cystic crypt wrote:
ok, i’m confused . . .
the “fallacy of the church”? It appears that you are the one who does not know his history. I obviously do agree with the second part of this paragraph.
And which book was written by which Roman emperor??
He is referring to Constantine issuing the bible at the Nicean Council…
Prior to Constantine’s 400something AD council, where he and his political advisors laid out the Christian bible, Christianity was much different. Jesus’s followers believed Jesus was not the Son of God, but the mortal messager from God. Jesus had a well known wife and family line, his wife being Mary Magdalene. The holy day of Christianity was Saturday. The list goes on (Read the Da Vinci Code thread for more info if you don’t mind the book being ruined).
Constantine needed to create a Religion to rule the three major religions of his day. Early Christianity (in reality, Judaism), Roman Paganism (Jupiter, Apollo ect), and Sun-Worship. Traits from all three were incorporated into the Bible. Jesus had to be the son of god, a deity himself, for the religion to work for Constantine. This way, Christians could only find salvation through the only link to god, the Roman Catholic Church. The Holy day was changed, to Sunday, in honor of the Sun god (who Constantine himself worshipped). Many Roman Pagan holidays simply had their names changed into Christian holidays. For example, December 25 was the birthday of both Apollo, Venus, and some obscure Egyptian god before that whose name I cannot recall.
The Bible was created. Constantine ordered all prior Christian documents destroyed. Few survived. The Dead Sea scrolls predate the Bible, and give us a picture of what Jesus and his contemporaries really taught. The church is struggling to keep these scrolls from being released to the public.
In fact, its a general misconception that Constantine was a Christian. He never practiced, and was only baptised on his death bed, too weak to refuse. The whole modern Christian religion was created by him and his advisors, to better rule the masses of Rome. Why do you think it was so successful? It was created to be so.