On Matthew 6:11 through 6:13

Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, your modern passage into the life and ministry of the historical Jesus.  If this is your first time here, start over from the beginning by following this hyperlink.

We will waste little time on exposition today.  Suffice it to say that we are in the midst of the Lord's Prayer, a specifically worded prayer that Jesus teaches his followers during his famed Sermon on the Mount.  Today, we will read the last three verses of that prayer, take note of a particular Greek phrasing behind these verses, define and discuss the "doxology" of the Lord's Prayer, and draw some simple conclusions about the prayer as a whole.  Let's get started, as per usual, by looking at the text and then looking at some Greek words.

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Matthew 6:11 through 6:13

11 Give us today our daily bread; 

12 and forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors; 

13 and do not subject us to the final test,
but deliver us from the evil one.

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Some Greek Words

Today we have quite a doozy of a translation issue on our hands with the phrase "daily bread."  Since the Greek origin of "daily bread" is uncharacteristically difficult to understand, we will forgo any study of the other Greek words that underpin today's reading and focus entirely on this particular phrase.  Take my word that the rest of the Greek here is relatively unambiguous.

"What's ambiguous about 'daily bread'?" you'll immediately ask.  And I appreciate the inquisitive attitude.

The ambiguity here lies in the word "daily."  In the oldest Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew, the scribes recorded the term "epiousios" here in Matt 6:11 as the adjective for "bread."  Throughout history, "epiousios" has most often been interpreted as meaning "daily," but that interpretation is not as straight-forward as one might think.  Because of the possibility of alternative translation, the term "epiousios" warrants our special attention today.

As it turns out, "epiousios" is completely unique to the Gospel; it is not extant in any other ancient Greek text.  While it has traditionally been translated as "daily," translators have struggled with this interpretation since very early Christianity.  The struggle becomes apparent when we realize that, in the New Testament, every other time that the word "daily" is used, it has been translated from a more common Greek word: "hemeran." Hemeran comes from the Greek "hēmérā," meaning "day" or "time," and is very precisely translated to English as "daily."  Bible scholars are right, then, to pay keen attention to the fact that in both Matthew and Luke's versions of the Lord's Prayer, the evangelists used this unique "epiousios" word, rather than the word "hemeran."

As I suggested, there is debate among linguists to this day as to what "epiousios" really means, and how the word came to be.  Tradition has translated it as "daily" by breaking it down into two Greek parts: "epi" and "ousia," where "epi" is taken to mean "for," and "ousia" is is taken to mean "being."  "For being."  A logical leap is then made from "for being" to "for the day being," where the traditional interpreter assumes that "the day" is implicit in this phrase.  So the traditional interpreter reads "for the day being," as in "for this day" or "daily."

Other translators, however, including the creator of the Latin Vulgate, St. Jerome, have alternatively translated "epiousios" as "supersubstantial."  This translation depends on translating "epi" as "over" or "before," and "ousia" as "essence" or "substance."  This alternative translation is certainly no more dubious than the previous.

In Matt 6:11, all the uncertainty lies in this word "epiousios."  The word we have translated as "bread" is "arton," and this is a straight one-to-one translation; the word definitely refers to a nourishing baked good.  So, we are left wondering: what kind of "bread" was Jesus talking about here?  Was it, as tradition has indicated, "daily bread," meaning, simply, the calories needed to sustain one's life for a day?  Or was it "supersubstantial" bread?  It is impossible to say with certainty, but I lean toward believing that "supersubstantial" comes closer to the mark, simply because the Gospel's author went out of his way here to use a unique term, as opposed to "hemeran," which he had used to clear effect elsewhere.

If "supersubstantial" is closer to the phrasing Jesus might have used, what could he have meant by this?  Questions abound, but I think it's easy to look at these words and imagine that Jesus here referred to a kind of "spiritual" bread; a kind of nourishment for the mind, heart, and psyche.  Perhaps "supersubstantial bread" was the grace of a quiet soul, happy in its faith in God or in goodness generally.  Perhaps "supersubstantial bread" was the capacity to weather the trials and pains of life without being subject to internal misery.  Or, perhaps "supersubstantial bread" refers to a metaphysical substance of some kind; a sort of mana.  We can really only guess, since we have no other use of the word to compare it to.

Of course, as is always the case, since we have no record of the words of Christ in their original Aramaic, we would be derelict of our duty if we said we can know with 100% certainty what Jesus said and thought in any particular case.  Because of the fog of history, we can truly only know Jesus generally, not specifically.  That said, the difference between "daily" and "supersubstantial" here are not enough to markedly change what we understand about Jesus' moral vision.  But the difference is worth noting, and, seeing it now, I think that the Lord's Prayer has slightly more meaning to me.

On to other questions.

Where's the "For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory" Part?

When I was growing up, I learned the Lord's Prayer as follows:

Our father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. 

Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those
who trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil. Amen.

I maybe said this prayer a trillion times in my childhood.  That's hyperbolic... but I said it a lot.  Among other prayers, this prayer is etched into my mind as if it had been there when I was born.  The words flow together like an unstoppable river once I've started the prayer; it would be impossible not to carry it to its fruition.  Certain prayers, to those of us who were raised Catholic, feel warm and familiar like our own flesh.  This is one of them. 

Imagine my shock, then, when I first found myself at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, somewhere around age twenty, and was bowled over upon hearing a slightly different version of the the Lord's Prayer.  (This different version is said in unison by meeting attendees at the end of most AA meetings.)  "Shock" is truly the correct word, here.  It was like a train crashing in my mind.  The prayer was going fine until we got towards the end and everyone around me started saying a bunch of unfamiliar, ugly sounding words at the moment when I said "amen."

Many of you already know what I'm talking about.  The extra words, with which I was as yet unacquainted, were "for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever," and by them I was totally taken aback.

Today, to the surprise of my younger self, I would say that most people I've known outside of the Catholic Church seem to say the Lord's Prayer with these additional "for thine..." words.  Interestingly, though, as you can see above, these words do not exist in the New American Bible, and, in fact, do not appear in the oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.  The Catholic-child part of my brain quietly inquires: "why is everyone saying this prayer wrong?"  This is myopic of my Catholic-child mind; there is no objective "right" or "wrong" to such things, of course.  But the question remains: where did this extra verbiage come from?

To get to the bottom of this, we need to get familiar with the term "doxology."  A "doxology" is a "liturgical formula of praise to God," or, in other words, a short, regimented string of words of praise for God.  "For thine is the kingdom..." is one of the better known doxologies in the world today.  Another is the Latin "gloria in excelsis Deo," which means "glory to God in the highest."  A third relatively well known doxology is a protestant hymn that reads as follows:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; 

Praise Him, all creatures here below; 

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; 

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Doxologies have been common aspects of Christian liturgies since very early on in Christian history.  Doxologies derived from an ancient Jewish practice wherein the Jewish hymn of praise known as the "Kaddish" was used to conclude various segments of synagogue worship.

Sadly, there is no extant evidence of the exact origin of the "for thine..." doxology.  All we can know for sure is that it was used in the eastern half of the Roman Empire as early as the First-Century.  The dating of this doxology is based in part on its presence in a text known as the "Didache," which we have had occasion to mention before.  Recall that the Didache was a Christian treatise that many scholars today believe was written in the late First-Century. 

The Didache, which survives in its entirety, says the following in a section titled "Concerning Prayer:"

Do not pray as the hypocrites either, but pray as the Lord commanded in His Gospel: 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one; for thine is the power and the glory unto ages of ages.  

Pray this way three times each day.

So how did this doxology make it into various translations of the Bible itself, then?  Well, most scholars find it nearly certain that some version of the "for thine..." verbiage must have been added to some very ancient Christian liturgy by some creative church elder, and that this liturgical use spread among other Christian communities until it became so common that scribes and translators began including it in their copies of the Gospels.  An alternative minority view states that the doxology had been there all along, and that translations of the Gospel without the doxology are the deviations.  Indeed, there are some very old Gospel manuscripts that include the phrasing, leading some scholars to this day to argue that "for thine..." is as true to the words of Christ as anything else in the Gospel.

Did Jesus utter the doxology of the Lord's Prayer?  Again, 100% certainty eludes us.

Either way, my mind is still jarred whenever I hear someone say "for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever," instead of just "amen."  It always will be, and, for that selfish reason, I'm glad the New American Bible doesn't include this foreign-sounding verbiage.

And that's what we know about that.

Conclusions About the Lord's Prayer

Jesus has now been very specific with his followers about how to pray.  He had told them in what spirit they ought to pray, and he has offered them the Lord's Prayer as a rote prayer mechanism.  When they needed something from God, or simply desired communion with him, they were to repeat the Lord's Prayer privately.

As I pointed out before, the clear theme of the Lord's Prayer is humility.  The entire prayer subordinates the one praying to forces above him or herself.  The prayer subordinates the will of the one praying to the will of God.  There is no act more humble, perhaps, than the submission of one's will.  

In teaching his followers this prayer, I believe that Jesus continues to do what he has been doing since the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount: he is re-ordering the universe in which his followers exist.  He is asking his followers to give up whatever terrestrial height or status that they have achieved (or think that they have achieved, or desire to achieve) in order to make themselves humble and low before God and humanity.

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."  If the Christian desires forgiveness, he or she must be willing to give it.

"Your kingdom come.  Your will be done."  If the Christian desires to glimpse the Kingdom of God, he or she must forgo their own will.

Beautiful abject humility.  I love this prayer.  I hope to never stop learning from it.

That's all we have for today.  Join us next time for more in-depth Gospel work.  Until then, happy studies.  Please share this writing.

Love 

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To read what came prior to this, click here.

On Matthew 6:9 through 6:10

Hello all, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, an exhaustive Gospel study.  If you're new here, check this out from the beginning by following this link.

I'd be remiss if I forgot to wish you all a happy Easter.  Easter is by far my favorite holiday of the year.  I guess I like it best because it doesn't seem to have been commercialized as much as any of the others.  There's less of an advertising frenzy leading to buying frenzies for Easter than there are for Valentine's Day, Halloween, and, certainly, Christmas.  As much as I'd like to, we're not going to spend any time discussing Easter here today, because that's not the part of the Gospel that we're on.  But we will get to it, four times, I promise.

Recall that we're still in the midst of Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," near the beginning of the Gospel According to Matthew.  Jesus has been teaching about humble almsgiving, humble execution of righteous deeds, and humble prayer.  Last time we met, he got specific about the way he wanted his followers to pray when he instructed them to "not babble like the pagans," which prompted us to take a closer look at the prayers of pagans in general, and of the Greeks and the Romans specifically.  Today, as promised, we are going to take a look at the nature of ancient Jewish prayer traditions in order to gain fuller context for "prayer" as Jesus would have thought of it.  As we've said one hundred times before, Jesus was a First-Century Jew before anything else, and everything he said or did is only understandable, from a historical viewpoint, through the lens of First-Century Judaism.  Hopefully, by the end of today, we'll have a reasonable basic grasp on Jewish prayer in Palestine at the time of Christ.

As usual, we've no time to delay.  Let's get started with today's study. 

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Matthew 6:9 through 6:10

9 “This is how you are to pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name, 

10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.

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As is our custom, before we get to our broader topic today, we need to go over some Greek vocabulary.

Some Greek Vocabulary

Some of these words are review for us.  We just recently learned about the Greek origin of the word "pray," the discussion of which can be found here, and we've been over, perhaps more than once, the Greek word behind "Father," that is, "pater."  "Heaven" is also a term we've been over before, but perhaps not for some time.  As a refresher, we found that the word "heaven" is being translated from the original Greek word "ouranos," and that: 

"To the Greeks, "ouranos" meant "the vaulted sky," "the home of the gods above the vaulted sky," "the universe in general," or anything shaped like the sky, i.e. a vaulted ceiling or a tent.  This is a Greek term that originated to describe a Greek universe, in which many pagan Gods existed.  Due to ambiguities within the multiplicity of first-century Jewish belief systems, it is difficult to say exactly what Jesus means here by the term "ouranos."

New terms of interest today are "hallowed," "name," "kingdom," and "earth."

The original Greek word in the ancient manuscripts which has been translated for us as "hallowed" was "hagiasthētō," an adjective which comes from the verb "hagízō," which meant "to make sacred, especially by burning a sacrifice."  "Hagízō" derives from the Greek adjective "hágios," which meant "devoted to the gods," "sacred," "holy," "pious," or "pure."  "Hágios," in turn, probably came from a much more ancient Proto-Indo-European word, hypothesized to be "Hyeh₂ǵ."  (Yes, there's a little "2" in there.  That's because the Proto-Indo-European language is so ancient that we don't know what kind of alphabet, if any, was used to represent it.  Language scholars use a complex kind of hypothetical alphabet, which includes some numbered letters, to represent the hypothetical phonetic sounds of this ancient language.)  "Hyeh₂ǵ" is hypothesized to have meant "to sacrifice," "to worship," "sacred," or "holy."

We arrive at the term "name" from the Koine Greek "onoma," which can mean both "name," "fame," or "reputation."  This word is also thought to originate from a much older Proto-Indo-European term, "h₁nómn̥," which would have meant basically the same thing.

"Kingdom" comes from the ancient Greek "basileia," alternatively meaning "a dominion," "a hereditary monarchy," "the office of king," or "being ruled by a king."  This is all rooted in the Greek word "basileús" which meant "chief," "master," "king," or "lord."  We should note that this word refers to earthly governments, not celestial expanses.

The last word we will look at briefly is "earth," which was originally written in the Gospel manuscripts as the Greek word "gês."  "Gês" is the singular version of the Greek "gê," which means "land," "earth," "country," or "soil."

With these Greek terms under our belt, let's move on to briefly process the meaning of today's verses, before we start our contextual study of Jewish prayer.

What Does Jesus Mean?

On the face of it, Jesus' meaning is perhaps obvious here; he wants his people to pray by saying the words he is prescribing, probably verbatim.  But we should ask ourselves "is this merely a formulaic incantation?  Or is there some meaning in the prayer itself?"  Of course, the answer is that the prayer itself is full of meaning.

The first lines of the Lord's Prayer as we see them today are a continuation of Jesus' riffing on the concept of humility.  We will continue to find humility to be one of Jesus' favorite philosophical topics.  I dare to theorize that humility was Jesus' favorite human characteristic.  That theory is borne out today in the Lord's Prayer, wherein Jesus instructs the prayer to A) admit that there is a holy and superior force above him or herself in this universe, B) ask that holy and superior force to reign over him or herself as "king," and C) ask that holy and superior force to unilaterally enact its will over him or herself and the world at-large.

In the context of pagan prayer, which we learned about last week, this "Lord's Prayer" is quite unique.  It would have been rare, or perhaps entirely unheard of, for a pagan to pray simply for the dominion and will of a god.  The pagan gods weren't necessarily to be trusted in this way.  Pagans prayed for specific earthly things, and their prayers usually accompanied a sacrifice (read: bribe) to the god to whom they prayed.  Pagan prayer was not a humble "surrender" the way the Lord's Prayer is here in its first few lines, but, rather, a mechanism of control over one's life.  Thus, the "Lord's Prayer," as it starts out today, is the exact opposite of a pagan prayer.

As we continue to discuss the Lord's Prayer over the next couple of installments of our study, we will continue to focus on this concept of "humility" that we see shining through the text.  For today, suffice it to say that Jesus is telling his followers: "you're not in control of this universe.  To attempt to be in control of it is folly.  You should loose the reins; tie yourself to the mast."  A beautiful and extremely powerful sentiment that yields large dividends in real life.

Ok, let's move on to our contextual study.

Prayer Customs of the Ancient Jews

The Old Testament contains around three-hundred instances of the words "prayer," "pray," "praying," "prays," or "prayed," yet it is difficult to say with certainty how the average ancient Jew performed prayer in their own personal life, if at all.  The vast majority of occurrences of "prayer" in the Old Testament are specific instances in which some character is calling out to God in lamentation, in supplication, or in thanks.  The prayers almost always occur spontaneously, and are almost always completely situational. 

Nowhere in the Old Testament are there "prescribed daily prayers" the way there are in modern forms of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other faiths.  To be sure, nowhere in the 613 mitzvot, or "commandments of the Jewish God," is there an explicit and specific mandate to "pray" at all. 

We can compare the lack of a commandment to pray in the ancient Jewish religion to the lack of commandments to pray in the ancient pagan traditions.  Recall that ancient Jewish tradition has far more in common with ancient paganism than it does with modern religious traditions.  Up until the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, the Jewish spiritual life, especially in Palestine, centered around the ongoing sacrificial rites occurring in the Temple.  In the same way, pagan spiritual life always centered around temple sacrifices. 

For pagans, as long as regular sacrifices to the gods were performed at various temples and shrines, the gods would favor them, and all would be well for them.  So, too, for the ancient Jews; as long as the daily sacrifices were being performed correctly in Jerusalem, the Jews believed, the Jewish people were within the bounds of their covenant with God, and all would be well for them.  The individual, and thus individual prayer, was peripheral at best in ancient Jewish worship, which was primarily a communal affair.

Generally, we can say that the kinds of prayers that the Jews of Jesus' time, as individuals, would have been accustomed to uttering, if any, were the same kind of prayers that you will find throughout the Old Testament.  These prayers would have been conversational, situational, and spontaneous.  "Thank you God, for X."  "Please, God, grant us Y."  "Relieve us, God, from Z."  There's not a lot else that can be said for certain about personal prayer among the Jews at that time.

One might wonder: "don't Orthodox Jews today pray three times each day?  Is that tradition not ancient?"

In a word, the answer is "no."  As we've discussed before, and will continue to discuss, the traditions of the Jews changed drastically around the time of Jesus, as a result of the aforementioned destruction of the Second Temple and the subsequent scattering of the diaspora*.  In an article published at myjewishlearning.com, a reasonably reputable source of information on Jewish tradition, the author writes:

"Regular communal Jewish prayer began as a substitute for the sacrificial cult in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem."

So, again, like so much else that we see in the "Rabbinic" or "modern" form of Judaism, modern traditions of prayer evolved "in place of" the old tradition of ritual sacrifice at the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.

The same article continues on:

"The formative period of Jewish prayer was that of the Tannaim, the sages whose oral traditions of law and legend are gathered in the Mishnah (edited c. 200 C.E.) and some early collections of midrash. From their traditions, later committed to writing, we learn that the generation of rabbis active at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.) gave Jewish prayer its structure and, in outline form at least, its contents."

In the same way that much of the Old Testament was not written down until the Babylonian exile, when Jewish people suddenly became concerned that there could be a break in the centuries old chain of oral tradition, so did structure and institutionalization of personal worship suddenly become extremely important when Rome's incursion into Palestine became imminent.  In short, Jews had to augment the way they identified themselves, because Rome was about to destroy the one thing they had identified with more than anything over the previous centuries.  Rote systems of prayer rapidly evolved as one way to shore up Jewish identity in the dispersion.

What does this all mean for Jesus' understanding of prayer?  What might Jesus have grown up being taught about prayer?

Ultimately, it is hard to say exactly what Jesus was taught in this regard.  He was certainly aware that the priests in the Temple were steadily praying along with their near-constant blood sacrifices, just the way the Greeks had been doing for centuries at their various temples.  It is also certain that he knew the ancient traditions, and understood that the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs had frequently offered spontaneous conversational prayer to God.  We can tell from Jesus' commandment to not pray in public for the purpose of attracting human praise that some people of his era must have made it a habit to do so, but, again, the nature of these publicly offered prayers was likely spontaneous and unscripted.  All things considered, it seems unlikely that Jesus would have been taught to pray at certain times of the day, or a certain number of times each day, or in a certain place or position, or with certain words.  Jewish traditions of his era and the immediately preceding centuries simply didn't involve prescribed prayer as such.  Prayer, for the Jews of Jesus' time, would have been as spontaneous as it seems to have been for their Biblical ancestors.

Obviously, as we can see in our Gospel readings, Jesus meant to change the way his followers were praying, and offered specific guidance along these lines.  Jesus gives his followers a form of prayer different than that of the Romans, the Greeks, and the ancient Jews.  In the coming sessions, we will continue to read the Lord's Prayer in its entirety, continue to strive to identify its moral value, and continue to consider the changing meaning of prayer itself during the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.  Happy Easter.

Love
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* The "diaspora" indicates all Jews who do not live in Palestine.

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To read what came prior to this, click here.

On Matthew 6:7 through 6:8

Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, a Gospel study.  If you're new here, and you want to know what's going on, start over from the beginning by following this link.  If you're not the link-following type, then suffice it to say that this will be the largest, most comprehensive Gospel study to have ever been written in history, and that, by the end of it, we will know everything that there is to know about my absolute favorite historical figure, Jesus Christ.

Remember that we are currently, and have been for some time, studying Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," the longest and most focused collection of his moral prescriptions that exists.  The Sermon on the Mount does more to define Christ's philosophy and world-view than does any other extant ancient text, and, for the discerning historian, serves as the baseline or the bedrock from which everything else Christian grows.

Without further delay, let's see what's next in the Sermon, shall we?

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Matthew 6:7 through 6:8

7 In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. 

8 Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

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You'll recall that in Matthew 6:5-6, Jesus told his followers not to pine for attention and human accolade through the act of prayer, instead advising his followers to pray in secret, in their bedrooms.  This followed closely the theme of the previous four verses, in which he advised his followers not to seek worldly glory for almsgiving and "righteous deeds."  Today, in verses 6:7-8, Jesus deviates slightly from the trajectory of the last six verses, and becomes more specific about how his followers ought to pray.  In order to get underneath this reading, first we need to look at some of the original Koine Greek behind the English we have before us.  Then, for the meat of our study today, we'll look at the nature of pagan prayer in the ancient world for context on this "babble like the pagans" phrase.  Continuing next time we meet, as Jesus introduces "The Lord's Prayer," we'll look at Jewish prayer customs as they existed in ancient times, and try to draw some conclusions regarding what Jesus thought about prayer generally.

Anecdotally, I will take this opportunity to tell dear reader a little about my prayer preferences.  Personally, I often say "The Lord's Prayer" the way my parents taught it to me when I was a boy.  I also say "The Jesus Prayer" like a mantra. The Jesus Prayer is one of the oldest extant Christian prayers, and it soothes me during good times and trying times.  I sometimes say it over and over and over again until the words start to lose their wordiness and become more like unrelated nonsense syllables.  The Jesus Prayer reads as follows:

Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

There is evidence of The Jesus Prayer's popularity among the Desert Fathers, a loose group of Third-Century Christian ascetic-hermit-monks who lived in virtual solitude in the deserts of Egypt.  I think I was initially drawn to The Jesus Prayer upon learning about these Desert Fathers and their preference for it.  We will find more time to talk about The Jesus Prayer and the Desert Fathers later.  I just thought this the time to disclose my prayer preferences.

Now let's get Greek.*

Some Koine Greek Terms

We've already looked at the Greek counterparts to a couple of the critical words in today's reading.  The word "pagans" is being translated from the plural of the Greek word "ethnikos," which we discussed here, and the word "Father" we arrive at from the Greek word "patér," discussion of which can be found by following the same link.

Terms that are new and interesting to us today are "praying," "babble," and "many words."  We will take them in that order.

The word "praying," here, is translated from the present participle of the Koine Greek "proseuchomai" which means "to pray," "to vow," "to offer prayers," "to worship," or "to pray for a thing."  This term can be found in a myriad of ancient Greek texts, including in "Histories," by our old friend Herodotus.  As promised, we will endeavor to understand the meaning of "prayer" to ancient Greeks like Herodotus shortly.

The Greek word that was translated into "babble" here is a form of the term "battalogeó."  In other Bible translations, this word comes out as "say meaningless things," "use vain repetitions," "use meaningless repetitions," or "babble repetitiously."  It could also be translated as "to stammer" or "to speak idly."  The interesting thing about this word is that scholars aren't sure exactly how it originated.  It may have been onomatopoeic, meaning that it literally sounds like the kind of babbling that it describes.  Alternatively, it may have been synthesized from the Aramaic word for "idleness" and the Aramaic verb for "to say."  It may even have been derived from the name Battus, after Battus I of Cyrene, a Seventh Century BC Greek king remembered for, among other things, a childhood speech impediment.  This word occurs only one single time in the entirety of the Bible.

Our last fresh Greek term here is a form of "polulogia" which we have translated as "many words."  Polulogia literally just means "multiple words."  The word is made up of the Greek word "polús" and the Greek word "lógos."  "Polús" means "much, "many," or "a lot."  "Polús" is the word from which our modern prefix "poly" comes from.  "Lógos" means "that which is said," "that which is thought," or, simply, "word."  

This concludes today's short Greek lesson.  Now, let's take a look at the nature of prayer in the ancient pagan world.

Prayer Among the Ancient Pagans

As we've noted many times over, the religions of the ancient world were all extremely similar in their form and execution.  From Greece to Rome to Egypt to Babylonia, people of the ancient world shared religious systems that were so similar to one another that, today, we commonly lump them all together into one word: paganism.  Aspects these ancient religious systems generally had in common were A) the belief in multiple, if not many, deities, B) the worship of these deities at temples, sanctuaries, or holy places specifically dedicated to particular deities, and C) the transactional practice of some sort of sacrifice to said deities in exchange for worldly favors. 

Whereas we tend, today, to think of religions as systems of morality, ancient religions did not prescribe morality.  The ancient Gods were disinterested in who you had intercourse with, whether or not you stole something from your neighbor, or whether or not you commonly lied in business.  The ancient Gods were mostly just interested in what you could give them, especially in the way of delicious smelling barbecues.

Prayer has existed as long as the fear and worship of gods has existed.  The basic shape of prayer has not changed over the millenia.  In its origin, prayer was a one-sided conversation with a deity meant to garner some divine favor for the individual offering the prayer.  One could argue that most prayer today, even in our modern monotheistic religions, remains the same.

Many examples of ancient pagan prayer remain extant, either carved in stone or some such near-permanent medium, or passed down through ancient writings.  The easiest way for us to access the world of ancient pagan prayer is for us to read some of these historical prayers.  To start, let us look at an example of an ancient Greek prayer found in Homer's The Iliad, Book 1.  In this prayer, Chryses, a priest from a Trojan-allied town that has just been sacked by the Achaean army - led by Agamemnon - is praying for divine retribution to be rained down upon his Achaean enemies.  Chryses calls for this retribution because his daughter has been taken by Agamemnon as a prize, and Agamemnon has rejected Chryses' offer of a massive ransom for her return.  The texts reads:

"Hear me, god of the silver bow, who stand over Chryse and holy Cilla, and rule mightily over Tenedos, Sminthian god, if ever I roofed over a temple to your pleasing, or if ever I burned to you fat thigh-pieces of bulls and goats, fulfill this prayer for me: let the Danaans pay for my tears by your arrows.” So he spoke in prayer, and Phoebus Apollo heard him. Down from the peaks of Olympus [Apollo] strode...

Later in The Iliad we find a similar prayer, uttered by Theano of Troy, daughter of King Cisseus, to the Goddess Minerva.  The text (from a more poetic translation) reads:

"The priestess then the shining veil displays,
Placed on Minerva's knees, and thus she prays:
"Oh awful goddess! ever-dreadful maid,
Troy's strong defence, unconquer'd Pallas, aid!
Break thou Tydides' spear, and let him fall
Prone on the dust before the Trojan wall!
So twelve young heifers, guiltless of the yoke,
Shall fill thy temple with a grateful smoke.
But thou, atoned by penitence and prayer,
Ourselves, our infants, and our city spare!"
So pray'd the priestess in her holy fane;
So vow'd the matrons, but they vow'd in vain"

Examples of such prayers abound in ancient Greek literature.

Another example of ancient Greek prayer, from an inscription carved in Second Century Phrygia, reads as follows: 

"Zeus, wet the earth, that she become heavy with fruit and flower with ears of corn. This I, Metreodoros, beg of you, Zeus of Kronos, as I perform delightful sacrifice on your altars."

Notice the economic or transactional nature of each of these prayers.  All three prayers call attention to sacrifices made by, or promised by, the prayer him or herself.  Chryses calls Apollo's attention to the work he has done erecting Apollo's temple, and to the many blood sacrifices he has made in Apollo's name over the years.  He is calling on a bank of goodwill he has built up with Apollo.  Theano promises a sacrifice of twelve premium heifers in exchange for Minerva's protection.  Our Second Century Phrygian calls Zeus' attention to a sacrifice he is making at the time of the prayer.  "Please accept this sacrifice in exchange for good farming weather," he pleads.  As historian Mary Depew notes in her paper Reading Greek Prayers, from which we get two of these examples, "No [Greek] prayer is complete without a sacrifice or an offering."

It is also important to note that Greek prayers were not usually "formulaic."  They were, more often than not, composed at the time of their offering by the prayer, and represented a personal, conversational interaction with the gods.

The Romans, to the contrary, did tend to use formulaic prayers, the precise recitation of which was imperative for the efficacy of the prayer.  Livy, in his History of Rome, gives an example of this when he says that an entire religious festival had to be repeated because an official who had offered a prayer during the first festival had botched the thing by not offering the prayer perfectly.  Livy writes:

"The Latin festival was celebrated on the third day before the nones of May; and because, on the offering of one of the victims, the magistrate of Lanuvium had not prayed for the ROMAN PEOPLE, THE QUIRITES, religious scruples were felt.  When the matter was laid before the senate, and they referred it to the college of pontiffs, the latter determined that the Latin festival had not been duly performed, and must be repeated; and that the Lanuvians, on whose account they were repeated, should furnish the victims."

As you can see, the Lavunians payed the price for their improperly executed prayer by having to supply the replacement "victims," or sacrificial animals, for the second-try-festival.

We find several examples of formulaic Roman prayer in a book written around 160 BC by Cato the Elder called De Agri Cultura.  De Agri Cultura is the oldest extant complete work of Latin prose, and has been described as a "farmers notebook."  Chapter 132 of De Agri Cultura consists of instructions for making an offering for the health of one's oxen.  It reads as follows:

"The offering is to be made in this way: Offer to Jupiter Dapalis a cup of wine of any size you wish, observing the day as a holiday for the oxen, the teamsters, and those who make the offering. In making the offering use this formula: "Jupiter Dapalis, forasmuch as it is fitting that a cup of wine be offered thee, in my house and in the midst of my people, for thy sacred feast; and to that end, be thou honoured by the offering of this food." Wash the hands, then take the wine, and say: "Jupiter Dapalis, be thou honoured by the offering of thy feast, and be thou honoured by the wine placed before thee." You may make an offering to Vesta if you wish. Present it to Jupiter religiously, in the fitting form. The feast to Jupiter consists of roasted meat and an urn of wine. After the offering is made plant millet, panic grass, garlic, and lentils."

Formulaic, indeed.  Later, in Chapter 141, Cato explains how to make a prayer and sacrifice offering for the purification of one's land.  He writes:

"The following is the formula for purifying land: Bidding the suovetaurilia** to be led around, use the words: "That with the good help of the gods success may crown our work, I bid thee, Manius, to take care to purify my farm, my land, my ground with this suovetaurilia, in whatever part thou thinkest best for them to be driven or carried around." Make a prayer with wine to Janus and Jupiter, and say: "Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee that thou be gracious and merciful to me, my house, and my household; to which intent I have bidden this suovetaurilia to be led around my land, my ground, my farm; that thou keep away, ward off, and remove sickness, seen and unseen, barrenness and destruction, ruin and unseasonable influence;  and that thou permit my harvests, my grain, my vineyards, and my plantations to flourish and to come to good issue, preserve in health my shepherds and my flocks, and give good health and strength to me, my house, and my household. To this intent, to the intent of purifying my farm, my land, my ground, and of making an expiation, as I have said, deign to accept the offering of these suckling victims; Father Mars, to the same intent deign to accept the offering of these suckling offering." Also heap the cakes with the knife and see that the oblation cake be hard by, then present the victims. When you offer up the pig, the lamb, and the calf, use this formula: "To this intent deign to accept the offering of these victims." . . . If favourable omens are not obtained in response to all, speak thus: "Father Mars, if aught hath not pleased thee in the offering of those sucklings, I make atonement with these victims." If there is doubt about one or two, use these words: "Father Mars, inasmuch as thou wast not pleased by the offering of that pig, I make atonement with this pig."

Fascinating. 

So you can see here, as we've noted before, that both Greek and Roman prayer systems were transactional.  The prayer offers something to a particular god or group of gods in exchange for some favor by the god or group of gods.  You can also see the difference between the Greek and Roman style of prayer; the Greeks tended to make their prayers up as they went, while the Romans tended to recite specifically worded prayers in the midst of specifically designed ceremonies.

For Jesus' part, it is likely that he would have been familiar with both of these kinds of pagan prayer, and perhaps even others outside of the Greek and Roman systems.  We can be all but certain that he would have been exposed more often to Roman prayer than any other form of pagan prayer, because of Rome's considerable and growing influence in the region of Palestine at that time.  When Jesus says "do not babble like the pagans," then, the context of rote formulaic Roman prayers should come to mind.  Perhaps we could read Jesus' words here as "don't go on and on, the way Cato the Elder taught."

That's all we need to know for today.  Your takeaways are these:

- Pagan prayer was almost always transactional, meaning that it referred to some sacrifice to the gods that accompanied the prayer.

- The linguistic form of pagan prayer varied between pagan cultures.

- The Romans were a little OCD about the execution of their prayers and religious ceremonies.

- Cato the Elder is awesome.

Join us next week when we will look at the prayer habits of the ancient Jews, comparing and contrasting them with the prayer habits of the ancient pagans, as context for Jesus' words regarding prayer here in the Sermon on the Mount.  Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.

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* No, not that way.

** Suovetaurilia - a traditional Roman sacrifice consisting of a sheep, a pig, and a bull.

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To read what came prior to this, click here.

On Matthew 6:5 through 6:6

Hello, all!  Welcome to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  I apologize for my extended absence.  My beloved fiance and I have been spending all of our free time moving into a townhouse that we recently purchased together.  On top of that, we have both been sick.  (Excuses, excuses, I know.) 

To those who don't know, this is an exhaustive study of the Gospel and of the Morality of Jesus Christ.  If this is your first time here, you may want to consider starting over from the beginning of this study by clicking this link.

For those of you who are already caught up, today will mark the end of one of our most significant departures to date from the life and times of Jesus Christ.  We've been studying the epic turning point in history that was the accession of Emperor Constantine, the first "Christian" Roman Emperor.  For the history of the world, and of Christianity in particular, it is difficult to identify many moments in the past that were more consequential.  Follow me, then, as we take a look at our next two Gospel verses and then wrap up our study-within-a-study about the Emperor Constantine.  Happy reading!

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Matthew 6:5 through 6:6

5 “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. 

6 But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

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Today's verses follow right along with the theme and tone of the last four verses.  In Matthew 6:1-4, Jesus told his followers that to exhibit one's charity and almsgiving to the world in order to be exalted by one's peers negates the positive nature of said charity and almsgiving, and leaves one lacking any meaningful reward for said works.  The glory of good works, he indicated, is a zero-sum thing.  If you pine for and accept worldly glory for your good works, you will receive no Godly metaphysical glory for them.  If you shirk worldly glory for your good works, you will receive Godly metaphysical glory for them.  Today, Christ extends this logic to prayers made in public for the purpose of impressing one's peers and exhibiting to them one's piety.  The concept transfers exactly from almsgiving to prayer: if one seeks and accepts the glory of one's peers for his or her prayers, one sacrifices the metaphysical reward for prayer that could have otherwise been achieved by praying more humbly.

Once more, because of the relative intensity of our "Constantine" project, we are going to forgo our regularly scheduled Greek lesson here and just hit a few bullet points regarding these easy-to-understand verses.  First off, we should note that ancient Jewish tradition included both communal and solitary prayer, so the idea of praying in private wasn't a new concept at the turn of the First Century.  Furthermore, Jesus isn't indicating that anyone who prays in public or in a synagogue is necessarily praying in vain.  A careful reading shows us that the qualifier "so that others may see them" is actually the key here.  Jesus is speaking about a specific group of elitist Jews who clearly only prayed (or gave alms) in order to increase their social standing among their peers.  

Jesus recommends that, in order to be sure that one isn't offering their prayer in vain, one should pray in the seclusion of their "inner room," or bedroom, alone.  He tells his followers that prayers offered in secret will surely be rewarded by God.

It can be said that all of the last six verses point toward the maleficent effect of human ego on human action.  If we pan out a little bit, we can understand these verses to be a stern warning against ego itself; against self itself.  That said, these verses also point to the moral ambiguity of human action.  With both almsgiving and prayer, the actions themselves are not inherently either "good" or "bad."  Instead, it is the spirit behind the action that makes it "good" or "bad."  The spirit behind an action is either egotistical and self-serving, or humble and God-serving, and it is that spirit that defines the morality of an action.  Jesus is simply warning his followers that the ego is highly corrosive.

I would like to note that verse 6:5 today contains Jesus' second use of the word "hypocrites," which we very recently saw for the first time in Matthew 6:2.  Please be aware that, of the people that catch flack from Jesus during his Galilean Ministry, people he sees as "hypocrites" get it the very worst.  We will notice that he has much harsher words and much more frequent rebukes for hypocrites within his own faith (Judaism) than he does for any non-Jews.  In following with the example of Jesus, this study itself aims to take the same course - that is to say that this study is meant, more than anything, to be a fiery rebuke against the pervasive hypocrisy within modern Christianity.  This should already be clear to those who have been with us from the beginning.

Here's today's big-picture takeaway: it doesn't matter what other humans think, and being praised by other humans is an empty luxury.  What matters, in human action, is doing right for the sake of God, or, for our agnostic friends, for the sake of rightness itself.  Those "Christians" among us that are constantly making a display of their supposed righteousness are, in fact, not right at all, and if Jesus were alive today, he wouldn't mind telling them that, right to their face.  The Prince of Peace did not avoid intellectual confrontation of hypocrisy and evil, and acting "right" in order to increase one's social standing is both hypocritical and evil.  So don't be a hypocrite!

Now, back to Fourth Century Rome.

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The Emperor Constantine: Champion of Christendom?

Part IV: The First Christian Emperor?

In the Fourth Century AD, Rome was the western world, and the western world was Rome.  From the banks of the Nile to the waters of the Jordan, from the Danube river to the Rhine, up to the English Channel and all the way back down to the Tiber, the influence of Greco-Roman culture was universally felt, and the power of the Empire was universally acknowledged, even by those peoples who had yet to pass under her yoke.  As the saying goes, all roads, indeed, led to Rome.

It is undeniable, then, that the adoption of "Christianity"* as the religion of the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century is what allowed this fledgling faith to become the largest religious system the world has ever known.  The "Christianization" of the the Empire marked the eventual end of pagan belief, and the eventual spread of "Christianity" to every corner of the globe.  Without Constantine's "conversion," there would have been no Roman Catholic Church, and without the Roman Catholic Church, it is difficult to say what form, if any, Christianity would have survived in.  The "Christianization" of the Roman Empire is such a monumental turning point that it is almost impossible to imagine the rest of history without it.  (I'm not saying that without it, we'd still be cutting birds open to divine the future from the condition of their livers, or sacrificing goats to a large pantheon of deities at the behest of ancient mystery cults, but I'm not not saying that, either.)

Last time, in Part III of this study, we followed the arc of the Emperor Constantine's life all the way up to the Milvian Bridge, on the north side of the City of Rome, where we witnessed his decisive, if not miraculous, defeat of the competing Emperor Maxentius.  The Battle of the Milvian Bridge, as we learned, was perhaps the most pivotal moment in all of history, marking the beginning of all of this "Christianization" we've been discussing.  Today, we will look at the actions Constantine took after his victory which ensured that, in modern times, nearly a third of the world's population call themselves "Christian."  This will involve, first, a brief discussion of the remaining civil wars that he fought in order to secure his place as sole ruler of the Empire.  Next, we'll look at his "Edict of Milan," which re-legalized Christianity within the Empire, and extended certain privileges to Christians.  We will discuss the all-important "Council of Nicaea," called by Constantine, which was responsible for homogenizing to a degree what was, up until that point, a diverse array of Christian beliefs, and, finally, we will consider the personal beliefs of Constantine himself, and question whether or not the first Christian Emperor was indeed Christian at all.  This will conclude (for now) our study of the Emperor Constantine and his exploits, and set us up for a subsequent study of the birth of the Roman Catholic Church.  

Let's get started, shall we?

1. Civil War Wrap-Up

To begin, we need to take stock of the men who were calling themselves Emperor on October 29, 312 AD, the day after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.  Constantine was busy parading the decapitated head of Maxentius around the streets of Rome, so we can remove Maxentius from that list and call Constantine the only remaining claimant to the throne in the west.  In the east, as you'll recall, the puppetmaster Emperor Galerius had died in 311, and had left two Emperors in his stead: Maximinus Daia and Licinius.  Our list of Emperors has thus been winnowed, and the belligerents of the remaining civil war have thus been set.

I will spare you the fine details and tell you that Maximinus Daia attacked Licinius' men first.  After experiencing some victories early in 313, Maximinus' army was trounced by Licinius' on April 30, 313, when they were attacked while besieging Heraclea, in modern-day Turkey.  Maximinus escaped and rallied his men for further defense, but the writing was on the wall.  Licinius chased Maximinus to Tarsus where his army kept on with the fight until, in August, Maximinus succumbed to some sort of illness and died.**  (One more Emperor down.)

As we will see momentarily, Constantine and Licinius remained on good working terms for some time.  They were friendly enough to jointly issue the Edict of Milan, a decree which reiterated and emphasized the illegality of persecuting Christians within the Empire.  The relationship quickly deteriorated, however, and the two Emperors began warring against one another in either 314 or 316 AD.  After a short series of indecisive battles, the two came to a kind of truce in 317.  The peace would not last, however.  Around 320, Licinius began persecuting Christians anew, which counted as a substantial afront to Constantine.  The difference of opinion over the status of Christian citizens led to the civil war of 324, which played out as a kind of epic conflict between Christianity and Paganism.  Constantine and his "Christian" forces prevailed, Licinius was eventually executed, and, by 325 AD, Constantine was truly the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, and the most powerful man in the world.

2. The Edict of Milan

Recall that, in the late Third Century, the Emperors Diocletian and Galerius instituted some of the most profound persecutions of the Christian population within the Roman Empire to date.  They purged all government offices of Christians, and kicked all Christians out of the army.  In certain places, Christians were tried and executed for denying the ancient Roman religion and for not offering sacrifice to the ancient Roman pantheon.  Christian property was seized, and Christian scriptures were burned.  Taken together, this period of time is known as the Great Persecution.

The Great Persecution proved to have the effect opposite to the one Diocletian and Galerius had hoped for.  The public persecution and martyrdom of Christians, in many places, actually caused the general populace to sympathize with the Christians.  In fact, awe at the conviction and fortitude of Christian martyrs in the face of torture and execution at that time caused many pagans to wonder at the greatness of the Christian faith.  Never could they have imagined a pagan being willing to die rather than renounce one of their many Gods.  This awe and wonder caused many Roman citizens to convert to Christianity.  Thus, in 311 AD, Galerius officially ended the failed persecution by issuing his famed Edict of Toleration, which did little more than make Christianity legal again across the Empire.  There may have been more behind Galerius' Edict of Toleration than simple admission of policy failure, however.  Remember that this Edict occurred briefly before Galerius' death, and that Galerius asked the Christians of the Empire to pray to their God for his health at the end of his life, indicating, perhaps, a true change of heart (or, at least, mind) on his part regarding the Christians.

Once Constantine had secure control over the western half of the Empire, supposedly thanks to the direct intervention of the Christian God, he decided almost immediately to take the Edict of Toleration a step further.  To do so, he met with the eastern Emperor Licinius in early 313 in what is the modern city of Milan, from whence they issued what is known as the Edict of Milan.  The Edict of Milan reiterated and made permanent the legalization of Christianity instituted by Galerius' Edict of Toleration, and then expanded beyond the old Edict in a couple of ways.  The Edict of Milan assured that a Christian's basic rights as a Roman citizen could not be abridged in any way on account of their faith, and included assurances that Christians had the right to convene and organize churches together at will.  Just as important, the Edict of Milan demanded that any property that had been seized from Christians during the Great Persecution be returned to them immediately.  So it was, then, that Christians went from being personae non gratae to being a favored group, uniquely protected by specific Imperial decree, in just a couple of years.  The Edict of Milan was a windfall for Christians, to say the least, and set the stage for the ensuing "Christianization" of the Empire.

Constantine and Licinius signed and issued the Edict of Milan jointly.  The exact wording of the Edict, sadly, is lost to the dustbin of history, but its effects have been consequential to everything that has occurred in western history since its declaration.  It sent a signal to the entire Empire that there was a new age on the horizon, and that the Emperors did not intend to stop the coming of said new age.

One should note that, although the Edict of Milan was written for the benefit of Christians, and contained language specific to Christians, the Edict did, in fact, promote toleration of all religions, making the practice of any faith legal under Roman law.  Contrary to frequent misunderstanding, the Edict of Milan did not make Christianity the official religion of the Empire.

3. The First Council of Nicaea

A little more than a decade after issuing the Edict of Milan, and almost immediately after his eventual military victory over Licinius, Constantine convened what is known as the First Council of Nicaea, in the town of Nicaea in what is modern-day Turkey, in 325 AD.  The Council of Nicaea was to be the first in a series of "ecumenical councils" constituted by the bishops of all the major Christian communities within the Empire.  Like subsequent ecumenical councils, the First Council of Nicaea was convened to homogenize Christian thought and consolidate Christian authority.  At that time, Christian theology and philosophy remained extremely diffuse and varied, and the Emperor had taken note of these variations and the frequent squabbling and infighting they caused.  If he was going to hitch his horse to Christianity, he needed the Christian community to oblige him by at least agreeing upon some basic religious tenets amongst themselves. If Constantine's conversion was genuine, than one can even imagine him convening the First Council of Nicaea in order to find out for himself personally: "what is this new religion, and how exactly do I follow it?"

As we've said, Christianity at the turn of the Fourth Century was a markedly varied set of religious beliefs.  From one Christian community to the next, one would find different sets of scriptures, different liturgical methodologies, and even different opinions about the nature of Christ himself.  There were groups that believed, for example, that Jesus was on equal footing with "God the Father," and other groups who believed that Jesus was divine but subordinate to "God the Father."  There were groups that believed that Jesus was not divine at all, but totally human.  There were groups that believed that Jesus was entirely divine, and not human at all.  There were still other groups that believed that Jesus was both God and human.  Disparities in theology abounded.  At the First Council of Nicaea, Constantine encouraged Christian leaders to work through some of these disagreements in order to create a more singular version of Christianity.  A candid look at history shows that a singular version of Christianity had never existed before.  

While the council didn't, and couldn't, address every existing point of contention, it did decide on one of the biggest disputes of the time, known as the "Arian Controversy."  Arianists were a group of Christians who believed, as we mentioned above, that there was a difference of "Godliness" between Jesus and God the Father.  The Council of Nicaea decided that the orthodox view for all Christians would be that Jesus and God the Father were "coequal" as a Supreme Divinity, neither being subordinate to the other in potency or import.  By this decision, all Arianists were declared "heretical," and the history of Christian theology was permanently changed.  The Council of Nicaea, a group of mere men living over three hundred years after Jesus, had taken it upon themselves to define the nature of Christ.  A profound precedent.

Aside from settling the Arian Controversy, the Council's lasting legacy includes a list of twenty canon laws for the nascent Universal Church, which included a prohibition against the self-castration of clergy, a prohibition against usury among the clergy, a prohibition against clergy cohabitating with younger women, and laws generally forgiving those who had strayed from the church during the later persecutions of Licinius.  The Council also definitively changed the way Christians calculated the date of Easter Sunday, decoupling said calculation from the Jewish calendar.  Perhaps the most important legacy of the Council, however, was the conception of the "Nicene Creed," a creed designed to firmly define the basic tenets of the Christian faith and to exclude from the ranks of orthodox Christians anyone who did not profess it.  The Nicene Creed will be familiar, in part or in whole, to most modern "Christians."  The original version of the Nicene Creed read something like this:

We believe in one God,

the Father almighty,

maker of all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the Son of God,

begotten from the Father, only-begotten,

that is, from the substance of the Father,

God from God,

light from light,

true God from true God,

begotten not made,

of one substance with the Father,

through Whom all things came into being,

things in heaven and things on earth,

Who because of us men and because of our salvation came down,

and became incarnate,

and became man,

and suffered,

and rose again on the third day,

and ascended to the heavens,

and will come to judge the living and dead,

And in the Holy Spirit.

But as for those who say, There was when He was not,

and, Before being born He was not,

and that He came into existence out of nothing,

or who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance,

or created,

or is subject to alteration or change

- these the Catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.

It is interesting that this, the first "orthodox" Christian creed, doesn't mention any of the things that Jesus asked his followers to do during his Galilean Ministry.  Already by the year 325, it seems, Christianity had generally lost track of the moral prescriptions of Jesus Christ, and was more interested in the deification and worship of The Man, as if he were akin to Jupiter Best and Greatest.  To paraphrase a modern Bible scholar: in just three centuries, Christianity had transformed from the religion of Jesus into the religion about Jesus.  All of this begs the question: if Jesus knew it was so important that his followers profess the correct belief about the nature of his divinity, why wouldn't he have revealed the tenets of the Nicene Creed to those listening to him at the Mount of Beatitudes?  Why would Jesus waste so much breath on "blessed are the meek," and "love your enemies," when what was really important was the profession that Jesus was "God from God, light from light, true God from true God?"

When comparing the words of the historical Christ as they occur in the Gospel to the theology of the Nicene Creed, we are struck by a profound contrast which leads us to a certain unavoidable conclusion.  The First Council of Nicaea, called together and presided over by the Emperor Constantine, was a huge departure from the Holy Philosophy of True Christianity.  The Council represented the first step in what would be the rapid transformation of Christianity into the blood-stained state-religion that became organized Orthodox Christianity.  While many Christians today remember the Council of Nicaea as a monumental victory for Christianity, a careful reading of the Gospel and of history shows that it was actually a death knell for the religion of Jesus Christ.

4. Constantine: The First Christian Emperor?

As we've said all along, history remembers Constantine as the first Christian Emperor, and, perhaps, as the savior of Christianity from permanent obscurity and minority.  Indeed, Constantine did champion Christian causes throughout his reign.  There is no denying that he issued the Edict of Milan and convened the Council of Nicaea.  There is no denying that he commissioned the construction of countless Christian churches across the Empire.  There is no question that he claimed to have had a divine revelation of the Christian God on the night of October 27, 312 AD.  There is no question that Constantine's accession to the throne marked a turning point for all of "Christendom."  But other questions yet remain.

Many scholars have cast different degrees of doubt on the genuineness of Constantine's conversion.  Some historians doubt, for example, that a true convert would have waited until he was at death's door to be baptized as a Christian, as Constantine did in 337 AD.  Some doubt that a truly converted Christian would have allowed a Triumphal Arch in his name to be erected displaying the symbology of the ancient pagan religion, including scenes celebrating pagan sacrifices, as Constantine also did.  Some doubt that a true convert would continue to mint coinage displaying the image of the Roman Sun God, Sol Invictus, up to fourteen years after their conversion, as Constantine did.  The truth about Constantine's personal beliefs will likely never be known.  Still, a more objective truth remains: Constantine's reign marked the beginning of the official Christianization of the Roman Empire, which marked the beginning of the Christianization of the entire western world.  Genuine in his belief or not, Constantine was probably as consequential to Christian history as such figures as St. Peter or Paul of Tarsus.

For our part in the doubt, we can say this: Jesus never once told his followers to "be ready for a powerful warlord that I will personally ordain as ruler of the world three-hundred years from now."  Jesus never said "watch out for further revelations, which I will be revealing through other humans throughout history."  Jesus definitely never said "go and institute a Universal Church as a grand cult dedicated to my worship, and marry it to the most expansive, powerful, and militaristic State apparatus to have ever existed."  To the contrary, Jesus said things like "when someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well."  He said things like "you cannot serve God and Mammon." He said things like "do to others as your would have them do to you." 

Since Constantine was the kind to have his enemies' heads severed from their bodies and displayed to the public, and the kind to consolidate riches and power, and the kind to have even his own son and wife mercilessly executed (as he did in 326 AD), any true Christian must wonder how the philosophy of Jesus Christ can be reconciled with his actions after his supposed "conversion."  If a questioning Christian finds this reconciliation difficult or impossible, than he or she owes it to him or herself to look at the fusion of Christianity and the Roman State brought on by Constantine and wonder: was this really what Jesus Christ was asking of his followers during his Galilean Ministry?  Are power, wealth, and military conquest tenets of the true Christian morality?  If not, than what is to be made of the rest of Christian history beyond the life of Constantine?

Was Constantine the first Christian Roman Emperor?  Or could it be that he was just the first in an unending line of blood-soaked psychopaths leveraging the name of Jesus Christ against his enemies for personal gain?

Could it be that all of western history after the "conversion" of Emperor Constantine has been predicated on deceit?

Like everything else, I believe that a hard look at history tells the story  I, for one, find it unlikely that Jesus was anywhere near the Milvian Bridge on that fateful day in Anno Domini Three-Hundred and Twelve.

But what do you think?

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That concludes our study-within-a-study.  I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Almost nothing makes me happier than learning about those dang Romans, so you can be sure that we will revisit them many times over the coming years.

Join us next time for more Gospel and more history!  Thank you for reading!

Love.

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* Remember that I use quotation marks around words like "Christianity" and "Christian" to call to attention the fact that most things that history calls "Christian" are not, indeed, Christian at all.  In places, I may forgo the quotes for readability.  Just know that, when I use the descriptor "Christian," unless I am talking about Jesus' exact moral teachings, his very first followers, or Leo Tolstoy, I usually actually mean " a group, person or thing that is commonly, but incorrectly, described as Christian."

** Some have proposed that he died of complications from Graves' Disease.
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To read what came prior to this, click here.

On Matthew 6:3 through 6:4

Howdy!  Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, the most complete Gospel study you will ever read.  We've been at this for quite some time now, but I recommend that new readers start over from the beginning by following this link.

Last time, after discussing our Gospel reading, we completed Part II of our latest "study-within-a-study" regarding the accession of the Emperor Constantine, the first "Christian" Roman Emperor.  Today, we will have an abbreviated discussion of our next Gospel reading before we jump into Part III of our study-within-a-study, wherein we will witness one of the most pivotal moments in all of history: the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.  Gird up your loins, soldier.  There will be blood.

Enjoy!

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Matthew 6:3 through 6:4

3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, 

4 so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

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An Abbreviated Discussion

Today's verses piggyback directly off of the previous two verses from our last installment.  Remember that Jesus was just explaining to his followers, still in the midst of his "Sermon on the Mount," that to give alms or to follow the law simply so that other people will praise one for giving alms or for following the law does not constitute "righteous" action.  Jesus assured his followers that people who participate in this kind of vain virtue-signalling would reap no spiritual reward for their "good deeds."

Today, Jesus expounds on his point.  In a bit of hyperbole, he tells his followers that almsgiving done with the right hand should be so secret that not even the left hand would know it had happened.  We know that hands are not, in fact, conscious of anything, so this verse is, on its face, not meant to be taken literally.  Here, Jesus means simply to emphasize the point he made in the previous two verses; he intends for his followers to keep their good deeds a secret between themselves and God.  He wants his followers to keep their good deeds so secret that they won't even mentally acknowledge the goodness of their own charity.  Taken together, Matthew verses 6:1-4 emphatically call to attention the self-serving hypocrisy of those who do good in order to be praised by humanity.  These verses suggest a worldview in which one's relationship with the Eternal is one's own business, and in which the opinions or thoughts of other humans mean nothing of consequence to a true follower of Christ.

As we mentioned last time, there are countless examples in modern America of philanthropic action taken seemingly for the singular purpose of augmenting the public image of the philanthropist.  Politicians, Hollywood celebrities, business people and even average Americans consistently make a show of all the "good deeds" they've done for the world through their charity and piety.  Both sides of the political spectrum in America engage in this near constant virtue-signalling in order to make it known to all how "good" they are, and how bad everyone else is by comparison.  As we can see here, the American way, as usual, is not the Christian way.  Jesus speaks about a deeper and higher morality in today's verses, and says unequivocally: "those who pine for the approval of other humans by trying to make themselves appear pious or morally upright will miss out on the spiritual gifts they might have received by ignoring the opinions of others and doing right merely for the sake of doing right."

As is so often the case with Jesus' words, there is next to no ambiguity here.  Jesus says what he means, and means what he says.  That being the case, we'll retire these verses here and move on to Fourth Century Rome.

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The Emperor Constantine: Champion of Christendom?

Part III: The Second Tetrarchy and the Battle of the Milvian Bridge

It could be said that all things Roman in the world had their beginnings on the banks of the Tiber River.  Indeed, the ancient mythological tale of the founding of Rome by the wolf-suckled twin brothers Romulus and Remus begins right on the shore of the Tiber.  There, as the story goes, the twin baby boys were abandoned to die according to the will of a certain King Amulius.  In this foundational yarn, it was the Tiber itself, in its deified form "Tiberinus," who saved the boys from dying on the edge of the river.  Tiberinus gave the baby boys over to the protection of a she-wolf named Lupa, who nursed them as her own.  When the boys grew up, they co-founded the city of Rome on the very same river.*  The Tiber marks the spot where Romulus and Remus were abandoned and saved, and where the Eternal City will forever sit.  The physical and psychological well being of Rome in ancient times was always closely dependent on the tremendous natural resource that is the Tiber, and it is no surprise that Romans came to understand the river as divine.

In today's study, history will bring us right to the banks of the Tiber in Fourth Century Rome, a little more than a millenium after Romulus and Remus were said to have founded the city.  We will be heading to a specific spot on the Tiber, about four miles north of the Palatine Hill, where a particular bridge spans 460 feet of the river.  The bridge in question, of course, is the famed Milvian Bridge, first built by consul Gaius Claudius Nero in 206 BC.  It was on this bridge, and on the land immediately to the north of it, that perhaps the most important battle of western history, the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, occurred.  The story is fascinating, and will serve as the apex of our study-within-a-study about the first "Christian" Roman Emperor, Constantine.

Today we have three goals.  The first is to understand how the Second Tetrarchy devolved into civil war, positioning Constantine as a leading contender for the rank of sole ruler of the Empire.  The second is to become familiar with the legendary tales about the events of the evening of October 27, 312 AD, the day before the battle.  The third is to walk through the events of October 28, 312 AD, when the forces of Constantine won a decisive victory against those of one Emperor Maxentius in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.  We have a lot of ground to cover, so let's start by seeing what came of the Second Tetrarchy.

1. The Second Tetrarchy (for what it was worth)

Last time, as you'll recall, we wrapped up with the mastermind behind the First Tetrarchy, Emperor Diocletian, tending his cabbage farm in Dalmatia and enjoying his retirement.  What was next for the Tetrarchy?  Well, when Diocletian and his co-Augustus Maximian retired, their respective Caesars, or "junior-Emperors," Galerius and Constantius, immediately assumed the roles of co-Augusti, or "senior-Emperors."  The two vacant junior-Emperor positions were then filled by a certain Maximinus Daia and a certain Valerius Severus, according to the decree of Emperor Galerius.  Maximinus would serve under Galerius in the east, while Severus served under Constantius in the west.  This new quartet of Emperors is known as the "Second Tetrarchy."

We mentioned briefly last time that many Romans were surprised by Galerius' picks for Caesars.  Some of their contemporaries saw Constantius' son, Constantine, as a more natural choice for Caesar in the west, and a man named Maxentius (Maximian's son and Galerius' son-in-law) as a better choice for Caesar of the east.  Many Romans perceived problems on the horizon when they learned about Galerius' selections.  It is little surprise that Galerius' choice of Caesars did, in fact, become a stumbling block for the longevity of the Tetrarchy.  

After Constantine was passed over for the position of Caesar, he travelled to the northern coast of Gaul in order to join his father's impending military campaign in Britain.  The father and son led troops into Britain, all the way to the northernmost parts of the island, where they defeated a people known as the Picts in late 305 AD.  After a winter hiatus from campaigning in early 306, Constantius had planned to continue his conquests.  His plans and his reign as Augustus were cut short, however, when he died of natural causes in July of 306 in the British town of York.

Immediately prior to his death, Constantius recommended to his troops that they unilaterally elevate his son, Constantine, to the office of Augustus in his place.  When the army did exactly as Constantius had suggested, hailing Constantine as Augustus, it was no small slight to Emperor Severus, who had had every reason to think that he was "next in line" for the senior-Emperor position.  This situation highlighted perhaps the biggest weakness of the Tetrarchy: the Emperors had failed to agree upon definitive rules of succession.  There was no "Tetrarchical Constitution" to guide the transfer of power in the event of the death of an Emperor, so the death of an Emperor was likely to result in a run for the throne by multiple contenders.

Upon being hailed Augustus, Constantine sent a message to Galerius in the east explaining that he had been spontaneously promoted by his troops.  He told Galerius that it hadn't been his will to take the position of Augustus, but rather that it had been thrust upon him.  Along with this message, Constantine sent a portrait of himself dressed in the robes of an Augustus.  Galerius was instantly furious, and was only barely prevented from burning the portrait to ashes on the spot.  As anyone might have expected, Galerius had wanted to maintain control of the line of succession, and couldn't bear the idea of Severus being passed over for the senior-Emperor position.  Some pragmatic members of Galerius' court were able to calm him down, and recommended a compromise; they recommended that he acknowledge Constantine as Emperor, but only as Caesar rather than as Augustus.  The title of Augustus could then still go to Galerius' favorite, Severus.  By this compromise, Galerius could avoid immediate war with Constantine, and still empower his man Severus.  Galerius consented and sent a proposal of the compromise to Constantine, who consented in turn.

Word travelled fast, and when Maximian's son Maxentius, stationed in Rome, heard that Constantine had taken the purple, he decided to have a go at at the regal robes himself.  The Praetorian Guard, or the elite Roman army stationed in Rome, hailed Maxentius "Emperor" on October 28, 306.  Maxentius didn't bother to give himself the title "Augustus" or "Caesar," believing that Galerius would eventually acknowledge the son of a former Emperor and legitimately grant him his due title, as he had with Constantine.  Galerius, however, would do no such thing.  As the most powerful Emperor of the now five Emperors, Galerius feared that legitimizing Maxentius' rule would encourage even more usurpers to leverage pockets of military power against him.  Seeing that the Tetrarchy was about to fall apart, and his considerable influence with it, Galerius ordered Augustus Severus to march into Rome and displace the upstart Prince-Emperor Maxentius.

Before Severus arrived at Rome, Maxentius brought his father Maximian out of retirement, making him "Emperor for a Second Time."  (Note that this brings the current Emperor-count to six.)  This proved to be a brilliant move, as many of the troops under Severus' command had once been under the command of Maximian.  When Severus approached Rome, droves of his legionaries defected to the side of their former beloved leader, and Maxentius was thus able to win the day.  Severus was stripped of his royal robes and eventually imprisoned by the forces of the potent father-and-son duo.  Galerius, in the east, was (again) infuriated, so much so that he decided to march to Italy in the summer of 307 AD and deal with Maxentius and Maximian himself.

Unfortunately for Galerius, Maxentius was easily able to use the prestige of his father's name and the promise of large sums of money to turn many of Galerius' troops against him.  As Galerius' approached Rome, it became quickly apparent that he would not be able to dislodge Maxentius.  He wisely retreated, plundering and sacking various Italian towns and cities on his way.  The rule of Maxentius and Maximian over Italy and Africa were solidified by Galerius' retreat.

During the hullabaloo of 307, Maxentius and Maximian reached out to Constantine, still in Gaul, for peaceful terms.  Constantine married Maximian's daughter, Fausta, and Maximian promoted Constantine from "Caesar" to "Augustus."  Wary of Galerius' still considerable power in the East, Constantine didn't directly assist the father-and-son duo in their repulsion of Galerius from Italy, but his marriage and promotion did signify a kind of treaty with Maxentius and Maximian.

Then, in an unexpected and perhaps bizarre move, in the spring of 308, Maximian attempted to usurp total power over Italy and Africa from his flesh-and-blood, Maxentius.  He believed that the troops serving under them would be more loyal to him alone, but was shocked when his assumption proved to be incorrect.  As a result, Maximian was stripped of his title and forced to flee Italy to join Constantine in Gual.  Constantine made Maximian Emperor again upon his arrival in Gaul.

Later that same year, a conference of Emperors known as the Conference of Carnuntum was held in Carnuntum, in modern-day Austria.  This conference, chaired by the retired Emperor Diocletian, officially refused to accept Maxentius' rule.  A new Emperor, Gaius Valerius Licinianus Licinius, or simply Licinius, was appointed and charged with the tall task of displacing Maxentius.  Civil wars and wars against outsiders continued thus until, in 310, the power-hungry Maximian rebelled against Constantine, attempting to take command of Constantine's domain.  Constantine broke off from a campaign against the Franks and chased Maximian to southern Gaul where he defeated him and asked him to kill himself.  In July of 310, the three-time Emperor Maximian obliged Constantine by hanging himself.

By 310, Galerius had fallen ill and was no longer in shape to play any part in the game of Imperial politics.  One of his final acts as Emperor was to legalize Christianity anew in his "Edict of Toleration."  (Recall that Christianity had been illegal, especially in the eastern half of the Empire, since around the turn of the century.)  As Galerius became sicker, he seems to have had a change of heart about the ever-multiplying Christian population.  Six days before his death, Galerius publicly asked that Christians pray for him and the relief of his illness.  Obviously, this was to no avail, as he died in the spring of 311 AD.  Galerius' death marked the total unravelling of what was left of the Second Tetrarchy.

Upon Galerius' death, the Emperor Maximinus Daia, who had been playing Caesar in the east to Galerius' Augustus, went to war with the newcomer Licinius.  While Maximinus and Licinius battled in the east, Maxentius became openly hostile to Constantine in the west, vowing revenge for his father's death.  Constantine forged an alliance with Licinius to pre-empt Maxentius' doing so, which enraged Maximinus, who, in turn, forged an alliance with Maxentius and offered him military assistance.  For a time, any sense of normalcy across the Empire was shattered, and Roman citizens everywhere anticipated the outbreak of terrible hostilities at every moment.  311 and 312 marked a period of almost unprecedented military buildup.  The Church Father Eusebius, in his "History of the Church," recorded it thus:

"... besides these things shields and breastplates were preparing, and darts and spears and other warlike accoutrements were making ready, and galleys and naval armor were collecting in every place. And no one expected anything else than to be attacked by enemies any day."

So it came to be that Constantine consulted pagan seers and augurs about what he should do next.  The omens came back loud and clear that Constantine should refrain from taking pre-emptive action against Maxentius.  Constantine, like several other notable Roman military commanders before him, flat-out ignored the auspices and began to march his troops toward Rome.  As he worked his way down through northern Italy in the summer of 312, Constantine was rewarded for ignoring the omens at every turn.  His troops found victory against those of Maxentius in Susa, Turin, and Verona in turn.  Everywhere he went, Constantine found an Italian population sympathetic to his cause.  Maxentius had fallen out of favor in Italy.  The next critical cities to fall to Constantine during his steady march were Aquileia, Modena, and Ravenna.  He was empowered every step of the way, seers and augurs be damned.  Rome was now squarely in Constantine's sights.

As Constantine approached, Maxentius prepared to dig-in, just as he had when Severus and Galerius had attempted to dislodge him successively.  He stockpiled grain, abandoned the countryside surrounding Rome, and concentrated his troops inside the Aurelian Walls of the city.  He went as far as to order all the bridges across the Tiber to be cut-off, to prevent, or at least slow, Constantine's forces entering the city proper.

In the fall of 312, Constantine's troops set up camp approximately seven miles north of the Milvian Bridge and prepared for a siege.  On October 27, 312, Maxentius went out to attend the chariot races.  At the races, the crowd openly taunted him, shouting that Constantine was an "invincible enemy."  Apprehensive and uncertain how to proceed, Maxentius consulted the oracular "Sibylline Books" - a kind of divination text akin to the I Ching - and was told that "on October 28, an enemy of the Romans will perish."  Maxentius took this to mean that Constantine would perish, and was thereby emboldened to make a move against Constantine in the open, rather than await the oncoming siege as planned.  Further encouraging Maxentius was the fact that October 28 was the anniversary of his having been crowned Emperor.  The internal pressure of the citizens of Rome, the reading from the Sibylline Books, and the omen of his anniversary all led Maxentius to change his tactical plan from "siege defense" to "open war."  Since he had already had the Milvian Bridge cut off, he ordered his men to build a pontoon bridge across the Tiber next to the out-of-service bridge so that he could move his troops to the field just north of that spot and bait Constantine into open battle.

2. A Vision from God?

The battle-lines were drawn, and Constantine prepared his forces to move against Maxentius.  Some of you know what's coming, but here's where it gets crazy.

To the understanding of history, on the morning of October 27, 312 AD, Constantine woke up as he had on every other morning of his life - that is to say that he woke up as a pagan.  The record shows that Constantine was still in the habit of performing pagan sacrifices and consulting pagan mystics in order to divine the future, right up until his supposed "conversion."  It is important to note that there is no evidence that Constantine had ever thought of himself as a Christian up until this point.  It is of the utmost interest, then, when Eusebius writes that Constantine, on October 27, did a kind of about-face by abandoning himself to prayer directed at the Christian God.

Eusebius claims that Constantine spontaneously converted to Christianity while reflecting on his father's many military victories.  (Eusebius is unique among historians in claiming that Constantine's father, Constantius, had been a secret Christian.)  Eusebius' account is too important to gloss over or paraphrase.  He writes, in his "Life of Constantine:"

"Being convinced, however, that he needed some more powerful aid than his military forces could afford him, on account of the wicked and magical enchantments which were so diligently practiced by the tyrant, he (Constantine) sought Divine assistance, deeming the possession of arms and a numerous soldiery of secondary importance, but believing the co-operating power of Deity invincible and not to be shaken. He considered, therefore, on what God he might rely for protection and assistance. While engaged in this enquiry, the thought occurred to him, that, of the many emperors who had preceded him, those who had rested their hopes in a multitude of gods, and served them with sacrifices and offerings, had in the first place been deceived by flattering predictions, and oracles which promised them all prosperity, and at last had met with an unhappy end, while not one of their gods had stood by to warn them of the impending wrath of heaven...  

... Reflecting on this, and well weighing the fact that they who had trusted in many gods had also fallen by manifold forms of death, without leaving behind them either family or offspring, stock, name, or memorial among men: while the God of his father had given to him, on the other hand, manifestations of his power and very many tokens: and considering farther that those who had already taken arms against the tyrant, and had marched to the battle-field under the protection of a multitude of gods, had met with a dishonorable end (for one of them had shamefully retreated from the contest without a blow, and the other, being slain in the midst of his own troops, became, as it were, the mere sport of death); reviewing, I say, all these considerations, he judged it to be folly indeed to join in the idle worship of those who were no gods, and, after such convincing evidence, to err from the truth; and therefore felt it incumbent on him to honor his father's God alone."

Eusebius goes on to describe what is known to historians as "The Vision of Constantine":

Accordingly he called on him with earnest prayer and supplications that he would reveal to him who he was, and stretch forth his right hand to help him in his present difficulties. And while he was thus praying with fervent entreaty, a most marvelous sign appeared to him from heaven, the account of which it might have been hard to believe had it been related by any other person. But since the victorious emperor himself long afterwards declared it to the writer of this history, when he was honored with his acquaintance and society, and confirmed his statement by an oath, who could hesitate to accredit the relation, especially since the testimony of after-time has established its truth? He said that about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, CONQUER BY THIS. At this sight he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this expedition, and witnessed the miracle.

"Conquer by this."  According to Eusebius, Constantine claimed to have been given an order by the Christian God to wage war against Maxentius under the sign of the Christian "Chi-Rho." The Chi-Rho was an ancient graphic symbol of Christ, still used by some today, which was formed by superimposing the first two letters of the Greek word "Christos."  For those who aren't familiar, the Chi-Rho looks like this:

On the evening of the 27th, Eusebius says that the message was made even clearer when Christ himself appeared in a dream to Constantine and told him to make a physical likeness of the sign he had seen in the sky as a "safeguard in all engagements with his enemies."

The contemporary historian Lactantius has his own similar version of events, as follows, from his "On the Death of the Persecutors:"

Constantine was directed in a dream to cause the heavenly sign to be delineated on the shields of his soldiers, and so to proceed to battle. He did as he had been commanded, and he marked on their shields the letter X, with a perpendicular line drawn through it and turned round thus at the top, being the cipher of CHRIST.

According to Eusebius, on the morning of October 28, Constantine quickly had a standard, or a set of standards, made in the sign of the Chi-Rho.  According to Lactantius, Constantine ordered the Chi-Rho painted on the shields of his army.  Either way, history tends to agree that Constantine marched into battle on October 28, 312 AD under some version of this "cipher of Christ," making him the first military commander ever to do so.

Tradition recounts the ensuing battle as perhaps the biggest vindication of the power and might of the Christian God in all of history.

Let us not slow down here...

3. The Battle of the Milvian Bridge

Finally, we arrive at the critical moment of our study.  On October 28, 312 AD, the forces of Emperor Constantine moved against the forces of Emperor Maxentius on the ground immediately north of the Tiber River near the Milvian Bridge.  Maxentius' army fought under the protection of the old pantheon of Roman gods, while Constantine's forces fought under the sign, if not the protection, of Jesus Christ.

While tradition remembers the outcome of the battle as being the result of divine intervention on the part of the Christian God, the truth of the matter is that Maxentius had placed himself in a nearly indefensible position on the north side of his pontoon bridge.  His troops started out the battle with their backs practically at the banks of the Tiber, leaving them no room to re-group if formations were broken and they were forced to temporarily cede ground.  Thus, when Constantine's cavalry faced off against that of Maxentius, Constantine's riders were easily able to prevail, as their enemy immediately ran out of adequate maneuvering space.  As any military strategist will tell you, a cavalry with no room to ride is worth less to a commander than an infantry in the same position.

Having dispatched with Maxentius' horsemen, driving them either into the river, off of their horses, or back across the pontoon bridge, Constantine then pushed his infantry forward into Maxentius' men, who quickly found themselves pressed so tightly between a sea of swords and the Tiber that they began to panic.  All hell broke loose for Maxentius, as formations broke down and each soldier desperately fought for his own life.  As bodies began to pile up, Maxentius, realizing his folly, ordered a retreat across the pontoon bridge toward Rome.  On the south side of the great river, he intended to make a second stand on more defensible ground.  Maxentius was thwarted by his own weak strategizing; the retreat became a slaughter, as the pontoons were simply not big enough to sustain all of the troops now frantically trying to cross them.  Portions of the bridge failed.  Maxentius' men clamored over one another on the makeshift bridge or dove headlong into the water to avoid the swords and missiles of Constantine's relentlessly pressing legions.  Many drowned in the river, and many more lay dead or dying on the northern riverbank.  All of this occurred mere miles from the spot where Romulus and Remus were said to have been abandoned to die in their infancy.

If Lactantius was right, there is no doubt that the last thing many of these men saw before being hacked down was the Christian symbol of the Chi-Rho painted upon their killer's shield.  So it was that, on October 28, 312 AD, the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, was turned into a god of war, not unlike the pagan gods Mars or Ares.  The Tiber, ever willing, drank in the blood.

Maxentius himself drowned during the retreat, either having purposely dove into the river to swim across, or having been thrown into the river by his horse.  One wonders if he had time to reconsider the Sibylline oracle before he gave up the ghost.  "On October 28, an enemy of the Romans will perish." 

Constantine's victory was decisive, and the battle wound down completely by the evening of the 28th.  Constantine had Maxentius' bloating body recovered from the Tiber and decapitated.  He then paraded the head around Rome in the following days as a symbol of his power.  The head was subsequently sent to Carthage, the seat of Roman power in Africa, as a clear message that Constantine was now the highest authority in the western half of the Empire. 

(Here, one is compelled to wonder about the "Christian" nature of decapitations and head-parades.  When was it, in the Gospel, that Jesus said "sever the head of your enemy from their body, affix it to a pike, and march it around town before men, women, and children?")

As you now know, the reign of Constantine would be the deciding factor in the eventual "Christianization" of Europe and the Empire, and, as history records, the Battle of the Milvian Bridge was the deciding factor leading to the reign of Constantine.  I've said it before, and I will say it again: October 28, 312 AD was among the most pivotal moments in the history of mankind.  The "Christians" you know today might not be "Christians" at all if Constantine's men had never marched on Rome.

Next time, we will wrap up this study-within-a-study by considering the policies and reforms of Constantine, which led to the deformation of Christ's religion and to the formation of what is today errantly called "Christianity."  Tradition and history see Constantine as the "Champion of Christendom."  We will make the undeniable argument that Constantine's rule was, in fact, the death knell for the faith and philosophy Jesus had prescribed to his followers some three-hundred years prior.  Join us, won't you?

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Wowee.  I'm all sweaty from that.  I hope you've been enjoying this deep dive.  I want to thank you for reading this writing, and for sharing it with your "Christian" friends.  I hope to see you next time.

Love.

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* Later, Romulus killed his brother for teasing him about the slow-going construction of a wall around the Palatine Hill.  It's kind of a funny story...

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To read what came prior to this, click here.