(August 22, 2018 at 2:08 am)Minimalist Wrote: Where did it come from?
Quote:By the time Eusebius became bishop of Caesarea around 315, a new vision of the church began to develop. The fantasy of a well-ordered, centralized, and monolithic church had always been around, but Eusebius wanted to make it a reality. In periods of peace, Christians were able to imagine themselves as a church of the present. It was no longer necessary to look to the future for redemption and vindication; they could create the Kingdom of God in the here and now. This possibility and the exciting vision for the church required a new version of the church’s history. Eusebius provided it. Drawing upon the work of Irenaeus and other early church writers, Eusebius set about telling the history of the “apostles” from the time of Christ to his own day.
Candida Moss The Myth of Persecution Page 190.
Translation: Eusebius concocted the "history" of the church!
Sure, but the fragmentary nature of the early church is kind of interesting. There were all manner of wild versions about. The varieties we have today are nothing compared to what happened early on.
For example, Docetism, which held that jesus was never corporeal but was wholly a spirit which merely gave the appearance of physical incarnation. The resurrection was simply jesus acting as though it was real. For our benefit of course, but he didn't really suffer at all and couldn't die anyway. The original performance art. That one was surprisingly long lived. The Cathars adopted it right up to when they were wiped out in the 1200s by Rome.
