Could Nicaea's Outcome Have Been The Reverse?

[Leucius Charinus]

Jerome, who with his Vulgate helped his boss kick-start the Latin Church of Rome, was the "pupil" of the thug pope Damasus. The church industry in Rome started with the PETER-WAS-HERE business and branched out into the cult of the saints and martyrs and the wonderfully successful holy relic trade. Damasus was working on the ground floor. The utterly corrupt church industry was into fraud, forgery and fabrication from the beginning.

Fascinating.

Peter-was-here-ism in context with later Papal supremacy doctrine could easily come very late, cementing not even fully by the HRE. However, literary Peter-was-here-ism is essential to reconstructing the fathers of the mid-second century church. We have enormous trouble locating ANY apostles other than Papias's testimony of John. Interesting concept.

I think that it is completely responsible to investigate the proposition that at least some of these "Fathers" were fabrications of the Latin Church industry. Take Irenaeus for example. Supposedly a Greek writer quoted (in Greek) by Eusebius and Epiphanius his extant manuscripts all descend from a supposed Latin translation c.380 CE. His earliest extant manuscript is from the 10/11th century Claremontanus. It's Latin. In 1526 Erasmus published the Latin edition of Irenaeus and uses sources not found in the three existing manuscripts Erasmus is convinced Irenaeus was a Latin author (Erasmus is completely unaware of any Greek mss!). In 1713 Pfaff publishes Turin manuscript in Greek. Harnack declared it a forgery.

Why did the Latin Church Industry forge Irenaeus c.380 CE?

1) The all-important concept of "Apostolic Succession" and the Primacy of the Roman Church (this was of course very important to Damasus c.380 CE).

2) The first witnessing of the four gospel collection by name. (Precedent!!)

3) They needed an early "Theologian of the Church". They fabricated one.

4) They wanted early references to the trinitarian concept which had become lawful under Theodosius. They found some in Irenaeus.

5) They needed some early references to the great conflict between orthodox books and apocryphal books and Irenaeus furnished these so that Athanasius --- after the Arian controversy which involved apocryphal books ---- in the later 4th century could pick up the baton and run with his masterful distinction between the orthodox books and the apocryphal books furnished by Irenaeus.

In any event, whatever's behind the debate between catholicizers and Gnostics, Marcionites, Ebionites, etc., it's clear that Theodosius, Augustine and Jerome created a particularly novel thing. I wonder what it was like beforehand?

I think the Roman empire was embroiled in a massive controversy over which Jesus Story Books were to be regarded as more important than the other Jesus Story Books. This controversy today is called the Arian controversy however I believe that it was far more controversial than the "church histories" written in the 5th century would have us believe. IMO the Arian controversy was all about the great literary war between the NT apocryphal books and the "Emperor Constantine's New Codex".

AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State -
Charles Freeman (2008)

Description:

• 'We authorise followers of this law to assume the title of orthodox Christians; but as for the others since, in our judgement, they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious names of heretics.' - Emperor Theodosius.

In AD 381, Theodosius, emperor of the eastern Roman empire, issued a decree in which all his subjects were required to subscribe to a belief in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This edict defined Christian orthodoxy and brought to an end a lively and wide-ranging debate about the nature of the Godhead; all other interpretations were now declared heretical.

Moreover, for the first time in a thousand years of Greco-Roman civilization free thought was unambiguously suppressed. Not since the attempt of the pharaoh Akhenaten to impose his god Aten on his Egyptian subjects in the fourteenth century BC had there been such a wide-sweeping program of religious coercion. Yet surprisingly this political revolution, intended to bring inner cohesion to an empire under threat from the outside, has been airbrushed from the historical record. Instead, it has been claimed that the Christian Church had reached a consensus on the Trinity which was promulgated at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381. In this groundbreaking new book, acclaimed historian Charles Freeman shows that the council was in fact a shambolic affair, which only took place after Theodosius' decree had become law. In short, the Church was acquiescing in the overwhelming power of the emperor. Freeman argues that Theodosius' edict and the subsequent suppression of paganism not only brought an end to the diversity of religious and philosophical beliefs throughout the empire but created numerous theological problems for the Church, which have remained unsolved. The year AD 381, Freeman concludes, marked 'a turning point which time forgot'.

[yakovzutolmai]

I think the Roman empire was embroiled in a massive controversy over which Jesus Story Books were to be regarded as more important than the other Jesus Story Books. This controversy today is called the Arian controversy however I believe that it was far more controversial than the "church histories" written in the 5th century would have us believe. IMO the Arian controversy was all about the great literary war between the NT apocryphal books and the "Emperor Constantine's New Codex".

I agree with your premise only with the caveat that older literature is being repurposed, rather than constructed whole cloth. For instance that Nag Hammadi may be an Arianist reconstruction reacting to Theodosius. Nevertheless, it is reconstructed out genuine earlier material. I also believe there was an Iranaeus, but the works attributed to him could be misattributed.

So, rather than creating a new reality, Rome is merely creating utter historical confusion which we see confounds scholars absolutely since their methodology is not permissive of imaginative speculation.

Rome's libraries were lost in the Year of Four Emperors, and had to be reconstructed, and that's just one instance of parts of the past being lost where received history is going to necessarily confuse and confound us.