Polygamy

[doombug]

I know this is going to piss off the crowd that thinks that Constantine knew exactly what should and shouldn't go into a book that's supposed to be the unerring Word of God,.

Thanks for the explanation Accountable. Sorry I wasn't specific but I was referring to your quote above. Many people get this idea from watching "The Da Vinci Code" but it isn't true. As a matter of fact here is a quote from wiki-pedia:
"While Constantine wanted a unified church after the council for political reasons, he did not force the Homoousian view of Christ's nature on the council, nor commission a Bible at the council that omitted books he did not approve of...."

Constantine changing the bible is just another myth from people who don't know what they are talking about.

 

[Accountable]

A commission by a King injects politics whether the king wishes it or not. Everybody wants to please the king, and what better way than to show that God chose a Roman to take the lead in building this new church that the king has adopted as his own?

It's really unimportant to me. I choose to accept what the Bible says are the words of Jesus Christ. The rest, I choose to take as the opinions of fallible men.

 

[doombug]

A commission by a King injects politics whether the king wishes it or not. Everybody wants to please the king, and what better way than to show that God chose a Roman to take the lead in building this new church that the king has adopted as his own?

It's really unimportant to me. I choose to accept what the Bible says are the words of Jesus Christ. The rest, I choose to take as the opinions of fallible men.

Interesting take Accountable. You obviously see the truth when it comes to humans. I just haven't seen any proof to back up the theory that Constantine influenced the make up of the bible.

 

[BornReady]

Constantine invited bishops from all over the empire to the Council of Nicea. Then he told everyone present that they couldn't leave until they had come to agreement on what official church doctrine should be. He didn't give a rat's ass what they decided. He just wanted them to come to agreement. That's what I heard anyway.

 

[Accountable]

Just a thought: what was the Roman tradition regarding marriage, monogamy or polygamy?

 

[Kyle B]

A commission by a King injects politics whether the king wishes it or not. Everybody wants to please the king, and what better way than to show that God chose a Roman to take the lead in building this new church that the king has adopted as his own?

It's really unimportant to me. I choose to accept what the Bible says are the words of Jesus Christ. The rest, I choose to take as the opinions of fallible men.

He also persecuted sects that believed Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit weren't one trinity.

Just a thought: what was the Roman tradition regarding marriage, monogamy or polygamy?

That's a good question. Given the context, that Rome was a pretty conservative place which believed in family values and such, I'm guessing that it was scorned upon, at least officially.

 

[Leananshee]

He also persecuted sects that believed Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit weren't one trinity.

As an interesting aside, St. Nicholas, that's right, Santa Claus, was one of those persecutors. He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, and if you're a nasty little heretic, then he'll burn you at the stake......

My SO has designs to move to Utah and found a splinter group of the Mormons, but with a woman having multiple husbands, collecting all their checks. She points out that women can manage relations with many men far more than the other way around. Not really a Biblical basis for or against that either, really, though I think the current Mormon splinter groups would really dislike her trying to upset their monopoly or empower women by showing them another way.

 

[doombug]

Constantine invited bishops from all over the empire to the Council of Nicea. Then he told everyone present that they couldn't leave until they had come to agreement on what official church doctrine should be. He didn't give a rat's ass what they decided. He just wanted them to come to agreement. That's what I heard anyway.

Exactly. So to say Constantine changed the bible to fit what he wanted is quite a leap.

 

[Zorak]

Just a thought: what was the Roman tradition regarding marriage, monogamy or polygamy?

Monogamy. And it was more than tradition, it was law also. I'm not just talking about the Late Roman Empire here, I mean the Republic also. You'd be surprised how little marrital law and tradition has changed in over 2000 years.

Monogamy, in my opinion, probably resulted as a start of the tradition of dowry, something practiced in Ancient Greece, but probably even earlier still. If you had a daughter, and she could marry multiple times, you'd have to pay an extrordinary dowry each time. And similarly, a man could make an inordinate amount of wealth from multiple wives.

 

[Zorak]

Add: Here's a website, I can't vouch for it's validity, but it seems well written and it's all stuff I have read before: http://www.crystalinks.com/romefamily.html

A ceremony involving religious elements and the signing of the marriage contract was followed by a feast for all of the friends, relatives and business associates of the two families.

Polygomy was outlawed. For the first 500 years in Rome, divorce was unknown. So, a great deal of care was taken selecting a marriage partner. In general, marriage was forbidden between relatives four times removed, and between anyone connected by marriage.

Consent to the marriage had to be shown. Consent was very important and consisted of three steps. First, consent had to be shown in public prior to the wedding ceremony. One way to show consent was for the future bride and groom to appear in public holding hands. An engagement period before the wedding was considered good manners, but it wasn't a legal requirement. An engagement ring was usual, when affordable. This ring was worn on the third finger of the left hand, as it is today, because the ancient Romans believed that a nerve ran from this finger directly to the heart.

There had to be witnesses to the ceremony to make it legal, typically at least ten witnesses. The bride and groom would stand before a priest, hold hands. The bride had agreed to the wedding by appearing in public holding hands with her future husband. Once again, the bride had to consent to the marriage during the wedding ceremony, this time by saying words of consent in public.

An offering was made to the god Jupiter, which usually consisted of cake. Once the priest had made the offering, this cake was eaten by the bride and groom. Then followed congratulations by the guests.

 

[Accountable]

Exactly. So to say Constantine changed the bible to fit what he wanted is quite a leap.

Sounds like you have a dog in this hunt. Think it's possible to find some proof? Of course, the proof would have to be a disinterested party, so it couldn't be from Church or government records because both would benefit from putting forth a certain image, regardless of the real truth. I really don't know who else was around that kept records.

 

[Accountable]

Monogamy. And it was more than tradition, it was law also. I'm not just talking about the Late Roman Empire here, I mean the Republic also. You'd be surprised how little marrital law and tradition has changed in over 2000 years.

Monogamy, in my opinion, probably resulted as a start of the tradition of dowry, something practiced in Ancient Greece, but probably even earlier still. If you had a daughter, and she could marry multiple times, you'd have to pay an extrordinary dowry each time. And similarly, a man could make an inordinate amount of wealth from multiple wives.

Add: Here's a website, I can't vouch for it's validity, but it seems well written and it's all stuff I have read before: http://www.crystalinks.com/romefamily.html

Interesting! Good find, Zorak.

 

[Accountable]

She points out that women can manage relations with many men far more than the other way around.

Si se puede. I've seen videos of it.

 

[doombug]

Thanks for the explanation Accountable. Sorry I wasn't specific but I was referring to your quote above. Many people get this idea from watching "The Da Vinci Code" but it isn't true. As a matter of fact here is a quote from wiki-pedia:
"While Constantine wanted a unified church after the council for political reasons, he did not force the Homoousian view of Christ's nature on the council, nor commission a Bible at the council that omitted books he did not approve of...."

Constantine changing the bible is just another myth from people who don't know what they are talking about.

Hey Accountable here is a post I made earlier where I quote such a source.

 

[Accountable]

Add: Here's a website, I can't vouch for it's validity, but it seems well written and it's all stuff I have read before: http://www.crystalinks.com/romefamily.html

I found this Princeton paper with citations. http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/010903.pdf It's pretty thorough and really well-written.

Here's one place where the author gives his opinion about biblical monogamy:

As both the notion of civic rights and the institution of chattel slavery declined in the Greco-Roman world of the later Roman Empire, Christianity maintained and reinforced monogamous norms. The canonical New Testament tradition has Jesus take sides in Jewish debates about the propriety of divorce in a way that implies rejection of any non-monogamous practices (Matthew 19.3-12; Mark 10.2-12; Brewer (2000) 89-100). The roughly contemporaneous Qumran movement likewise opposed polygamy (Brewer (2000) 80-2). Pauline doctrine, however, fails explicitly to address this issue (Brewer (2000) 104). Later Church Fathers saw fit to explain away Old Testament polygamy as motivated by God’s command to populate the world, an expansion that was no longer necessary or desirable (e.g., Clark (1986) 147). However, monogamy per se does not play a central role in early Christian writings, and the fact that Augustine labeled it a ‘Roman custom’ (On the Good of Marriage 7) indicates that Christianity may simply have appropriated it as an element of mainstream Greco-Roman culture.

 

[Accountable]

Hey Accountable here is a post I made earlier where I quote such a source.

Wiki sources cite better sources. You didn't provide a link, so I copied your quote & googled. Did you find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea ?
If so, that passage cited a website http://www.equip.org/articles/what-really-happened-at-nicea- , in which the author {"James R. White is Scholar in Residence at the College of Christian Studies, Grand Canyon University, an adjunct professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (AZ Campus) and Faraston Theological Seminary, and Director of Ministries for Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona."} supports what I opined earlier:

We are dependent, in large measure, on the words of Eusebius of Caesarea for our knowledge of many of the events at the council. This is somewhat unfortunate, because Eusebius, the first "church historian," was a partisan participant as well.

So it would be virtually impossible to find disinterested support for your claim. That's not to say it isn't true, only that it's not verifiable.

 

[doombug]

Wiki sources cite better sources. You didn't provide a link, so I copied your quote & googled. Did you find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea ?
If so, that passage cited a website http://www.equip.org/articles/what-really-happened-at-nicea- , in which the author {"James R. White is Scholar in Residence at the College of Christian Studies, Grand Canyon University, an adjunct professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (AZ Campus) and Faraston Theological Seminary, and Director of Ministries for Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona."} supports what I opined earlier:

So it would be virtually impossible to find disinterested support for your claim. That's not to say it isn't true, only that it's not verifiable.

As far as what went on at the council I agree. I doubt that any source would be good enough but the claim that is made by anyone can be verified by comparing earlier texts to the texts thaat came out of the council. I haven't seen any major differences in those texts myself.

But here is what the Encyclopedia Britannica says : " COUNCIL OF NICAEA

, (325), the first ecumenical council of the Christian church, meeting in ancient Nicaea (now İznik, Tur.). It was called by the emperor Constantine I, an unbaptized catechumen, or neophyte, who presided over the opening session and took part in the discussions. He hoped a general council of the church would solve the problem created in the Eastern church by Arianism, a heresy first proposed by Arius of Alexandria that affirmed that Christ is not divine but a created being."

To me it seems it is generally accepted by the mainstream that this was the case. The claim that Constantine purposely changed the bible for his own gain is a nothing more than a half baked conspiracy theory.

 

[Azazel]

 

[Kyle B]

nah, it's not like that. I was watching 20/20 and the Mormon dude on there kept his wives in line. He even married his first wife's best friend and pulled it off. Where's the success kid meme?!?!

 

[Accountable]

As far as what went on at the council I agree. I doubt that any source would be good enough but the claim that is made by anyone can be verified by comparing earlier texts to the texts thaat came out of the council. I haven't seen any major differences in those texts myself.

But here is what the Encyclopedia Britannica says : " COUNCIL OF NICAEA

, (325), the first ecumenical council of the Christian church, meeting in ancient Nicaea (now İznik, Tur.). It was called by the emperor Constantine I, an unbaptized catechumen, or neophyte, who presided over the opening session and took part in the discussions. He hoped a general council of the church would solve the problem created in the Eastern church by Arianism, a heresy first proposed by Arius of Alexandria that affirmed that Christ is not divine but a created being."

To me it seems it is generally accepted by the mainstream that this was the case. The claim that Constantine purposely changed the bible for his own gain is a nothing more than a half baked conspiracy theory.

I'm not disputing what is generally accepted, only pointing out that it all comes from one or two biased sources, making any definitive statement "half-baked."

BTW, any encyclopedia is not a primary source. Their information came from somewhere else, so it's always better to dig that source up if possible.