point.
“According to Bart Ehrman, all Christians contemporary to Constantine got baptized on their deathbed since they firmly believed that continuing to sin after baptism ensures their eternal damnation.” (Wikipedia article on
deathbed conversion). Even people who had been Christians since childhood, would still only get baptized on their deathbed; not being baptized didn’t make them pagans.
I would add to Tim’s further reading: Geza Vermes’ “Christian Beginnings from Nazareth to Nicea” (Penguin: 2012) which includes a good deal of information on what did and did not happen at Nicea.
The gist ultimately is that Gnostic Christianity didn’t win and that this must have been a conspiracy by evil patriarchal Constantine. Modern-day neo-Gnostics (those affiliated with some Masonic lodge or New Age club or another) read the Pistis Sophia and assume because of it that Gnostics must have been goddess worshipping matriarchal feminists and portray all scholarship that correctly notes their extreme misogyny and their insignificant numbers among early Christians as a conspiracy against Gnosticism. Just read the controversy regarding the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife”. Neo-Gnostics go so far as to fabricate fragments in order to support their untenable notion that goddess worship is the same as egalitarian matriarchy, when Cynthia Eller has shown with the examples of India and China how goddess worship does not make cultures any less patriarchal.
You know my caveats at this point Tim; this is only tangibly related to the article, so accept or deny as you see fit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6Iyg9fznvM HFA readers who find Rogan insufferable may appreciate this recent bit by the comedian Tim Heidecker. Heidecker and his guests really capture how banal and shallow Rogan’s discussions are. “I’m an atheist, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in God. I do believe in God.” is a direct quote from this skit.
The first chapter in RHC Davis’s classic A History of Medieval Europe gives the main thrust of why the Council was called and what Constantine’s involvement was.
Thanks for this Tim. I remember writing an essay on Constantine’s conversion whilst at Uni about 30 years ago. I didnt even look at half the stuff you looked at, and got an appropriately low mark. This was the essay I should have written. Chapeau
Do you intend to do a future article on whether religious people are aesthetically less intelligent than atheist people?
I’m not sure exactly what this means (“aesthetically less intelligent”?), but it doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with history. So, no.
Consider this, attributed to Jerome, as a possible candidate of the myth’s origin.
“But since the Nicene Council is considered to have counted this book among the number of sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request”
https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/jerome_preface_judith.htm
Yes, that is sometimes cited as support for the myth. The problem is that the myth says it was the New Testament that was created at the Council of Nicea, and Judith is a book in the Old Testament. What Jerome is saying here is that the Council used Judith in its deliberations (though in what context he doesn’t say) and so it should be considered scriptural. He’s not referring to some (non-existent) debate on the canon of the Bible at that Council.
Joerg Gerber
Fine piece of historical commentary. A small correction: Persecution of Christians was formally ended by the eastern Augustus Galerius in 311, shortly before his death, not by Constantine/Licinius in 312.
Thank You.
Speaking of the Council of Nicaea…. From the “actually this is pagan” series: “trinity is pagan (thus it is polytheistic)”. The defense of this charge consists in claiming that the concept of trinity was created and developed long after the early Christians and derives from “Nimrod, Semiramis, and Tammuz”. Personally I have a vague memory of having read that the concept of trinity was developed over time from the reflections of the church fathers, so the early Christians still did not have the concept of trinity, but they had, let’s say, the basis of this concept. Could you help me to know if the statement “trinity is pagan (thus it is polytheistic)” is true?
The problem with this line of argument is it tends to take any parallel that looks vaguely similar and declares it to be evidence of derivation. Many religious traditions have triads of gods or even gods with three aspects. Does that make them the same as the Trinity, or just similar? And even if the parallel is close, is this evidence of derivation? Or even of influence? It’s really hard to get this kind of argument past a kind of general hand waving.
I also think so, but after seeing people claiming that the trinity is polytheistic, I started to wonder if any studies have come out that endorse this idea that people vehemently affirm. At the moment I am interested in knowing from what moment the concept of trinity was created and developed precisely because I saw many people defend this idea stating that if this concept was created much later than the early Christians then it was created by the church to replace the polytheistic (or, as I’ve seen it called, “christian gaslighting”). I am aware that the trinity concept was developed by the church fathers from early Christian readings, so I think the roots of the concept can be traced back to early Christians but not the fully formed concept. If you could briefly write about the context in which the concept of the trinity was created and developed, or at least recommend literature that addresses these themes, I would be grateful 🙂
If the concept of the Trinity was derived wholesale from some pagan precursor, then it’s a bit strange that it developed so slowly and gradually. It took literally centuries for Christianity to thrash out exactly how this “Trinity” thing worked. Even the idea that the three elements of the Trinity were all fully divine and all equally so took a long time. So this idea that it was somehow directly derived from some supposed pagan equivalents doesn’t make sense.
The idea that it represents a pagan-style polytheism ignores the fact that the Second Temple Judaism that Christianity arose out of already had a long and well-developed theological tradition of regarding aspects of God, or “Monads”, as separate entities like “Sophia” (Wisdom) and “Logos” (the Word) and also of calling various celestial/angelic beings “gods”. The evolving ideas about who and what Jesus was/is developed out of this tradition, which was, in turn, influenced by Greek Neoplatonic philosophy and so, indirectly, from pagan thought. This is the real origin of the concept and it’s much more complex that some dumb “they stole the Trinity from paganism”. Ehrman’s book How Jesus Became God (2014) is a good introduction to all this.
Thank you!