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Contrary to common belief, there was never a one-time, truly universal decision as to which books should be included in the Bible. It took over a century of the proliferation of numerous writings before anyone even bothered to start picking and choosing, and then it was largely a cumulative, individual and happenstance event, guided by chance and prejudice more than objective and scholarly research, until priests and academics began pronouncing what was authoritative and holy, and even they were not unanimous. Every church had its favored books, and since there was nothing like a clearly-defined orthodoxy until the 4th century, there were in fact many simultaneous literary traditions. The illusion that it was otherwise is created by the fact that the church that came out on top simply preserved texts in its favor and destroyed or let vanish opposing documents. Hence what we call "orthodoxy" is simply "the church that won." Link.
9 comments:
While there will obviously be some Christians who would find Carrier's statements controversial and would want to push against it, I don't really see any of it as providing a rebuttal of Christianity. Most of the points in the quote you provided have been made and recognized by Christians as well. Craig Allert, who happens to be a self-described evangelical Christian, addresses most of these issues in his excellent book A High View of Scripture? Carrier is providing a valuable service to believers by helping open our eyes to a better understanding of the historical process of the formation of the canon.
Saying that orthodoxy is "the church that won" is obviously correct, but is also misleading to the extent that a person simplistically takes it as all there is to the story of the NT and the growth of Christianity. The same sort of statement could be made of say, the American Civil War for example, claiming that the victory of the Union and the ending of slavery as a consequence is simply an example of might makes right. Obviously, force of arms brought a conclusion to the matter, but that does not mean that there may not be a moral dimension to this result that we would want to affirm.
Matt,
I think you're missing two larger points: to what extent we can rely on the assembled book as "gospel", and whether the non-cannonical accounts might have just as much truth in them. For the first, if the gospels were selected for politics rather than accuracy, we should not treat them as being accurate when many Christians wish to do exactly this. For the latter, should we then say there might be truth to some of the non-cannonical writings like the accounts of Jesus as a child where he kills several playmates?
Recognizing truth outside of the canonical books is not the same thing as having to affirm everything that is contained in any work that purports to be about Jesus Christ. While dating issues are always highly controversial, the non-canonical books are generally dated quite a bit later than the canonical gospels, so not every work can aspire to an equal historical standing.
Also, where there is a political aspect of the process of canon formation (and indeed for all of Byzantine history), that does not make it determinative, because there seems to be good reason to believe that the gospels, whether or not they were politically expedient to Constantine and his successors, were widely circulated and treated with authority in Christian communities throughout the old Roman Empire. Talk about a canon among these early believers is obviously anachronistic, but its not as if these works were simply forced on unwilling subjects. There were different traditions, yes, but political circumstances are only one part of the story of "orthodox" Christianity, with another part being this widespread high regard for works that would later be labeled as "canon."
Matt said, "it's not as if these works were forced on unwilling sujects." I couldn't help thinking of all the unwilling subjects, sitting and listening to words that they have no understanding of, and wishing that they were anywere else. They are called children and the process is called indoctrination. Like the largely illiterate masses during the fomation of the canon, they tend to believe what they are told by whatever prevalent authority that exist. Sorry, but the argument from popularity fails under these conditions. Thanks for the laugh though..
And let's not forget that this is reflected even today. It's an ongoing process and it becomes more readily apparent in the Old Testament. Just look how many books are recognized by the Orthodox Church that are missing from the KJV (marked in green). That's 11 books for crying out loud! *chuckles* Not to mention the difference in contents and text layout. (the book of Jeremiah is such a mess, one needs a table in order to find similar passages between the greek and english text)
Sidenote: Is there a way to display my nickname (EvanT) here instead of the blog title through Open ID?
I think the key line is "there was nothing like a clearly defined orthodoxy until the 4th century."
This ignores the Apostles Creed, which we may even be able to trace back to the 1st Century. At least we can say it was before the 4th century. It also ignores the general consensus among the 2nd generation Christian writers like Clement.
Carrier should also mention that the "clearly defined orthodoxy" was a reaction to perceived heresies. (if there were no perceived orthodoxy, then there would be no catholic reaction to heresies) Marcion chopped up Luke to formulate his theology, and the orthodox response (2nd century, mind you) was to affirm the whole text. In fact, historical and apostolic considerations were the #1 criteria in canon formation, not supposed political concerns.
If Carrier's last move is to claim that non-orthodox books were not preserved or were modified because of the victory of orthodoxy, then the charge of "argument from silence" isn't even strong enough. It's more of a conspiracy theory argument.
He speaks from history, but his implications are not supportable.
There is an important distinction between orthodoxy and canon, as Brad points out. And David, lets not be dismissive towards the early Christians. They had a number of strong disinsentives to becoming Christians in the Roman Empire (afterall, they were at times seen as enemies of the Roman pantheon and labeled atheists because of it), so its not fair to characterize them as dupes who would believe anything.
Brad read the entire article before judging, I just clicked the link and seems at first glance to have touched on it.
The Catholics burned both Marcionites and Marcion's gospel. Only an idiot would deny this. From the beginning Catholicism used the secular sword. The Catholic church was established by Rome to destroy all versions of Christianity that Rome didn't like.
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