Constantine

by HowTheBibleWasCreated 5 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  HowTheBibleWasCreated

  The fact that the majority of the world jumps when you say 'god' is traced back to one guy. Constantine, This is the one man that made Christianity the official religion Rome thus masking the beliefs of people until the reformation a literal hell.

  Oh yes Mohamed knew his teaching later.

  When you say 'god' as if other people are supposed to be impressed you owe that to Constantine. Not a mythical figure named Jesus,

  JWs split off from other groups later but even so-called born -again re mixing late theologies. that Constantine merged. Yes Pulane theology existed as did Jewish and both merged by the late second century,. But what a sick idea emerged blood atonement!

  I am currently still in the Hebrew bible for my book but keep looking ahead with horror at how I can presen t the first 3 centuries of Christianity.

  Remember Russel's 1914 was not unique. He was a duped fool too.
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  Phizzy

  Yes, you have your work cut out as soon as you get to the 1st Century for sure. Although as with a lot of this, we cannot be categorically sure as to what happened, and who wrote what, etc we can say with assurance that things were not as most people viewed them up until the Enlightenment, and as some still do, that the Bible is inspired and accurate for a start, and written by who it says it is etc etc

  The other big myth, perpetuated by other religions as well as JW's, is that there was one Pure Church which sprang up after the death of Jesus.

  That is far from reality, there were a good number of different groups that claimed Jesus in some way, all teaching different things, the Bible itself tells us this. Even what we call "Pauline Christianity" is an amalgam of teachings, some from Paul and some adapted after his death by writers pretending to be Paul.

  Then we have the intervening mess of battling ideas that was sorted by Constantine because he had the power to do so. Many things were not fully sorted, the Trinity debate continues, the ideas as what is "Canonical" and what should not be included as Scripture goes on too.

  If the Christianity of today were claiming to be a valuable antique Vase for example, the experts would say " This Vase has no Provenance".
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  Rivergang

  Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome?

  I seem to recall hearing such claims while I was a JW. However, it was in fact the Roman emperor Theodosius who did that. Constantine was well disposed towards Christianity, but only converted to it while in his deathbed. He certainly never made it the state religion.
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  Phizzy

  You are correct Rivergang, with the Edict of Milan Constantine made it safe to be a Christian, or of any other religion !

  Theodosius later made Christianity the Religion of choice of the Empire. He was a Christian, and believed the Trinity to be an accurate Doctrine, so that became part of the orthodoxy he imposed.

  He seemed tolerant of other religions existence, but did not encourage them ! For that reason from his time on it was expedient for people to appear to be Christian, hence at the remains of a Roman Villa near where I live we have the wealthy owner's Christian Chapel boldly displayed as part of the Villa, but by a stairway, well hidden no doubt, you could go down to a Temple below the Chapel that was used to worship Mithras in secret. Fascinating !
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  Vidiot

  My favorite Constantine moment was his nifty little conversation with Lucifer on the Flash episode of "Crisis on Infinite Earths"...

  ...oh, wait...

  ...Emperor Constantine...

  ...my mistake.
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  HowTheBibleWasCreated

  Rivergang

  You are correct. Thanks for bringing this up. We can replace every mention of Constantine with Theodosius in the OP.

  I suspect with the Holy Roman empire and later the Crusades started the lockdown on other religions was much tighter.

  The Dark Ages continues where I leave off my book so I have not researched these centuries. However I can see now a read of Will Durant's -Age of Faith is in order.