It's a bit more complicated than that. Just as we laugh at mormon and scientology fuckwits for following religions which were invented in recent times the ancients expected religion to have some sort of ancient roots. Who wants to follow a johnny-come-lately god?
As Bart Ehrman writes on page 251 of Lost Christianities:
The proto-orthodox variant which morphed into the catholic church offered a thug like Constantine a religion which was just like him. It told people to STFU and do what they were told, pay their fucking taxes, and remember that the king was "appointed" by fucking god.
As Bart Ehrman writes on page 251 of Lost Christianities:
Quote:If any other form of early Christianity
had established itself as dominant within the religion, would Constantine
have embraced it? Would he have been willing to adopt a Jewish form of Christianity,
which would have required him and his fellow converts to become
Jewish, undergo circumcision, keep kosher food laws, and observe other traditions
of the Jewish Law? Or would he have been inclined to accept a Marcionite
form of Christianity, which could claim no “ancient” roots, since it abandoned
the ancient traditions of Judaism? Would he have been likely to adopt any of
the Gnostic forms of Christianity, which maintained that only a spiritual elite
could truly understand the revelation of God, that the majority of believers
misunderstood the true teachings of Jesus?
The proto-orthodox variant which morphed into the catholic church offered a thug like Constantine a religion which was just like him. It told people to STFU and do what they were told, pay their fucking taxes, and remember that the king was "appointed" by fucking god.
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