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Christian history (was: my boy problems)
Boy, these thread topics sure can wander, can't they. :-)
> When the Bible was first written the printing press hadn't even been
> invented. Since most of the population couldn't obtain a copy of scripture,
> let alone read it if they did, the church was an absolute necessity. (It
> didn't just interpret it, but safeguarded and disseminated it as well.)
Okay, I have two problems with this line of reasoning. First, it's rather
anachronistic and euro-centric. It's hard to say when "the Bible" was "first
written", since the component texts were written (not to mention redacted) over
a span of centuries (decades if you just count the NT), and then not codified
for over two centuries after the last included book was written (less than that
if you include some of the ultimately rejected candidates like the Shepherd of
Hermas). The earliest extant texts of the NT are long strings of capital
letters with no spaces or punctuation. The earliest form of "mass printing"
was to have someone stand at the front of a room and read the text, while
twenty or so people copied down what he said. This introduced at least two
types of errors (if a writer mis-heard, or if the writer wrote down a homonym
for the intended word), which have been shown to exist in the texts (See "The
Text of the New Testament" by Metzger). So there really is *no* single
"original text", no single "Bible" that one can look to for the final
authority. If it was the job of the (roman) church to protect and distribute
such a document, they failed.
Also, literacy rates in the first and second century Roman were much higher
than they often get credit for. This lack of credit is, I believe, due in part
to what C. S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery" (they lived a long time
ago, so they must be inferior to us), in part due to the simple paucity of
extant documents (although many of those that do survive indicate widespread
and casual literacy), and in part due to a projection of medieval europe back
onto classical Rome (perhaps due to a reverse extrapolation of the improvement
in European literacy since the middle ages in the other direction: we're more
literate now than 1200, so those in 200 must have been less literate than those
in 1200.). In the third century, there is ample evidence that the exact nature
of Jesus's relation to the father (of the same spirit or of like spirit) was a
hot topic of discussion from bishops' tables to barstools. (See e.g. "When
Jesus Became God" by Rubenstein.). It wasn't decided by some august council
(and the so-called Ecumenical councils were hotbeds of intrigue and politics,
too. Athanasius was in some ways like a mob boss, manipulating mobs to take
out his rivals in Alexandria. He was excommunicated several times, more for
his unscrupulous violence than for his theology. But I digress...), it was a
topic out there for free debate amongst the populace. And it *was* debated.
People felt invested in the topic.
My second problem with the line of reasoning is that there is no evidence from
history that there was a "pure christianity" that was "safeguarded and
disseminated" by a unified Church. That story as far as I can tell is pure
retro-projection wish-fulfillment propaganda (although, I want to stress,
sincerely believed by those who profess it), starting with Eusebius in the
fourth century. I don't think the evidence supports a single, universal Church
going back to the time of Christ, with splinter heretic factions that fell
away. It looks to me more like a bubbling cauldron of different takes on the
same general theme, out of which (due in no small part to the political
pressure of Constantine) a single thread was eventually chosen to be official,
which then claimed (as all the others did, but without secular authority) that
they had been right from the start.
Peter's quip that we would be Orthodox not Catholic is, I believe, based in the
fact that Rome didn't become the center of the Christian universe (and still
isn't for many non-European christans) until manymany centuries after Christ.
It was important, but not central. Look at where the Ecumenical councils were:
Antioch, Nicea, Chalcedon, all eastern places. When Christianity became a
state-sponsored religion, the capitol was Constantinople, and then Rome fell to
the Vandals, and didn't become important again for a long time. As far as the
"mainstream" Christianity was concerned at the time, it was Rome who "fell
away" in the eleventh century, and it remained the Orthodox churches who held
onto the true tradition. (See, for example, the suggested time line at
http://www.execpc.com/SaintIgnatius/timeline.html, clearly written from an
Orthodox point of view.)
I wonder how the Coptics feel about all this. :-)
Yours sincerely,
--
Don Smith Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/
"Some people dream of fortunes, while other people dream of cookies."
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