14 February 2013
You learn something new everyday and today was particularly enlightening:
2nd century Christians were a varied bunch fighting among themselves to be the true path to god.
While some believed in one god as is popular today, many others believed the god of the old testament was a separate entity to the one being promoted as a modern saviour following the events of Jesus. Marcionism believed that the wrathful god of the old testament was inferior to the more forgiving one, post-Jesus. (Would go some way to explain the split personality).
Gnostic Christians had gods in numbers from 12 up to 365.
Nearly every aspect of modern Christian belief had an alternative following.
What they all had in common was their belief they followed Jesus and his teachings and those of his disciples.
During this tumultuous times, there was no New Testament, only numerous epistles, gospels and acts, all claiming to be from Jesus' apostles.
The reason modern Christians believe in one god, is because during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the power struggle swayed in that direction. Early churches debated each theme until a popular doctrine had a majority backing.
Once this agreement had majority backing and therefor strongest voice, they used biased confirmation to choose which gospels, acts and letters to use and which to exclude, to back their version of Christianity.
That heralded the birth of the New Testament collection of writings.
This became the Orthodox Christian doctrine, and the rest as they say, is history.... Or is it?
History is created by those that win wars...
Word Of God #2 • Opuss № I