Constantine Conspiracies

Since I just talked about a used-to-be-hot-now-not book, why not deal with the most annoying aspect of The DaVinci Code?

The conspiracy theory that involves the Roman Emperor Constantine remolding Christianity to suit himself, revising the scriptures and then destroying all existing copies of scripture is not unique to The DaVinci Code. (Here's a clue...if Dan Brown ever had a truly original thought, it would probably die of loneliness.) This idea has been bouncing around for at least a century and a half. I remember the first time I encountered it, back in the fall of 1982. Then, it was a guy explaining how the Bible had originally taught reincarnation, but the Council of Nicea had removed all references to reincarnation. If you watch the History Channel or are just kindly disposed to conspiracy theories, you have, no doubt, heard it repeatedly. It goes like this: Constantine wanted to consolidate his power, so he took Christianity, which was a minor religion which held that Jesus was just a teacher, and transformed it, elevating Jesus to the status of God, all of this done at the Council of Nicea in 325. Then, all scriptural references supporting the original form of the religion were edited out, all of the existing copies were destroyed, and new versions of the scriptures were issued.

The problem with the theory is that there is not one scrap of evidence for it. We have hundreds of manuscripts and fragments from before 325, and every one of them matches the post-Nicene versions of the scriptures. But all of the originals were destroyed, the theory claims, so the evidence is gone. Conspiracy folks don't use evidence, the lack of evidence is evidence in itself, it is proof for them of the existence of the conspiracy. "The Bible originally taught reincarnation," they say, but where is the evidence? Constantine destroyed it. "Christianity originally believed that Jesus was a prophet, not God," they say, but where is the evidence? Constantine destroyed it. They willfully ignore that we do have evidence, and all of it points to the scriptures pre- and post-Nicea being identical. The existence of any pre-325 fragments that match post-Nicene ones is proof that the conspiracy is false.

The Council of Nicea is an issue that I'll take up later, that's a post to itself. The point is that the issue of Jesus' divinity was NOT a point at the council, the Arians believed that Jesus is a created divinity, a litte god, as it were. The issue at Nicea was not whether or not Jesus was divine, it was over whether he was God or a god.