Faded Memories

[xephyr]

History is a funny thing. Written history goes back four thousand years, and yet there are periods simply rife with myth to the point that it didn't matter if "actual" history had been recorded. There does appear to be a natural tendency for famous people to accumulate mythology as they become farther removed from the living. Someone like the Roman

Comments

[xephyr]

I think my post lacks a summary along the lines of this: "Christian" meant different things in the past than it does today. Lots of words undergo such changes and often in less time. When we think of "Christian" today, we think of this hoary collection of rites and dogma, "Jesus Christ" and "Virgin Mary". What we forget is that in 300AD, "Christian" was an umbrella term that referenced followers of Attis, Mithras, Osiris, along with a raft of other obscure, localized mystery cults from every port in Asia.

While modern readers may automatically associate the title "Christ" with a possibly historical Nazarean Joshua bar Joseph, it is by no means certain that "Christians" of the late Imperial Rome would have identified their Savior as such. Given the inherent difficulties in locating any historical information regarding, it is far more likely that the character of "Jesus of Nazareth" was composed of several competing stories in order to consolidate a larger "Jesus Movement" organization from conflicting groups. Any and all of these groups would be catering to the poor and anyone else they could get to sign up with them.

There is, in fact, nothing in the original Creed of Nicea that requires one to believe in a Syrian Jewish Messiah cult, a Mythraic cult, or at Attis cult. It was a one-size-fits-all religious statement for the times. It wasn't until the Creed of Constantinople fifty years later that you get the introduction of characters like Pontius Pilate and Virgin Mary (and the introduction of ideas like "church", "baptism", and "sins").

With all of that said -- yes, part of the value to Constantine was his army of Bishops providing alms to the poor and reinforcing the corrupt Roman bureauracracy.