Posted on 04/15/2013 5:06:15 PM PDT by DouglasKC
Few understand how the Trinity doctrine came to be accepted - several centuries after the Bible was completed! Yet its roots go back much farther in history.
"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32).
Most people assume that everything that bears the label "Christian" must have originated with Jesus Christ and His early followers. But this is definitely not the case. All we have to do is look at the words of Jesus Christ and His apostles to see that this is clearly not true.
The historical record shows that, just as Jesus and the New Testament writers foretold, various heretical ideas and teachers rose up from within the early Church and infiltrated it from without. Christ Himself warned His followers: "Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name . . . and will deceive many" (Matthew 24:4-5).
You can read many similar warnings in other passages (such as Matthew 24:11; Acts 20:29-30; 2 Corinthians 11:13-15; 2 Timothy 4:2-4; 2 Peter 2:1-2; 1 John 2:18-19, 26; 4:1-3).
Barely two decades after Christ's death and resurrection, the apostle Paul wrote that many believers were already "turning away . . . to a different gospel" (Galatians 1:6). He wrote that he was forced to contend with "false apostles, deceitful workers" who were fraudulently "transforming themselves into apostles of Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:13). One of the major problems he had to deal with was "false brethren" (verse 26).
By late in the first century, as we see from 3 John 9-10, conditions had grown so dire that false ministers openly refused to receive representatives of the apostle John and were excommunicating true Christians from the Church!
Of this troubling period Edward Gibbon, the famed historian, wrote in his classic work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire of a "dark cloud that hangs over the first age of the church" (1821, Vol. 2, p. 111). It wasn't long before true servants of God became a marginalized and scattered minority among those calling themselves Christian. A very different religion, now compromised with many concepts and practices rooted in ancient paganism (such mixing of religious beliefs being known as syncretism, common in the Roman Empire at the time), took hold and transformed the faith founded by Jesus Christ.
Historian Jesse Hurlbut says of this time of transformation: "We name the last generation of the first century, from 68 to 100 A.D., 'The Age of Shadows,' partly because the gloom of persecution was over the church, but more especially because of all the periods in the [church's] history, it is the one about which we know the least. We have no longer the clear light of the Book of Acts to guide us; and no author of that age has filled the blank in the history . . ."For fifty years after St. Paul's life a curtain hangs over the church, through which we strive vainly to look; and when at last it rises, about 120 A.D. with the writings of the earliest church fathers, we find a church in many aspects very different from that in the days of St. Peter and St. Paul" ( The Story of the Christian Church, 1970, p. 33).
This "very different" church would grow in power and influence, and within a few short centuries would come to dominate even the mighty Roman Empire! By the second century, faithful members of the Church, Christ's "little flock" (Luke 12:32), had largely been scattered by waves of deadly persecution. They held firmly to the biblical truth about Jesus Christ and God the Father, though they were persecuted by the Roman authorities as well as those who professed Christianity but were in reality teaching "another Jesus" and a "different gospel" (2 Corinthians 11:4; Galatians 1:6-9).
Different ideas about Christ's divinity lead to conflict
This was the setting in which the doctrine of the Trinity emerged. In those early decades after Jesus Christ's ministry, death and resurrection, and spanning the next few centuries, various ideas sprang up as to His exact nature. Was He man? Was He God? Was He God appearing as a man? Was He an illusion? Was He a mere man who became God? Was He created by God the Father, or did He exist eternally with the Father?
All of these ideas had their proponents. The unity of belief of the original Church was lost as new beliefs, many borrowed or adapted from pagan religions, replaced the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.
Let us be clear that when it comes to the intellectual and theological debates in those early centuries that led to the formulation of the Trinity, the true Church was largely absent from the scene, having been driven underground. (See the chapter "The Rise of a Counterfeit Christianity " in our free booklet The Church Jesus Built for an overview of this critical period.).
For this reason, in that stormy period we often see debates not between truth and error, but between one error and a different error— a fact seldom recognized by many modern scholars yet critical for our understanding.
A classic example of this was the dispute over the nature of Christ that led the Roman emperor Constantine the Great to convene the Council of Nicaea (in modern-day western Turkey) in A.D. 325.
Constantine, although held by many to be the first "Christian" Roman Emperor, was actually a sun-worshiper who was only baptized on his deathbed. During his reign he had his eldest son and his wife murdered. He was also vehemently anti-Semitic, referring in one of his edicts to "the detestable Jewish crowd" and "the customs of these most wicked men"—customs that were in fact rooted in the Bible and practiced by Jesus and the apostles.
As emperor in a period of great tumult within the Roman Empire, Constantine was challenged with keeping the empire unified. He recognized the value of religion in uniting his empire. This was, in fact, one of his primary motivations in accepting and sanctioning the "Christian" religion (which, by this time, had drifted far from the teachings of Jesus Christ and the apostles and was Christian in name only)
. But now Constantine faced a new challenge. Religion researcher Karen Armstrong explains in A History of God that "one of the first problems that had to be solved was the doctrine of God . . . a new danger arose from within which split Christians into bitterly warring camps" (1993, p. 106).
Debate over the nature of God at the Council of Nicaea
Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 as much for political reasons—for unity in the empire—as religious ones. The primary issue at that time came to be known as the Arian controversy.
"In the hope of securing for his throne the support of the growing body of Christians he had shown them considerable favor and it was to his interest to have the church vigorous and united. The Arian controversy was threatening its unity and menacing its strength. He therefore undertook to put an end to the trouble. It was suggested to him, perhaps by the Spanish bishop Hosius, who was influential at court, that if a synod were to meet representing the whole church both east and west, it might be possible to restore harmony.
"Constantine himself of course neither knew nor cared anything about the matter in dispute but he was eager to bring the controversy to a close, and Hosius' advice appealed to him as sound" (Arthur Cushman McGiffert, A History of Christian Thought, 1954, Vol. 1, p. 258).
Arius, a priest from Alexandria, Egypt, taught that Christ, because He was the Son of God, must have had a beginning and therefore was a special creation of God. Further, if Jesus was the Son, the Father of necessity must be older. Opposing the teachings of Arius was Athanasius, a deacon also from Alexandria. His view was an early form of Trinitarianism wherein the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were one but at the same time distinct from each other.
The decision as to which view the church council would accept was to a large extent arbitrary. Karen Armstrong explains in A History of God: "When the bishops gathered at Nicaea on May 20, 325, to resolve the crisis, very few would have shared Athanasius's view of Christ. Most held a position midway between Athanasius and Arius" (p. 110).
As emperor, Constantine was in the unusual position of deciding church doctrine even though he was not really a Christian. (The following year is when he had both his wife and son murdered, as previously mentioned).
Historian Henry Chadwick attests, "Constantine, like his father, worshipped the Unconquered Sun" ( The Early Church, 1993, p. 122). As to the emperor's embrace of Christianity, Chadwick admits, "His conversion should not be interpreted as an inward experience of grace . . . It was a military matter. His comprehension of Christian doctrine was never very clear" (p. 125).
Chadwick does say that Constantine's deathbed baptism itself "implies no doubt about his Christian belief," it being common for rulers to put off baptism to avoid accountability for things like torture and executing criminals (p. 127). But this justification doesn't really help the case for the emperor's conversion being genuine.
Norbert Brox, a professor of church history, confirms that Constantine was never actually a converted Christian: "Constantine did not experience any conversion; there are no signs of a change of faith in him. He never said of himself that he had turned to another god . . . At the time when he turned to Christianity, for him this was Sol Invictus (the victorious sun god)" ( A Concise History of the Early Church, 1996, p. 48).
When it came to the Nicene Council, The Encyclopaedia Britannica states: "Constantine himself presided, actively guiding the discussions, and personally proposed . . . the crucial formula expressing the relation of Christ to God in the creed issued by the council . . . Overawed by the emperor, the bishops, with two exceptions only, signed the creed, many of them much against their inclination" (1971 edition, Vol. 6, "Constantine," p. 386).
With the emperor's approval, the Council rejected the minority view of Arius and, having nothing definitive with which to replace it, approved the view of Athanasius—also a minority view. The church was left in the odd position of officially supporting, from that point forward, the decision made at Nicaea to endorse a belief held by only a minority of those attending.
The groundwork for official acceptance of the Trinity was now laid—but it took more than three centuries after Jesus Christ's death and resurrection for this unbiblical teaching to emerge!
Nicene decision didn't end the debate
The Council of Nicaea did not end the controversy. Karen Armstrong explains: "Athanasius managed to impose his theology on the delegates . . . with the emperor breathing down their necks . . .
"The show of agreement pleased Constantine, who had no understanding of the theological issues, but in fact there was no unanimity at Nicaea. After the council, the bishops went on teaching as they had before, and the Arian crisis continued for another sixty years. Arius and his followers fought back and managed to regain imperial favor. Athanasius was exiled no fewer than five times. It was very difficult to make his creed stick" (pp. 110-111).
The ongoing disagreements were at times violent and bloody. Of the aftermath of the Council of Nicaea, noted historian Will Durant writes, "Probably more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in these two years (342-3) than by all the persecutions of Christians by pagans in the history of Rome" ( The Story of Civilization, Vol. 4: The Age of Faith, 1950, p. 8). Atrociously, while claiming to be Christian many believers fought and slaughtered one another over their differing views of God!
Of the following decades, Professor Harold Brown, cited earlier, writes: "During the middle decades of this century, from 340 to 380, the history of doctrine looks more like the history of court and church intrigues and social unrest . . . The central doctrines hammered out in this period often appear to have been put through by intrigue or mob violence rather than by the common consent of Christendom led by the Holy Spirit" (p. 119).
Debate shifts to the nature of the Holy Spirit
Disagreements soon centered around another issue, the nature of the Holy Spirit. In that regard, the statement issued at the Council of Nicaea said simply, "We believe in the Holy Spirit." This "seemed to have been added to Athanasius's creed almost as an afterthought," writes Karen Armstrong. "People were confused about the Holy Spirit. Was it simply a synonym for God or was it something more?" (p. 115).
Professor Ryrie, also cited earlier,writes, "In the second half of the fourth century, three theologians from the province of Cappadocia in eastern Asia Minor [today central Turkey] gave definitive shape to the doctrine of the Trinity" (p. 65). They proposed an idea that was a step beyond Athanasius' view—that God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit were coequal and together in one being, yet also distinct from one another.
These men—Basil, bishop of Caesarea, his brother Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus—were all "trained in Greek philosophy" (Armstrong, p. 113), which no doubt affected their outlook and beliefs (see "Greek Philosophy's Influence on the Trinity Doctrine," beginning on page 14).
In their view, as Karen Armstrong explains, "the Trinity only made sense as a mystical or spiritual experience . . . It was not a logical or intellectual formulation but an imaginative paradigm that confounded reason. Gregory of Nazianzus made this clear when he explained that contemplation of the Three in One induced a profound and overwhelming emotion that confounded thought and intellectual clarity.
"'No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Three than I am carried back into the One. When I think of any of the Three, I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me'" (p. 117). Little wonder that, as Armstrong concludes, "For many Western Christians . . . the Trinity is simply baffling" (ibid.).
Ongoing disputes lead to the Council of Constantinople
In the year 381, 44 years after Constantine's death, Emperor Theodosius the Great convened the Council of Constantinople (today Istanbul, Turkey) to resolve these disputes. Gregory of Nazianzus, recently appointed as archbishop of Constantinople, presided over the council and urged the adoption of his view of the Holy Spirit.
Historian Charles Freeman states: "Virtually nothing is known of the theological debates of the council of 381, but Gregory was certainly hoping to get some acceptance of his belief that the Spirit was consubstantial with the Father [meaning that the persons are of the same being, as substance in this context denotes individual quality].
"Whether he dealt with the matter clumsily or whether there was simply no chance of consensus, the 'Macedonians,' bishops who refused to accept the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, left the council . . . Typically, Gregory berated the bishops for preferring to have a majority rather than simply accepting 'the Divine Word' of the Trinity on his authority" ( A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State, 2008, p. 96).
Gregory soon became ill and had to withdraw from the council. Who would preside now? "So it was that one Nectarius, an elderly city senator who had been a popular prefect in the city as a result of his patronage of the games, but who was still not a baptized Christian, was selected . . . Nectarius appeared to know no theology, and he had to be initiated into the required faith before being baptized and consecrated" (Freeman, pp. 97-98).
Bizarrely, a man who up to this point wasn't a Christian was appointed to preside over a major church council tasked with determining what it would teach regarding the nature of God!
The Trinity becomes official doctrine
The teaching of the three Cappadocian theologians "made it possible for the Council of Constantinople (381) to affirm the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which up to that point had nowhere been clearly stated, not even in Scripture" ( The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, "God," p. 568).
The council adopted a statement that translates into English as, in part: "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages . . . And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets . . ." The statement also affirmed belief "in one holy, catholic [meaning in this context universal, whole or complete] and apostolic Church . . ."
With this declaration in 381, which would become known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Trinity as generally understood today became the official belief and teaching concerning the nature of God.
Theology professor Richard Hanson observes that a result of the council's decision "was to reduce the meanings of the word 'God' from a very large selection of alternatives to one only," such that "when Western man today says 'God' he means the one, sole exclusive [Trinitarian] God and nothing else" ( Studies in Christian Antiquity, 1985,pp. 243-244).
Thus, Emperor Theodosius—who himself had been baptized only a year before convening the council—was, like Constantine nearly six decades earlier, instrumental in establishing major church doctrine. As historian Charles Freeman notes: "It is important to remember that Theodosius had no theological background of his own and that he put in place as dogma a formula containing intractable philosophical problems of which he would have been unaware. In effect, the emperor's laws had silenced the debate when it was still unresolved" (p. 103).
Other beliefs about the nature of God banned
Now that a decision had been reached, Theodosius would tolerate no dissenting views. He issued his own edict that read: "We now order that all churches are to be handed over to the bishops who profess Father, Son and Holy Spirit of a single majesty, of the same glory, of one splendor, who establish no difference by sacrilegious separation, but (who affirm) the order of the Trinity by recognizing the Persons and uniting the Godhead" (quoted by Richard Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God, 1999, p. 223).
Another edict from Theodosius went further in demanding adherence to the new teaching: "Let us believe the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since, in our judgement, they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give their conventicles [assemblies] the name of churches.
"They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation, and the second the punishment which our authority, in accordance with the will of Heaven, shall decide to inflict" (reproduced in Documents of the Christian Church, Henry Bettenson, editor, 1967, p. 22).
Thus we see that a teaching that was foreign to Jesus Christ, never taught by the apostles and unknown to the other biblical writers, was locked into place and the true biblical revelation about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit was locked out. Any who disagreed were, in accordance with the edicts of the emperor and church authorities, branded heretics and dealt with accordingly. Trinity doctrine decided by trial and error.
This unusual chain of events is why theology professors Anthony and Richard Hanson would summarize the story in their book Reasonable Belief: A Survey of the Christian Faith by noting that the adoption of the Trinity doctrine came as a result of "a process of theological exploration which lasted at least three hundred years . . . In fact it was a process of trial and error (almost of hit and miss), in which the error was by no means all confined to the unorthodox . . . It would be foolish to represent the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as having been achieved by any other way" (1980, p. 172).
They then conclude: "This was a long, confused, process whereby different schools of thought in the Church worked out for themselves, and then tried to impose on others, their answer to the question, 'How divine is Jesus Christ?' . . . If ever there was a controversy decided by the method of trial and error, it was this one" (p. 175).
Anglican churchman and Oxford University lecturer K.E. Kirk revealingly writes of the adoption of the doctrine of the Trinity: "The theological and philosophical vindication of the divinity of the Spirit begins in the fourth century; we naturally turn to the writers of that period to discover what grounds they have for their belief. To our surprise, we are forced to admit that they have none . . .
"This failure of Christian theology . . . to produce logical justification of the cardinal point in its trinitarian doctrine is of the greatest possible significance. We are forced, even before turning to the question of the vindication of the doctrine by experience, to ask ourselves whether theology or philosophy has ever produced any reasons why its belief should be Trinitarian" ("The Evolution of the Doctrine of the Trinity," published in Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation, A.E.J. Rawlinson, editor, 1928, pp. 221-222). Why believe a teaching that isn't biblical?
This, in brief, is the amazing story of how the doctrine of the Trinity came to be introduced—and how those who refused to accept it came to be branded as heretics or unbelievers.
But should we really base our view of God on a doctrine that isn't spelled out in the Bible, that wasn't formalized until three centuries after the time of Jesus Christ and the apostles, that was debated and argued for decades (not to mention for centuries since), that was imposed by religious councils presided over by novices or nonbelievers and that was "decided by the method of trial and error"?
Of course not. We should instead look to the Word of God—not to ideas of men—to see how our Creator reveals Himself!
But don’t disregard all of their traditions and festivals and teachings either.. I should have said, because you will miss a lot of understanding.
There is a reason for everything Jesus said and did in the NT, and the answers are in the OT.
Jesus did come to uphold those laws. So don’t throw them away. Think about them. You will be blown away at what you come to realize. I promise. :)
2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
The Scripture (OT and Apostles' teachings, see post #45) is sufficient for man of God.
Furthermore,
1 Timothy 6:3-5
If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.
Teachings that vary from Scripture are not permitted by Paul, and show that the person teaching those doctrines understands nothing.
Therefore, Scripture is sufficient for the man of God, and teachings that vary from Scripture show a lack of understanding.
So, if someone is teaching, it must be compared against a standard, which is the Scripture, just as the Bereans did with Paul:
Act 17:10-11
The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.
Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.
Likewise, Jesus showed to the travelers on the road to Emmaus:
Luke 24:26-27
"Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?"
Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.
This has been firmly refuted in my first post
No.......... it wasn't!
Oh for sure...I agree. The problem is that many today have forgotten the festivals of the Lord along with the meaning and significance they have for Christians today.
I'm with ya!
:) Excellent! Thank you! Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Your beliefs are very mechanical.
What you consider pointless, is in reality essential for those that wish to obey all of the commandments.
Caution! This is an indication you subconsciously feel you're losing the argument. I would suggest another tact before you run out of ammo...... and end our entertaining discourse.
The warning found in the Apocalypse is actually a repeat of the warning given in Deuteronomy.
Deut 4:2, and 12:32
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Deu 4:2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish [ought] from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.
.
Deu 12:32 What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.
When they cannot deflect the message, they resort to Ad Hominem attack; in this case, COG has tweeked them in a most vulnerable spot, and must be demolished.
People, even the disciples [at times], didn't understand God when He was speaking directly to them, incarnate, as Jesus.
This is the reason there's a couple of times while reading Jesus he sounds almost exasperated they aren't "getting it" -- it's kind of a "I've been with you years, don't you understand yet?"
True- true.. it just always surprises me, I guess.
God the Spirit was descending and God the Father spoke from Heaven.
You kick against the pricks, Doug.
To suggest otherwise requires a suspension of disbelief and a rejection of Scripture. We know that following the Pentecost the Apostles and many Disciples were blessed with the gift of tongues which enabled to converse with each visitor to Jerusalem in his own language. It seems preposterous to believe that the Holy Spirit would hamper the spreading of the Gospel by forcing it to be written in a largely ceremonial language.
Peace be with you.
Nah, just taking scripture for what it actually says my friend! :-)
I don't know about oneness Pentecostals but acknowledging that there is a father, son and holy spirit doesn't mean that a doctrine that was developed over hundreds of years after the death of Christ is correct.
We have lots of evidence to back up what you wrote
From UPENN
SBL Presentation, Toronto, 25 November 2002
It has become a widely held opinion in discussions of ancient Greek literature that two of the main criteria for distinguishing "Christian" from "Jewish" scriptural fragments are (1) mega-format -- Christians tended to use the newly developed codex technology while Jews used scrolls -- and (2) treatment of nomina sacra -- while Jews had special ways of representing the tetragrammaton, Christians developed an entire system for abbreviating special words and names. Martin Hengel's recently translated book on The Septuagint as Christian Scripture (Clark 2002; with a long prehistory), which probably will attain wide usage in such circles as ours, states this position succinctly: "Long before there was a 'New Testament,' the Christian LXX was distinguished by the use of the codex rather than the Jewish scroll. Further, the tetragrammaton, as a rule continued in use in Greek scrolls of Jewish provenance, but in the Christian codices it was replaced by ku/riov, which was now written , like xristo/v and other nomina sacra, for emphasis with only the initial and final letters and a line above (KS, XS, etc.). This distinction must reach back into the first century and thus makes it possible to distinguish between Jewish and Christian manuscripts practically from the very beginning" (41). My presentation attempts to call such conclusions, which have now become widespread assumptions, into question by reexamining the ancient evidence now available.
Scholarly Context: The idea that Christians popularized the use of the codex has a long history in modern scholarship, and is probably most closely argued in the essay on "The Birth of the Codex" by the late Colin H. Roberts (Proceedings of the British Academy 40 [1954] 169-204), revised and supplemented by Theodore C. Skeat into a small monograph (The British Academy and Oxford University Press [1983] 1987). In discussing, and rejecting, various theories for why Christians so quickly adopted the codex format (cheaper, more compact, easier to use), Roberts and Skeat rather casually and without further discussion allude to the dilemma that I wish to explore more closely: "We would have expected the earliest Christians, whether Jew or Gentile, to be strongly prejudiced in favour of the roll by upbringing, education and environment" (53). That there was no appropriate first century CE codex environment for early Christians is simply assumed, and possible supporting evidence for the use of codices in Jewish contexts at that time is dismissed or ignored on the principle that "Jews used scrolls, Christians used codices" -- supported by the further assumption that only Christians used nomina sacra representations. Then they provide two alternate hypotheses to explain the virutally immediate adoption of the codex by Christians: (1) the Gospel of Mark was written in Rome where we know that the codex format was being experimented with for literature, was transported to Alexandria, and from there set a pattern for other early Christian writings [Roberts' original suggestion], and (2) the sayings of Jesus were transcribed on tablets (on the model of law codes in Jewish contexts in Jerusalem and/or Antioch) that came to constitute a proto-Gospel in codex form, and thence to be imitated from Antioch [Skeat's revision].
Socio-Religious Context: It should be noted that questions about Jewish scribal practices and bookmaking techniques are never thoroughly discussed. Indeed, it is assumed (1) that later rabbinic Jewish evidence about the use of scrolls and other media is immediately applicable to the first century Greek Jewish situation, and (2) that in the matter of literary production, as in some other areas, Christians were anxious to differentiate themselves from Jews. Note the following statements: "It may be further noted that, whether or not this was the intention, nomina sacra share the same characteristic with the codex of differentiating Christian from both Jewish and pagan books" (57). "The [Christian] missionaries to the Gentiles would have needed Greek manuscripts, initially perhaps only of the Septuagint, [which] ... cannot have made use of the Hebrew tetragram for the Name of God, and the necessity to find an alternative may have led to the invention of the nomina sacra" (59; what did Jewish Greek speakers use among Gentiles, we might ask?). "Jewish children, like Gentile children, started their education on tablets and continued to use them for memoranda. ... Tablets of the kinds just mentioned [for recording isolated rabbinic sayings of "Oral Law"], including tablets of papyrus, would have been in common use amongst the Jews there [in Antioch]" (59). "It could be argued that the Jews equally used tablets for recording the Oral Law, but in no case did this usage develop into the codex. ... The use of the roll in Judaism was so rooted in tradition and prescribed by the Law [sic!] that such a development would have been impossible. The Christians, however, would have had no such inhibitions, and to them the adoption of a form of book which like the nomina sacra would have differentiated them from both Jews and pagans, as already noted, might have constituted an additional attraction" (60).
Ambiguous Evidence: The admixture of "social history" and "material remains" in such an argument is obvious. But does it make sense? To deny that Jews could or would have used codices under similar conditions is simply to beg the question. Indeed, even Roberts and Skeat admit to the existence of a Jewish codex of Genesis around the end of the second century (POxy 656 -- "in spite of the codex form we consider it to be of Jewish origin" [41] -- presumably because QEOS and KURIOS are written in full by the original hand?). But other codex fragments of Greek Jewish scriptures from the same period they automatically classify as "Christian," without discussion:
Strangely, a couple of other codex fragments for which a Jewish origin seems quite possible are not included in this discussion, perhaps because they are dated slightly later -- Roberts did comment on them briefly in his 1977 Schweich Lectures on Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt (British Academy and Oxford University Press 1979):
Of course, if Jews were producing and using biblical codices in the late 2nd and into the 3rd centuries, the argument/assumption that "if it's a codex, it's Christian" is seriously jeapordized, and the unasked question of when Jews began to use codices becomes even more relevant. And the appearance of simple nomina sacra (for QEOS and perhaps also KURIOS) in these possibly Jewish codices is equally intriguiging.
Christian Scribal Activities: Furthermore, Roberts and Skeat admit that "The Christian manuscripts of the second century, although not reaching a high standard of calligraphy, generally exhibit a competent style of writing which has been called 'reformed documentary' [quote from Roberts] and which is likely to be the work of experienced scribes, whether Christian or not. ... It is therefore a reasonable assumption that the scribes of the Christian texts received pay for their work" (46). Apart from what we can infer from the extant remnants, we know very little about Jewish or Christian scribal practices including training and "commercial" production of texts in these early centuries, but it is an area that deserves some reflection. Were there Jewish booksellers and professional copyists who would make copies for paying customers? Was Jewish literature available through the non-Jewish book trade? Would professional copyists attempt to emulate formatting features in their exemplars? To what extent might "educated" early Jewish followers of Jesus such as Paul have made their own copies of materials useful to them? At what point might (non-Jewish) Christian leaders employ their own copyists, and how would they be trained (and/or religiously oriented)? When did an independent and selfconsciously "Christian" booktrade develop, and how did it operate?
These questions are basic to treatments of textuality, transmission, technique, and technology in the world in which early Christianity developed, yet are seldom even imagined, much less discussed. Since we have a growing body of relevant evidence, both Jewish pre-Christian in date, on the one side, and certifiably "Christian" by the 2nd century CE, on the other, it is possible to attempt to investigate details regarding possible continuities, and discontinuities, between these chronological and community poles. The evidence is not very widely distributed geographically -- north-central Egypt (Fayyum, Oxyrhynchos) and the Judean caves bear most of the weight. Nevertheless, some of the scribal phenomena are suggestive.
Unambiguously Jewish Fragments: Pre-Christian fragments of Greek Jewish scriptures and related literature:
Features of note:
General Observations: It seems safe to speak of the existence of professionally prepared copies of Greek Jewish scriptures, surviving from a few locations in Egypt and Judea. There are scribal features in many of these fragments that are not typical, although perhaps not unique, in contemporary non-Jewish literary texts (especially the use of spacing, sometimes in conjunction with marginal sectioning markers). The special four-lettered name of deity receives a variety of special treatments, suggesting that perhaps no single or even relatively restricted Jewish scribal convention had been developed for that feature. If these generalizations are correct, it would seem presumptuous to ascribe similar features in "early Christian" manuscripts (e.g. use of spacing, marginal section markup) to "documentry" influence, as has sometimes been done, or even to consider special treatment of names associated with deity to be original or special to Christians. Quite the contrary, I would argue that the presence of such features in manuscripts of Christian date and/or provenance indicates continuity in scribal practice, if not misidentification or confusion of "Christian" and "Jewish" products and procedures. It is doubtful that in general "Christians" dissociated themselves from their "Jewish" predecessors in the production of manuscripts, or at least of copies of Greek Jewish scriptures.
Conclusions: Christians did, it is clear, develop their own scribal conventions as time went on. Even if Jewish practice gave impetus to the compression and/or abbreviation of special names, Christian scribes gradually created much more extensive and detailed "systems," tending to de facto standardization of nomina sacra in later generations. Even though the practice of marking blocks of text and/or of spacing between some sub-units is evidenced in some early Christian materials, Christian scribes also seem to have tended to employ the "scriptio continua" (uninterrupted flow of letters) format more common in the surrounding literary worlds, sometimes in combination with blocked format. But "Christian" scribal practice did not originate de novo with the emergence of selfconscious followers of Jesus who did not consider themselves "Jewish." It seems to have inherited, probably in a gradual and natural transition (as with many other areas of early Christian development!), features that already existed in pre-Christian Jewish circles. And I can't help but wonder whether the preference for the codex format may not also be attributed to the same process.
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http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak//earlylxx/sbl2002.htm
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