Yesterday in class we ran two historical simulations of the canonization of Christian Scripture. The assignment and process is described here. The results of both simulations were similar, in part (I presume) due to some tweaks in the rules that I made since I last did this (see here). Taking away some of the innate power of the Bishops and lessening the active role of the Emperor created a more level playing field that allowed the other Christian groups managed to rally and bypass what would become the “Orthodox” position. The winning proposal for a canon of Christian scripture in the simulation that I ran was: Exclusion of the Hebrew Bible and the redaction of all included texts from references to it; Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, and Thomas; Letters of Paul; Book of Revelation; Ability to add (but not subtract) texts to the canon, as determined in future synods; Ability to interpret texts allegorically (not sure what this means, but the Montanists insisted that this was a deal-breaker) It certainly is possible, historically, that a coalition of Marcionites, Gnostics, and Montanists could have arrived at something like this. Could they, though, realistically have opposed the bishops? We discussed […]
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