What really happened at Nicea(Nicaea)?

a reply to: Akragon

That is not correct... Arius believed Jesus was God, just not the Father

No, all indication is that Arius rejected the Doctrine of the Trinity and did not believe that Jesus was God. The determination at Nicaea was that Jesus was begotten, not created, the second person of the Trinity, and a validation of the Christian belief in the Trinitarian God. It is one of the most important Councils in Christian history, because out of its rulings came the basis for most of the commonly held doctrines of faith -- the Doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation and Grace.

a reply to: jmdewey60

Athanasius decided that Jesus must be declared "un-begotten".

I think you're getting your terminology, or your people, mixed up.

Athanasius was on the side of those who believed that Christ was begotten, not created.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

The debated the Trinity and when Easter should be.

a reply to: DarknStormy

You are making it seem as though Constantine did something corrupt to the information at the council. What evidence is there of such a thing? Aside from maybe the DaVinci Code which is a fictional novel...

a reply to: adjensen

Athanasius was on the side of those who believed that Christ was begotten, not created.

He saw them as being the same thing.
His extreme position on that was toned down (by others) in later versions.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

If a God preordained the canonization of the scriptures, he wouldn't need men to vote on it, if they did vote, they'd vote unanimously, and when they didn't vote unanimously, they wouldn't target the least popular sects for routine exterminations and book burning. If you look at the early Christian Quakers in the United States, they drank from the source of the font of light directly and many of their organizations ran by unanimous consent. How is it that mystics a millenia later can come to consensus when the first universalists of the religion could not?

originally posted by: adjensen
a reply to: borntowatch

Marcion was a gnostic who rejected the teaching, Jesus was God, God (Jehovah) was a different God to Jesus. He depicted the Old Testament God of as a tyrant, understandable if you consider a judge or a policeman doing his duty as a tyrant.
he was one of the main reasons for the Nicean council

Um… no.

Marcion wasn't a Gnostic, though he had many of the same beliefs that Gnostic Christians would later hold (Gnostic Christians post-dated Marcion by about 25 years.) And he had nothing to do with Nicaea, which was held about 200 years after Marcion came, and went, from the Christian scene. Marcion was, essentially, the first anti-Semitic Christian, who ignored the fact that Jesus was Jewish, and taught a Christianity that expunged its Jewish roots.

Uhm well we could argue but I dont mind if you disagree

From my study the council was set up as was the scriptures to counter the Gnostics and their particular teachings.
One of the main reasons they canonised the gospels and letters was to stop Gnosticism.
Marcion was not to the letter a Gnostic but seriously, is this the place, for the record I was aware, just didnt think it relevant to go in to details.

Marcions choice of texts was countered claimed at Nicea, seemingly to put an end to his authoritive understandings

or
try this

People who insist on this myth vary on who was behind this "editing" of the Bible and choice of which texts went into it. Here IPA35 insists it was "the Pope" who was behind this nefarious deed, though usually it is the Emperor Constantine who is the villain of this piece of cartoon history. The idea that the Bible was "chosen" at the Council of Nicea is so prevalent that you find this so-called "fact" mentioned in History Channel documentaries and various conspiracy theory books, but it was recently given a huge boost by my old friend Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code:

Teabing cleared his throat and declared, "The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. .... "More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them .... "Who chose which gospels to include?" Sophie asked.

"Aha!" Teabing burst in with enthusiasm. "The fundamental irony of Christianity! The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great." .... "The twist is this," Teabing said, talking faster now. "Because Constantine upgraded Jesus' status almost four centuries after Jesus' death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. To rewrite the history books, Constantine knew he would need a bold stroke. From this sprang the most profound moment in Christian history." Teabing paused, eyeing Sophie. "Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned."
(Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, pp. 231-234)

The idea is that there was either (a) an "original Bible" that the Council of Nicea "edited" to "take out" works like the Gnostic gospels or (b) the Bible was created wholesale by some kind of "vote" at the Council of Nicea for political or other nefarious purposes. The upshot, according to either version of the myth, is the Bible we have today is the result of some kind of tampering/political shenanigans at this Council in the early Fourth Century.

This is total garbage.

The fact is that the Council of Nicea did not establish the canon of the Bible and did not even discuss the question of which works were to be regarded as scriptural. I'll get to how this myth arose in a moment, but first let's look at how the canon of the Bible was established.

The Formation of the New Testament

The long process by which Christianity settled on the canon of the New Testament - the books which were included in the Bible and regarded as definitive, authoritative and divinely inspired - began long before the time of Constantine the Great and continued for some time after he died. Contrary to the myth, Constantine and the Council of Nicea was not involved in this process in any way whatsoever.

The earliest Christian communities of the First Century relied entirely on the memories of Jesus' first followers. As these people died, an oral tradition of stories and sayings of Jesus developed and began to be written down in books. The four gospels which are now found in the modern Bible - the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - were amongst these earliest collections of accounts of Jesus' life and teaching. Other early writings also circulated amongst these early communities, including the letters or 'Epistles' of Paul to various early churches, letters by Peter and James and letters attributed to them but probably written by other people. Some accounts of the earliest followers, like the 'Acts of the Apostles', also came to be used as sources of information, inspiration and authority by these earliest communities.

But, at this stage, there was no definitive list or 'canon' of these writings. Any given isolated Christian community may well have known of some of them but not others. They may also have had copies of a few of them, but have only heard of others (since copies of any books were expensive and precious). And they may also have used a variety of other writings, many of which did not find their way into the Bible. There was no single, central 'Church' which dictated these things - each community operated in either relative isolation or intermittent communication with other communities and there were no standardised texts or a set list of which texts were authoritative and which were not at this very early stage of the Christian faith.

But the idea of such a definitive list was not totally foreign to early Christianity. Its parent religion, Judaism, had already wrestled with the problem of a large number of texts all being claimed to be 'scriptural' and inspired by God. Judaism generally agreed on the heart of its canon: the Torah, also called the 'Pentateuch', or 'five scrolls' because it was made up of the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Judaism later developed a wider canon called the 'Tanakh': twenty-four books, including the five books of the Torah and adding the books of the prophets, the Psalms and the historical books that can be found in the Old Testament of Christian Bibles today.

Long before Christians began to go through a similar process of determining which texts were 'Scripture' and which were not, it is clear that they already regarded some Christian texts as being on par with those of the Jewish books of the Torah and the Tanakh. The Second Letter of Peter was probably not written by Peter at all and was most likely written in his name by someone around 120 AD; about 60 years or so after Peter died. But its author refers to certain 'false teachers' who misinterpret 'the letters of Paul' he says, 'just as they do with the rest of the Scriptures' (2 Peter 3:16). So, as early as the beginning of the Second Century, the letters of Paul were being regarded as 'Scripture', or divinely inspired and authoritative works on the same level as the books of the Jewish Bible.

As the Second Century progressed there was more incentive for early Christianity to define precisely which Christian texts were 'scriptural' and which were not. In the Second Century a wide variety of new and different forms of Christianity began to develop. The various Gnostic sects were one prominent example, but it seems that it was the Marcionites which gave the impetus for the first formulation of a Christian canon of Scripture.

Marcion was born around 100 AD in the city of Sinope on the southern coast of the Black Sea. After a falling out with his father, the local bishop, he travelled to Rome in around 139 AD. There he began to develop his own Christian theology; one which was quite different to that of his father and of the Christian community in Rome. Marcion was struck by the strong distinction made by Paul between the Law of the Jews and the gospel of Christ. For Marcion, this distinction was absolute: the coming of Jesus made the whole of the Jewish Law and Jewish Scriptures redundant and the 'God' of the Jews was actually quite different to the God preached by Jesus. For Marcion, the Jewish God was evil, vengeful, violent and judgemental, while the God of Jesus was quite the opposite. Marcion decided that there were actually two Gods - the evil one who had misled the Jews and the good one revealed by Jesus.

This understanding led Marcion to put together a canon of Christian Scripture - the first of its kind - which excluded all of the Jewish Scriptures which make up the Old Testament and which included ten of the Epistles of Paul and only one of the gospels: the Gospel of Luke.

Marcion tried to get his radical reassessment of Christianity and his canon accepted by calling a council of the Christian community in Rome. Far from accepting his teachings, the council excommunicated him and he left Rome in disgust, returning to Asia Minor. There he met with far more success, and Marcionite churches sprang up which embraced his idea of two Gods and used his canon of eleven scriptural works. Alarmed at his success, other Christian leaders began to preach and write vigorously against Marcion's ideas and it seems that his canon of eleven works inspired anti-Marcionite Christians to begin to define which texts were and were not Scriptural.

By around 180 AD the influence of Marcion, the growth of the various Gnostic sects and the circulation of radical new 'gospels' began to be recognised as a genuine threat to those Christians who considered these groups fringe sects and heretical. It is around this time that we find Irenaeus declaring that there are only four gospels which derive from Jesus' earliest followers and which are Scriptural. These are the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John: the ones found in the Christian Bible today. Irenaeus makes it clear that these four had always been regarded as the earliest and most authoritative and were therefore the ones to be trusted as true accounts of Jesus' life, works and teachings. Interestingly, after two centuries of sceptical analysis, the overwhelming majority of historians, scholars and textual experts (Christian or otherwise) actually agree with Irenaeus and the consensus is that these four gospels definitely are the earliest of the accounts of Jesus' life.

Not long after Irenaeus' defence of the four canonical gospels we get our first evidence of a defined list of which texts are scriptural. A manuscript called the Muratorian Canon dates to sometime in the late Second Century AD and was discovered in a library in Milan in the Eighteenth Century. It details that the canonical four gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - along with most of the other books found in the modern New Testament, as well as a couple which are not (the Wisdom of Solomon and the Apocalypse of Peter) are 'scriptural' and authorative. It also gives some approval to other, more recent works like The Shepherd of Hermas, but says they should not be read in church as scripture.

The Muratorian Canon document accepts twenty-three of the twenty-seven works which now make up the New Testament in the Bible. It also explicitly rejects several books on the grounds that they are recent and written by fringe, heretical groups and it specifically singles out works by the Gnostic leader Valentius and by Marcion and his followers.

It seems that the challenge posed by Marcion and other dissident groups caused the early Christians to determine which books were scriptural and which were not. And it also seems that recent works, whether they were 'heretical' (like the Gnostic gospels) or not (like The Shepherd of Hermas), did not have the status of works from the earliest years of Christianity. It was only these earliest works which were considered authoritative.

t is clear that the process of deciding which texts were canonical and which were not was already well under way over a century before the Emperor Constantine was even born. It also continued for a long time after he died. Constantine's contemporary, the Christian historian Eusebius, set out to 'summarise the writings of the New Testament' in his Church History; a work written towards the end of Constantine's reign. He lists the works which are generally 'acknowledged' (Church History, 3.25.1), including the four canonical gospels, Acts, the Epistles of Paul, 1 John, 1 Peter and the Apocalypse of John/'Revelation' (though he says this is still disputed by some). He gives other texts which he says are 'still disputed'; including James, Jude, 2 Peter and 2 and 3 John. He gives other books which are probably 'spurious' and then lists others which are definitely considered heretical, including the Gospels of Peter, Thomas and Matthias and the Acts of Andrew and John.

So not only did the process of deciding the canon begin long before Constantine, there was still debate within the Church about the canon in his time.

And it continued. In 367 Athanasius wrote his 39th Festal Letter in which he laid out the current twenty-seven books of the New Testament - the first time this canon had been definitively stated by any churchman. A synod convened in Rome by Pope Damasus in 382 AD also considered the question of the canon and, with the help of the great scholar Jerome, settled on the same twenty-seven books set out by Athanasius. At this stage there was still no central authority which could compel church communities in any way (despite Dan Brown's frequent anachronistic references to a central 'Vatican'), but councils and synods in Hippo and Carthage in north Africa and later ones in Gaul also settled on the same canon.

Despite the myth that the canon was determined by Constantine in 325 AD, there was actually no definitive statement by the Catholic Church as to the make-up of the New Testament until the Council of Trent in 1546: a full 1209 years after Constantine died. The full development of the canon took several centuries, but the basics of which gospels were to be included was settled by 200 AD at least.



Summary
The canon was not even discussed at Nicea and was not set at that Council
The idea of what books were to be included in the New Testament was actually reached by a process of discussion and consensus over 200 years, not at one council or meeting.
The general shape of the canon was established by 200 AD, with only a little debate about some of the minor works from then on.
The four gospels were established as the most early and definitive works very early in this process.
Politics and "power" played no role in the process. At the time this subject was being debated Christianity was a small, marginalised, illegal and often persecuted faith. The idea that the books of the Bible were chosen for any political reasons is complete nonsense.
The Origin of the Myth


So how did this idea that the Bible was created at the Council of Nicea get started?

It seems the myth can be traced back to Voltaire, who popularised a ridiculous story that the canon was determined by placing all the competing books on an altar the the Council and then keeping the ones that didn't fall off:

Il est rapporté dans le supplément du concile de Nicée que les Pères étaient fort embarrassés pour savoir quels étaient les livres cryphes ou apocryphes de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament, les mirent tous pêle-mêle sur un autel; et les livres à rejeter tombèrent par terre. C’est dommage que cette belle recette soit perdue de nos jours.

(It is reported in the supplement to the Council of Nicaea that the fathers were quite embarrassed by the apocryphal books of the Old and New Testament, put all pell-mell on an altar, and the books that fell to the ground were rejected. It is a pity that this beautiful recipe is lost today.)
(Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1767)

Voltaire never let the truth get in the way of a kick at the Church, and this silly story of how the Bible was selected was the kind of thing he found amusing. It's likely he didn't actually believe it, but it seems to be where the myth began. But where did Voltaire get the story?

It seems he found it in a book he published in 1765 - La Religion chretienne analysée ('Christianity Analyzed) by César Chesneau Dumarsais. Dumarsais, in turn, found it in Sanctissima concilia (1671-1672, Paris, vol II, pp 84-85) by Pierre Labbe, which in turn cites the Sixteenth Century scholar Baronius. And when we track down Baronius' source for this story we find it's a pseudo-historical account of early Church councils from AD 887 called Vetus Synodicon. It states in its summary of the Council of Nicea:

The canonical and apocryphal books it distinguished in the following manner: in the house of God the books were placed down by the holy altar; then the council asked the Lord in prayer that the inspired works be found on top and--as in fact happened--the spurious on the bottom.
(Vetus Synodicon, 35)

So this miracle story - recorded a whole 562 years after the Council - seems to be the ultimate source of the myth. Thanks to Voltaire and constant repetition over the last 240 years, this obviously fictitious story has taken on the mantle of "fact".

As ever, real history is much more complicated and requires much more hard work and brain power than silly myths, which is why myths are so prevalent and real history is understood by so few. If you've read this far, give yourself a pat on the back and give me some rep for writing all this.

Bibliography

Dungan, David L. Constantine's Bible: Politics And the Making of the New Testament, (Fortress Press: 2006)

Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, (Oxford University Press: 2003)

Ehrman, Bart D. Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, (Oxford University Press: 2004)

Fredriksen, Paula From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ, (Yale Nota Bene: 2000)

Metzger, Bruce M. The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance, (Oxford University Press: 1997)

McDonald, Lee Martin and Sanders, James A. , The Canon Debate (Hendrickson Publishers; 2002)

Pearse, Roger, "The Council of Nicaea and the Bible" (kudos to Roger for finally pinning down the origin of the myth)

Rubenstein, Richard E. When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last Days of Rome, (Harvest Books: 2000)



this is an essay from Acco on (www.twcenter.net...) that forum
I thought it was clear and precise.

originally posted by: ServantOfTheLamb
a reply to: DarknStormy

You are making it seem as though Constantine did something corrupt to the information at the council. What evidence is there of such a thing? Aside from maybe the DaVinci Code which is a fictional novel...

Just the fact Constantine took it upon himself to merge Paganism and Christianity together is corrupt. The rest really doesn't matter.. Why would the Romans convert to something that they persecuted for centuries prior to the council? The Christianity that came out of Nicaea is an insult to the true teachings of Christ. All Rome done was take Christianity and installed itself as the unchallenged authority over Christians. This continues today with the blasphemy in the Roman Catholic Church.

Same people just under a different name in a different era of time. As for the DaVinci Code, I never read it because of what you said... The objective was too keep control and Power over the Empire, not a legitimate belief in Jesus Christ or the teachings. If this was the case, Western Christianity wouldn't be celebrating Pagan festival days that have nothing to do with Jesus. The Christianity right now has people worshipping Jesus and the Sun at the very same time.

a reply to: borntowatch

Marcions choice of texts was countered claimed at Nicea, seemingly to put an end to his authoritive understandings

Again, no they weren't.

Marcion's canon was the first "Christian" canon and consisted of the letters of Paul and a version of Gospel of Luke that Marcion modified to take out references to Judaism. Marcion was "countered" by Tertullian in the Second Century, not the Fourth, in his work Against Marcion, and the first orthodox canon emerged about the same time, The Muratorian Fragment, which is pretty close to the canon that we have today.

The Bible was not the subject of Nicaea, no matter what the conspiracy theorists and writers of fiction would have you believe.

a reply to: adjensen

No, all indication is that Arius rejected the Doctrine of the Trinity and did not believe that Jesus was God.

Well from what I've read he and his supporters did believe in the trinity, just not the version you have today...

Athanasius's version of the trinity is what is found in Christianity these days, which according to the words of Jesus which Arius was actually following... was and still is incorrect...

Arius states specifically that "WE believe in the Father/son/holy spirit" but his side maintained that the Father was greater then all... which follows Jesus' words

We believe in one God the Father Almighty, and in the Lord Jesus Christ his Son, who was begotten of him before all ages, God the Word through whom all things were made, both things in heaven and on earth; who descended, and became human, and suffered, and rose again, ascended into heaven, and will again come to judge the living and the dead. (3.) We believe also in the Holy Spirit, and in the resurrection of the flesh, and in the life of the coming age, and in the kingdom of the heavens, and in one catholic church of God, extending from one end of the earth to the other. (4.) This faith we have received from the holy gospels, in which the Lord says to his disciples: “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” If we do not so believe and do not truly receive the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as the whole catholic church and the holy Scriptures teach (in which we believe in every respect), may God judge us both now, and in the coming judgment.

a reply to: Akragon

He also said this:

But we are persecuted because we have said the Son has a beginning but God has no beginning. We are persecuted because of that and for saying he came from non-being. But we said this since he is not a portion of God nor of anything in existence. That is why we are persecuted; you know the rest. (Source)

Son and God are not the same time, and the Son is not a "portion of God."

a reply to: adjensen

He said that because its logical... his argument is that at some point in time the son did not exist...

All things came from the Father including the son, as Eusebius states... The Father could not be a Father, Nor the son be a son without the Father having come first...

And of course I realise this is not Christian belief today, but none the less it makes more sense...

Further more there are three passages in John which state the Father is greater then the son... Not equal as what is believed in Christianity today...

He was only following the words of Jesus... unlike his opponents

Arius still thought of Jesus as God, but less then the Father

originally posted by: ServantOfTheLamb
You are making it seem as though Constantine did something corrupt to the information at the council. What evidence is there of such a thing? Aside from maybe the DaVinci Code which is a fictional novel...

The possibility that he was not even a Christian is a huge red flag in my eyes...

Like you said earlier, many believe that Constantine was in fact never a Christian.

The real secret of Constantine and the bishops of Rome is their cunning introduction of sun worship and paganism into Christianity. It was done so shrewdly that, incredibly, it has been veiled within the faith for centuries. Through Constantine, paganism and Christianity joined hands in the Roman Empire.

History readily records that Constantine was a sun-worshiper. In one decree he declared, "On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed" (March 7, 321). He made this decree in honor of the sun after his supposed conversion to Christianity! Constantine, even after his "conversion," remained a pagan.

www.marytruth.com...

As the one of the main founders of Catholicism, Roman emperor Constantine took much of the mythology of the so called "Cult of Mithras" and carried it into Christianity to give us the sort of pagan/Christian hybrid that we now called Catholicism. For instance in order to honor the birthday of his favorite pagan God "Sol Invictus Mithras", Constantine ordered the official Mithras birthday of December 25th to also be the new fake birth date of Jesus. All of the pagan beliefs and practices of the so called "Cult of Mithras" is the real backbone that Catholicism is based on to this very day.

Some interesting tid-bits about old Constantine the founder of Catholicism that you should never forget include, (and these happen AFTER he became a so called "Christian" by the way): He had his own first son executed, his eldest son Crispus (strangled). He had his own wife executed, his wife Fausta (boiled alive). Does that sound like something a real Christian would do?

thenewholybible.org...

As emperor, Constantine was in the unusual position of deciding church doctrine even though he was not really a Christian. (The following year is when he had both his wife and son murdered, as previously mentioned).

Historian Henry Chadwick attests, "Constantine, like his father, worshipped the Unconquered Sun" ( The Early Church, 1993, p. 122). As to the emperor's embrace of Christianity, Chadwick admits, "His conversion should not be interpreted as an inward experience of grace . . . It was a military matter. His comprehension of Christian doctrine was never very clear" (p. 125).

Norbert Brox, a professor of church history, confirms that Constantine was never actually a converted Christian: "Constantine did not experience any conversion; there are no signs of a change of faith in him. He never said of himself that he had turned to another god . . . At the time when he turned to Christianity, for him this was Sol Invictus (the victorious sun god)"

www.ucg.org...

originally posted by: adjensen
a reply to: borntowatch

Marcions choice of texts was countered claimed at Nicea, seemingly to put an end to his authoritive understandings

Again, no they weren't.

Marcion's canon was the first "Christian" canon and consisted of the letters of Paul and a version of Gospel of Luke that Marcion modified to take out references to Judaism. Marcion was "countered" by Tertullian in the Second Century, not the Fourth, in his work Against Marcion, and the first orthodox canon emerged about the same time, The Muratorian Fragment, which is pretty close to the canon that we have today.

The Bible was not the subject of Nicaea, no matter what the conspiracy theorists and writers of fiction would have you believe.

Yeah I think you would find in Accos essay (the one I copied) very much what you said.

I was wrong and used that essay to say as much.

I live and learn, the forget and have to learn all over again.

a reply to: borntowatch

Props to you and your ability to accept that your conception was wrong, a rare ability in this age!

originally posted by: adjensen
a reply to: borntowatch

Props to you and your ability to accept that your conception was wrong, a rare ability in this age!

I second that notion, its very difficult to say you were wrong, I can imagine at least, you know because I'm never wrong in the first place

kidding,

seriously props to you

originally posted by: adjensen
a reply to: borntowatch

Props to you and your ability to accept that your conception was wrong, a rare ability in this age!

Well thanks gentlemen/ladys
Often wrong but what i like about this site is the varied responses and the need I find in relation to researching what I believe.
Its not about what I believe its researching to find the truth, the big problem is not being challenged.

I guess I should thank those who push me to research issues and exp-and my knowledge.

I am still sure that the bible was canonised to combat Marcion, just not at Nicea. It wasnt the only reason but a part of the reason.

I just finished reading a book about the bibles influence on the West and thats where I got the idea about Nicea and canon
The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western civilisation
By Vishal Mangalwadi

Good read if you get a chance

a reply to: borntowatch

I just finished reading a book about the bibles influence on the West and thats where I got the idea about Nicea and canon

Another really great book on the New Testament canon is Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, which uses historical analysis and statistics to demonstrate, pretty darn well, in my opinion, that the Gospels (apart from Luke,) were really written by eyewitnesses to Christ's life, and that's why they were chosen over alternative sources.

Thanks for the recommendation… Amazon Prime says that my copy will be here on Tuesday