Fourth-Century Christianity Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Did the Roman Government Become More “Moral” Once it Became Christian?

I'm still drafting away on my book on the difference Jesus' ethics made on the moral conscience of the West, and one thing I'm ruminating on is whether Christian emperors were more ethically conscious (in a way moderns would recognize) than their pagan predecessors. Here's a first draft of my discussion of the matter. ****************************** With the Christianization of the empire there were to be sure major beneficial effects on wider society and sometimes these came not from the actions of church leaders in providing material assistance to the poor, hungry, orphaned, widowed, homeless, elderly, and outcast, but on occasion from the imperial government itself. This started already with the first Christian emperor, Constantine, who converted to the faith in 312 CE. In some ways Constantine’s new religious commitments affected his interventions in social problems rampant throughout the empire. Infanticide had been practiced since time immemorial, especially in cases where an unwanted child was born to a family that simply could not afford it. In 315 CE Constantine passed legislation that applied to all [...]

BDEhrman2024-07-26T10:18:54-04:00July 30th, 2024|Fourth-Century Christianity|

Who Was The Last Non-Christian Emperor of Rome?

Most people know that Constantine was the first Christian emperor. Lots of other things they think about him are wrong -- for example, that he decided or helped to decide which books would be in the New Testament or that his conversion was just a political ploy. I deal with these in my book The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2019). But this one's right. He was the first Christian emperor. It's also right that nearly all the emperors after Constantine were Christian. I say *nearly* because of one brief but highly noteworthy exception: his nephew Julian, most frequently referred to as Julian the Apostate. Julian ruled for nineteen months in 361-63 CE. His short reign was highly significant: Julian tried to turn the empire back to the ways and worship of paganism. He is called “the Apostate” because he started out as Christian but then opted to worship the traditional gods of Rome. And he tried to enforce this view on his Empire. Here is how I describe how he did that (or [...]

BDEhrman2022-09-16T15:01:22-04:00September 14th, 2022|Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, Spread of Christianity|

Did Heretics’ Texts Describe Their Incestuous Rituals?

In my previous post I talked about the church Father Epiphanius's attack on a heretical group of Gnostics called the Phibionites. They allegedly based their practices on a now-no-longer-surviving book the Greater Questions of Mary (Magdalene). Epiphanius indicates he knows the book. Did he? Did it actually exist. Here I conclude the discussion, from my book Forgery and Counterforgery. ****************************** The prior question is whether Epiphanius’s description of the activities of the group is at all plausible. Historians have long treated Epiphanius in general with a healthy dose of skepticism.[1] No Patristic source is filled with more invective and distortion; Epiphanius frequently makes connections between historical events that we otherwise know are unrelated, and he expressly claims to write horrific accounts precisely in order to repulse his readers from the heresies he describes (Pan. Proem. I. 2). His description of the Phibionites and their sex rituals, nonetheless, has been taken as historically grounded by a dismaying number of competent scholars. For Stephen Gero, the fact that other heresiological sources down into the Middle Ages mention [...]

BDEhrman2022-04-04T10:46:50-04:00April 13th, 2022|Fourth-Century Christianity, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

Fabrication, Forgery, and Accusations of (Heretical) Christian Licentious Rituals!

Two weeks ago I was asked to lead a PhD seminar on the use of literary forgery in early Christianity for the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures in the Department of Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Cultures, at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Thank God for Zoom. In preparation I reread parts of my book Forgery and Counterforgery and came across a section that I thought might be of interest to (some) members of the blog, dealing with Christian authors who fabricate stories and forge books to attack their heretical opponents. This will take two posts. TRIGGER WARNING: it involves rather scandalous sex acts (and worse) by an early Christian group. Or so our source tells us. And he indicates he has first-hand knowledge of it. Whoa. Here’s part one. ****************************** As a further example of a forger who perpetrated a fraud, we might consider the work of the doughty defender of the apostolic faith, Epiphanius of Salamis (late fourth century). Throughout his major work, the Panarion, an eighty-chapter refutation of all [...]

BDEhrman2022-04-04T10:30:58-04:00April 12th, 2022|Fourth-Century Christianity, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

The Council of Nicaea and The Resulting View of Christ

I have been discussing the Arian controversy over how to understand the relationship of the Father and the Son – the crucial element in establishing the doctrine of the Trinity. It led to the Council of Nicea. A lot could be, and has been, said about the Council. It is NOT when church Fathers decided which books would be in the New Testament and is NOT when they decided that Jesus was divine (even though that’s what you read in the Da Vinci Code !!). They did not discuss the first issue and everyone at the council already fully believed Christ was God. The question was: in what sense? Here is what I say about the Council in my book The Triumph of Christianity, in a chapter in which I deal with the emperor Constantine and his involvement with the church after his conversion. I begin by summarizing the two main positions in question – Arius’s view of Christ and his bishop Alexander’s view. ********************* Arius maintained that Christ, the Logos, could not be equal [...]

BDEhrman2021-04-16T12:00:32-04:00May 2nd, 2021|Constantine, Early Christian Doctrine, Fourth-Century Christianity|

Randy Alcorn’s Response to Some Blog Criticisms (part 2)

A few days ago I posted the first part of Randy Alcorn's explanation of his views, in response to a number of criticisms blog members leveled at his review of my book Heaven and Hell. In particular, a number of readers thought that he was unduly harsh and even "slandered" me. Here he provides a response. Feel free to make further comments, though Randy probably will not be responding directly. ******************************************************************************************************* From Randy Alcorn: I’ve changed my mind on various things, I assume Bart has too. In a few cases I wish I wouldn’t have cited info that at the time appeared accurate but turned out not to be (my publishers have sometimes cringed when I insist on another update and revision, as well as corrections that are sometimes expensive). To your charge of slander, Truncated, I don’t consider it slander to say that I believe someone appears to think he’s 100% right in certain areas when there are many people as smart and educated as he is that disagree. I do think at times Bart [...]

BDEhrman2020-06-29T15:05:09-04:00June 29th, 2020|Bart's Critics, Fourth-Century Christianity|

How Did We Get The 27 Books of the New Testament?

27 Books of the New Testament. This is now a continuation of my projected longer blog post that will serve as an introduction to the New Testament (possibly around 5000 – 6000 words or so). In the first section, I discussed the layout and structure of the New Testament. In the second I gave brief descriptions of each of the twenty-seven books. This one is spread out over two posts and deals with the question of how we actually got it. How was it collected together into a “book” and how was it transmitted to us over the centuries. How Did We Get The 27 Books of the New Testament? The New Testament did not drop from the sky one day a few years after the death of Jesus. It was written over a number of years by a number of authors with a number of different purposes, interests, and perspectives. But how did we actually get it? That is, who decided on these particular 27 Books of the New Testament (early Christian writings) rather [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-12T19:42:42-04:00November 18th, 2019|Early Christian Doctrine, Fourth-Century Christianity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts|

How Did We Get These 27 Books in the New Testament?

I often receive questions about how we got the canon of the New Testament. We have twenty-seven books in it. Who decided? On what grounds? And when? Here is a recent question on the matter. QUESTION I have always wondered about the men (only men!) who decided “this one’s in . . . that one’s out!” back in 325 (was it 325?) at Trullan, Rome, Trent and where else? Nicea? RESPONSE: The first thing to emphasize is that the most common answer one hears – an answer that seems to have become common sense among people-interested-in-such-things-at-large -- is completely wrong. It appears that people have this answer because they read it someplace, or heard it from someone who had read it someplace, and that someplace was a place in particular: Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code! (If you don’t know, I wrote an entire book pointing out the historical mistakes in the book. [title: Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code]. That was a particularly fun book for me to write. Some [...]

BDEhrman2021-04-26T22:33:35-04:00October 4th, 2019|Fourth-Century Christianity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Reader’s Questions|

Constantine and the Christian Faith: My Fourth Smithsonian Lecture

I have found over the years that lots of people have mistaken ideas about Constantine the Great, the early fourth century Roman Emperor who converted to Christianity. I used to have mistaken ideas myself, until I started reading the sources and examining the scholarship. For example, Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire, right? (Wrong.) Constantine is the reason Christianity took over the empire, right? (Wrong again). Constantine didn't really convert to Christianity: it was a political move by a savvy politician who remained, at heart, a pagan, right? (Well, uh, sorry...) It is true, though that the conversion of Emperor Constantine in 312 CE is one of Christianity’s pivotal events, and that by the end of the 4th century, Christianity was proclaimed the official religion throughout Rome, leading to the suppression of other religious traditions. Here is a lecture I gave on Constantine and Christianity at the Smithsonian on Feb. 10, 2018. It is the last of the series of four that I have given here on the blog, based on my [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T11:01:46-04:00May 2nd, 2019|Book Discussions, Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, Public Forum, Spread of Christianity, Video Media|

Eternal Torment Even for Christians?

I have been discussing the “universalistic” strand in parts of Christianity in the early centuries, which said that ultimately, everyone will be saved. This was very much a minority opinion. Most Christians continued to think that non-believers would be damned, forever, to some very nasty torments that would never end. In fact, in many circles, more and more people came to be subject to the fires of eternity in the Christian imagination. In the fourth and fifth centuries, with a massive influx of converts there also came large numbers of less-than-devoted souls. And the blessings and punishments of eternity almost inevitably came to be modified as a result. By the end of the fourth century, when Christianity was well on the road to becoming the dominant religion of the empire, some Christian writers started to maintain that heaven was not the destination of all members of the church, or hell the fate reserved only for those outside of it. On the contrary, Christian sinners too could be subject to the eternal wrath of God. Especially [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-09T12:59:58-04:00January 14th, 2019|Afterlife, Fourth-Century Christianity|

The Happy News! No One Stays In Hell!

I don’t want to leave the impression that Origen was the only early Christian thinker who held to the idea of universal salvation, that in the end, everyone gets saved. Very few (hardly any) would have agreed that the Devil too would get redeemed. But that all humans will eventually “make it” was an attractive view to others – even “orthodox” Christian thinkers. Among scholars from the later church, the most famous theologian to countenance universal salvation was a self-confessed advocate of Origen, the late fourth-century Gregory of Nyssa (335-94 CE). In a dialogue called “On the Soul and the Resurrection,” held with his own sister and fellow theologian Macrina the Younger, Gregory insists that suffering after death is not meant to be a punishment for sin, but as a way of driving evil out of the soul. His sister agrees, at some length. Moreover, she claims that when evil is finally driven out, it will disappear, since evil cannot exist outside of the will of a person. And when that happens, Macrina maintains, there [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-07T14:49:23-04:00January 11th, 2019|Afterlife, Fourth-Century Christianity|

Was the Apocalypse of Peter Originally Part of the New Testament?

The Apocalypse of Peter was a reasonably popular book in some Christian churches of the first three or four Christian centuries. It was not as massively influential as the four Gospels or the writings of Paul, but even so, a number of Christian individuals and churches saw it as a Scriptural text, written by Peter. The book is first mentioned in the Muratorian Fragment, a late second century text written from Rome, which discusses the books that, in the anonymous author’s opinion, made up the Christian New Testament. The list, oddly, does not include James, 1 and 2 Peter, or 3 John, but it does include two apocalypses, the apocalypse of John (i.e., the book of Revelation) and the apocalypse of Peter. About the latter it says that some Christians do not think it should be read in church – i.e., that it was not to be accepted as part of the canon. But since he says that was the opinion of “some,” it appears that “most” did indeed accept it, as the author himself [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-09T12:57:45-04:00December 19th, 2018|Christian Apocrypha, Fourth-Century Christianity|

Deciding on Which Books Should Be in the New Testament

I am in the midst of a thread in which I explain why it is puzzling that the Apocalypse of Peter did not make it into the New Testament, when the book of 2 Peter did. So far I have talked about both books, as well as the Gospel of Peter, another Petrine book that did not "make it." Now I need to explain how church fathers decided which books would be accepted as official scripture and which not. I've dealt with the issue on the blog several times over the years, the first time being in response to a question on the matter I received some six years ago. What I said then is what I would still say now! Here it is: QUESTION: I just read Jesus, Interrupted … and have now seen that you have written quite a few books and articles. I am particularly interested in how the books of the New Testament were chosen and why/how the others were not. Can you recommend a good read for this? RESPONSE: [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-07T15:14:56-04:00November 21st, 2018|Fourth-Century Christianity, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Early Debates about the Gospel of Peter

This is the second of my two posts on the Gospel of Peter, and in some ways it is the more important one. Here I talk about what we knew about the Gospel, before it was discovered, from the writings of the ancient church fathers. One of these discussions in particular will provide us with the information I’m heading for, of why the Gospel was not accepted into the canon of the New Testament. (It shows only a single instance of a debate about it, but the terms of the debate are instructive.) These comments come from the “Introduction” to the Gospel that I wrote for the new translation and edition of the early apocryphal Gospels, that I produced with my colleague Zlatko Plese. ************************************************************** The third-century Origen is the first patristic author to mention a Gospel allegedly written by Jesus’ disciple Simon Peter. Origen indicates that the book may have spoken of Jesus’ “brothers” as sons of Joseph from a previous marriage (Commentary on Matthew 10.17). It is not clear that Origen had actually [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-09T14:11:59-04:00November 18th, 2018|Christian Apocrypha, Fourth-Century Christianity|

The Core of My Dissertation on The Gospel Quotations of Didymus the Blind

Here is the second of three posts on how Bruce Metzger directed my rather technical dissertation on the Gospel quotations of the fourth-century church father Didymus the Blind, from six years ago on the blog. THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF MY POSTS OF MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE METZGER, MY MENTOR As I started thinking about how to write up this second post on my dissertation (the first post was posted some days ago), I remembered one of my clearest pieces of advice that I ever gave to myself, many years ago now, based, already then, on substantial experience. Never , ever, NEVER ask a graduate student what s/he is writing the dissertation on. They invariably will tell you, and it will take a half hour, and your eyes will glaze over in 30 seconds. So just don’t do it. With that principle in mind, I think I had better not go into all the ins and outs of the dissertation. I’ll just go into some of them…. The reason it is so painful listening to [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-11T14:00:22-04:00August 15th, 2018|Book Discussions, Fourth-Century Christianity, New Testament Manuscripts|

When Christianity Became the “Official” Religion of Rome

I have been discussing when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. It was not under Constantine, or even one of his sons who succeeded him on the throne. It was only at the end of the fourth century, during the reign of Theodosius. Here is what I say in my book about that new situation some seven decades after the conversion of Constantine. *************************************************************** When Julian was killed in a poorly-conceived and even more poorly-executed battle with the Persians on June 26, 361, he was succeeded by Jovian, one of his military commanders. Jovian, and every Roman emperor who followed him, were Christian. Many of these successors were quite vehement in the public affirmation of their Christian commitments and their resistance to traditional pagan religions. Arguably the most forceful in his views was Theodosius I, also known as “the Great,” who ruled from 379-95 CE, and who was responsible for making Christianity, for all intents and purposes, the official state religion of the Roman Empire. Theodosius was ... The rest of this [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-04T14:31:42-04:00May 2nd, 2018|Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Spread of Christianity|

Making Rome Pagan Again

After Constantine converted to Christianity, every Roman emperor, for all time, was Christian – with one brief exception: his nephew Julian, most frequently referred to as Julian the Apostate, who ruled for nineteen months in 361-63 CE. This short reign was highly significant: Julian tried to turn the empire back to the ways and worship of paganism. He is called “the Apostate” because he started out as Christian but then opted to worship the traditional gods of Rome. And he tried to enforce this view on his Empire. Here is how I describe how he did that (or tried to do it) in my book on the Triumph of Christianity. The Last Pagan Emperor Julian spent his first six months as emperor in Constantinople, and then nine unhappy and turbulent months in Antioch, before marching against the Persians. He was killed early in the conflict, having ruled the empire for a mere nineteen months. It was, however, an eventful year and a half, especially for pagan-Christian relations. Upon ascending to the throne, Julian declared [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T10:36:35-04:00May 1st, 2018|Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Spread of Christianity|

The Beginning of the End of Paganism

I have decided to pursue further the question of how, in the fourth century, Christianity took over the Roman imperial government (at the highest levels) leading to the proscription of pagan practices. For that I will rely on a couple of extracts from my book, The Triumph of Christianity, over a few posts. Here is the continuation of the story after the death of Constantine. ***************************************************************** Constantine’s father Constantius became Caesar of the West in 293 CE and then senior Augustus in the imperial college with the abdication of Maximian in 305 CE. His dynasty was to last seventy years, until the death of Constantine’s nephew Julian in 363 CE. It was not a peaceful and closely knit family, as seen nowhere more clearly than in the vicious bloodbath that occurred after Constantine’s death on May 22, 337, with the event known as “the massacre of the princes.” Constantine’s three remaining sons – Constantius II, Constans, and Constantine II (the eldest Crispus having earlier been executed) – were to divide his empire among themselves, but [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T11:03:45-04:00April 30th, 2018|Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Spread of Christianity|

Did Constantine Outlaw the Pagan Religions?

In today’s mailbag I deal with an interesting question about when, exactly, Christianity became the state religion of Rome and the traditional pagan religions were outlawed. Was it during the reign of Constantine (as is popularly imagined?)? Later? At the end of the fourth century? Here’s the question. QUESTION: I was listening to The Great Courses lectures on Early Middle Ages by professor Philip Daileader and he mentions that Christianity was made the official state religion of the Roman Empire and that pagan rituals and practices HAD been made illegal BEFORE the reign of Julian the Apostate and that Theodosius only made it illegal AGAIN to practice paganism in 391-392 !?! I always thought (and taught...) that Christianity became the state religion and that paganism was outlawed in 392 for the first time. Since you have been working on this period recently, I would love to know your stand on that matter RESPONSE: I need to say at the outset that I have not listened to this course by Prof. Daileader and so [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T10:59:22-04:00April 29th, 2018|Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, Reader’s Questions, Spread of Christianity|

The Conversion of Constantine

My book comes out tomorrow and I’m very excited! Here is a foretaste of what is in it. This is how I begin Chapter 1, which focuses on the conversion of Constantine. ***************************************************** Few events in the history of civilization have proved more transformative than the conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity in the year 312 CE. Later historians would sometimes question whether the conversion was genuine. But to Constantine himself and to spiritual advisors close to him, there appears to have been no doubt. He had shifted from one set of religious beliefs and practices to another. At one point in his life he was a polytheist who worshiped a variety of pagan gods -- gods of his hometown Naissus in the Balkans, gods of his family, gods connected with the armies he served, and the gods of Rome itself. At another point he was a monotheist, worshiping the Christian God alone. His change may not have been sudden and immediate. It may have involved a longer set of transitions than he later [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T11:09:46-04:00February 12th, 2018|Book Discussions, Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, Spread of Christianity|