Recently I read a brief apologetics essay that sought to debunk the myth that Emperor Constantine created the Bible at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE. For those who may not know, the myth states that the Bible as we know it today was created and compiled by Constantine's officials and bishops gathered in Nicea. According to the myth, the Council left out certain gospels and texts that did not align with their agenda, and edited the remaining texts to create the version of the Bible that supported their desired religious and political views.
ORIGINS OF THE CONSTANTINIAN CANON MYTH
This myth is a fairly modern invention. Antecedents to it appear in places like Voltaire's Encyclopedia during the French Enlightenment. This work was a product of its age, reflecting secular bias against religion in all forms, especially that of the Catholic Church. As such it popularized secular questioning of the authorship and reliability of Biblical texts. In some entries, Voltaire implied that the books of the Bible were determined by Church authorities like Constantine based on political motivations.
The Encyclopedia gave intellectual credibility to doubts about the Bible's authorship and formation, which the 19th-20th century myth-creators built upon in forming their narrative. Various authors, skeptics, and new age spiritual teachers claimed the Council of Nicea created and/or manipulated the texts for political gain. Overstating the results of the science of textual criticism and the differences between various ancient Biblical manuscripts, it became popular to claim the Scriptures, and even the life of Jesus, were invented in whole or in part by a elite cabal of some kind. Not only that, but the claim goes on to say that dozens of other ancient documents were excluded or even destroyed by ancient church officials to silence variant versions of Christianity. A powerful cabal of powerful men had taken over a peaceful, decentralized, diverse spiritual Path and remade it into a "tool of empire". And this cabal was often centered on Constantine and the First Council of Nicea.
These views on the fabrication of Scripture reached their apex near the turn of the 20th century with the rise of notable "Jesus Mythicists" such as atheist skeptics Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier, who claimed that Jesus himself was also invented in whole or in part (along with all the ancient documents about him). Often this kind of fundamentalist secularism is merely the inverse image of fundamentalist religion, and tends to stay isolated on the margins of cultural discourse. But the myth of Scriptural fabrication by Constantine was given a massive boost in popularity by the 2003 fictional thriller novel "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. In it, Brown has his scholarly sleuth say things like "The fundamental irony of Christianity! The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great.” And this was made into the blockbuster 2006 movie starring none other than Tom Hanks.
As a result, in the public confusion about the line between fiction and history, many took for granted the view that the Bible, as we know it today, was invented at (or around) Nicea in 325 CE. The only problem? There's no evidence of this. At all. No historian or writer from any ancient viewpoint-- whether Pagan or Christian or Heretic-- makes the claim that the Council of Nicea defined a canon (authoritative list) of Scripture, nor that it excluded certain books, nor that it made any declarations about accepted texts to read. None of the records of the proceedings of the Council include any such decisions. No official Roman Empire records exist with such a claim.
Compare this to what the Council of Nicea did speak authoritatively to: The nature of the Trinity and the boundaries of understanding the Incarnation of God in Jesus. We can find a whole swath of literature from diverse sources which explain, support, criticize, and even defy these decisions from Nicea. Indeed, the Nicene Creed which was developed at the Council (and revised at the Council of Constantinople a half century later) is recited publicly by billions of Christians every year. So, if the Council had made sweeping decisions about the canon and content of Scripture, it would have had no reason to hide it. But there is no record of it. Because it simply did not happen.
We may also add to this that there is quite a literature around the books that did, and did not, get included in the accepted Canon of Christian Scripture. Included in this literature are the books themselves, almost all of which we have copies of from well before Nicea: They existed for decades or centuries before Constantine's Council met, and they are quoted and debated by dozens or hundreds of people prior to any decisions of the Council. And when a book was considered unfit for inclusion in the Canon, early Christian writers were not shy about discussing why it was excluded. For a great example of this, read St. Irenaeus' monumental "Against Heresies" written 150 years before Nicea. We may agree with this ancient Christian consensus about Scripture, or disagree with it, but the point here is that this debate was not secret, nor were the documents forged, nor was it decided at Nicea.
BUT THERE IS MORE TO BE SAID ABOUT CONSTANTINE'S BIBLES
However, with all of this said, there is more to be said. Because it is untrue to say Constantine had absolutely NO influence on the Bible as we know it. He did. Just not at Nicea. The truth about the connection between Constantine and Canon is... Complicated. This is because shortly after the Council of Nicea I, in 331 CE Constantine ordered 50 copies of the Scriptures to be made for Churches in his Capitol city. According to the Church Historian and Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 265-340), here are the instructions that were given to him by Constantine:
“It happens, through the favoring providence of God our Saviour, that great numbers have united themselves to the most holy church in the city which is called by my name. It seems, therefore, highly requisite, since that city is rapidly advancing in prosperity in all other respects, that the number of churches should also be increased. Do you, therefore, receive with all readiness my determination on this behalf. I have thought it expedient to instruct your Prudence to order fifty copies of the sacred Scriptures, the provision and use of which you know to be most needful for the instruction of the Church, to be written on prepared parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient, portable form, by professional transcribers thoroughly practiced in their art.
The catholicus [chief bishop] of the diocese has also received instructions by letter from our Clemency to be careful to furnish all things necessary for the preparation of such copies; and it will be for you to take special care that they be completed with as little delay as possible. You have authority also, in virtue of this letter, to use two of the public carriages for their conveyance, by which arrangement the copies when fairly written will most easily be forwarded for my personal inspection; and one of the deacons of your church may be entrusted with this service, who, on his arrival here, shall experience my liberality. God preserve you, beloved brother!”
Such are reported words of Constantine to Eusebius in chapter 36 of Book IV of his “Life of Constantine”. And we really have no reason to doubt these words are authentic, because Eusebius was a public friend of Constantine and one of the official biographers for him in the Roman Empire. Not only did Eusebius have the texts he was quoting: His version of these texts were published in his lifetime in the Capitol of the Empire, and thus had to be accurate. Thus, in chapter 37 Eusebius goes on to detail his fulfillment of the order:
“Such were the emperor's commands, which were followed by the immediate execution of the work itself, which we sent him in magnificent and elaborately bound volumes of a threefold and fourfold form. This fact is attested by another letter, which the emperor wrote in acknowledgment…”
So, what we do know is that Constantine provided lavishly for very expensive and portable copies of Scripture to be created and distributed in the churches of his Capitol Diocese. What we do not know is twofold: (a) What was the extent of these Scriptures: Was it NT only? Or all of the OT as well? (b) What list (or canon) of Scripture was used, and in what order?
We can assume these Bibles contained at least the New Testament, and we could further assume that their canonical list would be the same as the New Testament canon lists provided by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History (cf. 3.3.5-7, 3.25.1-7). But these assumptions are not fool proof. However, we can look to ancient manuscript copies of the Bible to see if there is any evidence of what the Constantine Bibles were like.
It is possible that either Codex Vaticanus or Codex Sinaiticus (or both) are Bibles from Constantine's order. They are both from the early to mid 300's, and are two of the oldest and most complete surviving manuscripts of the Greek Bible (Old and New Testaments). But even if they are not part of the original set of Constantine's 50 Bibles, they almost certainly represent copies which incorporated the standardized texts and spellings of the Constantine Bibles. Thus, they are part of the legacy of Constantine's standardized and uniform Greek text of the Bible, a precursor to later Bible translations.
And what is the standardized text they contain? Well they both contain the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), including most of the Deuterocanonical books except for some differences in the books of Maccabees and the omission of Prayer of Manasseh. In both, the vast majority of the New Testament is included, with the complete Gospels and Acts. Due to damages in the manuscripts, Vaticanus is missing Hebrews 9:14 to 13:25, the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus), and Revelation. Sinaiticus also includes in the New Testament the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. The form and shape and contents of Constantine's Bibles, shown through manuscripts like these, reveal what a formative influence they have on Bible translations to this very day. And again, it must be emphasized: This table of contents did not appear out of nowhere. They represent centuries of texts and debates over them that were well known in the Church of 331 CE.
All of this is to say: It is absolutely the case that neither Constantine nor Nicea I ever created an authoritative list of the canon of Scripture, much less "invented" Scripture. That is a ludicrous and recent historical invention. However, Constantine did order a set of uniform and highly influential Bibles which would be copied and used as templates and models for Greek Bibles across the Roman Empire. Constantine did not dictate the contents of these Bibles, but left it to universally recognized scholars like Eusebius (and his team) to put the right books in the right order in these Bibles, to provide a standardized text for a standardized religion of Empire.
As David Dungan shows in his study on "Constantine's Bible", this process was a much more "soft power" approach to standardizing the Biblical Canon, especially when compared with the "hard power" approach of Nicea I to define the boundaries of Trinitarian and Christological thinking through Church decrees and Imperial legislation. But even though Constantine's Bibles were "soft power", they still represent power exercised from Constantine, through Eusebius and other bishops, to shape the texts which shape the faith of the people of the Empire.
And it is worth noting that, among many Eastern Orthodox, this entire process is largely welcomed: Constantine is considered an actual saint for his efforts to promote and standardize the faith. The polemic against Constantine, and image of him as some kind of intruder into a pure Christian religion, is largely a product of the Protestant West. Although he is complicated and messy, he did what an Emperor should do: He took steps to protect, promote, and standardize the religion of his people. And thus we find that, just like it is messy to follow a God who became human and who died and rose again, so also it is messy to understand the process by which we settled on the books which point us to him. But in this messiness, we can be assured that God is at work to unite us to Godself through Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment