"hippo" wrote:

My few past experiences with Mr. Pearse incline me to always extend him
every benefit of the doubt in matters of theology and church history. As
far
as I can see he has always acted the perfect gentleman, in the complete
sense of the word, in addition to providing a useful service to internet
researchers with his website.

His apparent humility fooled you, didn't it?

Even dogs have discovered snarls get you snarls back. Surely we have
evolved
past dogs.

I can see where he, and others like him, pose a threat to you guys on AA
who
seem never to have learned that skepticism is far more effectively
expressed
with humor, whit, and reasoned argument a la Ben Franklin and Voltaire
than
arrogant truculence laced with ad homonyms in the language of sewer
rats. -the Troll

Yet you admit that politeness served as a cover to aid your deception!

What deception? -the Troll

You clearly admit to having been decieved.
*That* deception.

hippo wrote:

It seems to me if the council decided what to include or to exclude as
part
of the canon,

Which they did not, tho. They just didn't ban the Old Testament
apocrypha in their discussions. Indeed no-one made any decision on
this at all until the Council of Trent in the 16th century.

It's actually really hard to define any one point at which the canon
gets fixed, you know. (I went and looked).

expelled the two non-juring prelates who presumably had a
different view than the majority,

Nothing to do with the canon, tho -- all about refusing to accept the
creed agreed by the council.

Possibly some people reading this don't know why the council happened.
It happened because of arguments in Alexandria over the status of the
2nd person of the Trinity; was he of the same substance (homoousios) as
the 1st person, or of like substance. The logical consequence of the
latter belief is either to create two deities, or to deny the real
divinity of Christ.

The other issue before them was to harmonise the date of Easter. While
the church was illegal, the church could never get all its people
together to agree it among themselves. The apostles hadn't worried
about it much, had even used different dates I suspect, and that left
people somewhat confused.

and contrived the exile of Arius,

The council had no such power, tho. Constantine exiled all those who
refused to accept the decision for being difficult, although they were
all allowed to return after a while. (This was, of course, the start
of a very slippery slope; his successor Constantius demonstrated just
how badly this could go).

they effectively set the canon.

Yes, if it had happened like that. But it didn't.

As for "sourcing the content on the internet..." that makes it sound as
if I simply repeated hearsay. But this is just what I didn't want to
do. I used sources which happen to be online. If your question is
whether the Ante-Nicene Fathers text online matches the printed text,
well, go and check! (They do).

Yes, that is what I meant.

Well, the page images are online as well. But beyond that, well, all I
can say is go and look. (That sounds harsh, but anything I might say
is open to the same objection).

This has been my first meeting with the 'gents' from AA who, it seems,
dislike any research into, or even discussion of, history that *might*
disagree with their pat little formulated arguments. They make the usual
mistake of zealots by conflating history with religion when they are in
entirely different dimensions. Proving the historicity of Jesus of
Nazareth
would in no way validate either side of the religious/secular argument.

No indeed. No-one really questions this anyway; but whether
Christianity is true is quite another question. No-one questions
whether L. Ron Hubbard existed, but we aren't scientologists for quite
other reasons.

The allegation that Jesus never existed seems to have been invented for
polemical reasons ca. 1700. It's evident why: imagine us denying
Mohammed ever existed, as a ploy to discomfit Moslems. If we were that
cynical, we could reason that it would be fun and useful to get them
running around trying to prove what we never really doubt; and every
time they got close, we'd just change the rules, or demand "more proof"
or whatever. The game can run on indefinitely, and all the time our
beliefs are off the table, unexamined, and psychologically get treated
as some kind of default.

The degree to which they react to even the suggestion indicates that they
are
not the open minded proponents of reason they claim to be

There is something rather ironic about demands for "think for yourself"
expressed robotically in the precise words of someone else, as one
sometimes hears.

and every bit as obstructive to pure research as competing religions and
medieval
superstition. I must say it has been a thoroughly unpleasant experience
and
I am not religious.

God-bothering is unpleasant, whoever does it. Live and let live.

Separately, do you happen to know if the creed existed in similar form
before the council, was made up of extant parts, or was it composed
entirely
by the council? -the Troll

That is one heck of a question. I don't feel all that competent to
answer it, although I think a lot of data exists on this. My own field
is Tertullian; I know that he makes various statements of belief ca.
200 AD which parallel a lot of it. Earlier creeds there were. But the
precise form was composed there. I don't believe the term homoousios
was so used before.

There is certainly this (Tertullian, Adversus Praxean, ch. 2):

"We however as always...believe (as these do) in one only God,
yet subject to this dispensation
(which is our word for "economy") that the one only God
has also a Son, his Word who has proceeded from himself, by
whom all things were made; and without whom nothing has been
made : 4 that this <Son> was sent by the Father into the virgin
and was born of her both man and God, Son of man and Son of
God, and was named Jesus Christ: that he suffered, died, and
was buried, according to the scriptures,5 and, having been raised
up by the Father and taken back into heaven, sits at the right
hand of the Father 6 and will come to judge the quick and the
dead 7 : and that thereafter he, according to his promise,8 sent
from the Father the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the
faith of those who believe in the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit. That this Rule has come down from the beginning
of the Gospel, even before all former heretics, not to speak of
Praxeas of yesterday, will be proved as well by the comparative
lateness of all heretics as by the very novelty of Praxeas of
yesterday."

http://www.tertullian.org/articles/evans_praxeas_eng.htm

Generally creeds arise in response to specific challenges. Someone
comes out with something, and everyone looks at each other and says
"no, that isn't right, I know it isn't." Then, of course, someone has
to work out why.

In Tertullian's time, there was a heretic called Praxeas who was taught
that the Father and the Son were so much the same that one could say
that the Father was crucified. This is not the language of the bible
-- the yardstick in such matters -- and Tertullian objected
accordingly. In Adversus Praxean, he ended up using the Latin term
"trinitas" in a technical way to indicate how the two are really
related. Unfortunately my eyes tend to blur once words like "the
economy of the godhead" start getting used -- I'm not very
theologically minded, I'm afraid. Everyone thought it was good
thinking, and his treatment stuck (more or less).

I hope that helps. I'm no expert on that question. Roman Catholic
scholars have produced huge tomes on it. But I could never bring
myself to open them!

Until something is found that evidences a biblical Israel it remains in the
realm of mythology.
Anyone publishing *anything* claiming there is any form of connection between
that hill and biblical Israel is doing nothing but reciting bible myth is pop
journalism for the edification of an unscientific masses.