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 what would happen on the next day. My students were positive that there would be hell to pay. The bishops, they assumed, would align with the emperor, have them all declared heretics, and persecute them. Maybe that’s right. But it is interesting to imagine another outcome. At a time when the meaning and boundaries of “heresy” and “orthodoxy” were very much in play, and it is not impossible that the majority of Christians in the empire would have had more sympathy for positions that would align with those that would be branded “heretical,” perhaps the “heretics” could have united and convinced the emperor to abandon the bishops. That which became heretical perhaps could have, with a bit of expert politicking, have become Orthodox and the Christian canon would look quite different.
One striking anomaly in the two simulations was the position of the rabbis. In my simulation they scored 0% (accomplishing none of their goals) but in the other they scored 100%. The reason is that they set different goals. The rabbis in my group wanted the Hebrew Bible included as part of the Christian canon but the rabbis in the other simulation wanted it excluded. The rabbis in this second group argued that having the Hebrew Bible as part of the Christian canon was bad for both Christians and Jews; they need a clean separation rather than intertwined stories. Looking at history – at the Christian need to continually wrestle with its Jewish past and understand, theologically, the place of contemporary Jews – the rabbis who argued for separation may have been on to something.