Ep 5: Betrayed by Dan Brown

00:00(upbeat music)

00:02There's one account that says things got so heated

00:05that this guy, Nicholas, slapped Arias in the face.

00:08And this is the famous St. Nicholas.

00:12So this is Santa Claus, who some people think,

00:17like to think of it as in punching areas.

00:19- Oh, Santa, how far are you falling?

00:21(upbeat music)

00:24Hey everybody.

00:27- Hi friends, I'm Dan Beecher.

00:29- And I'm Dan McClellan.

00:30And welcome to the Data Over Dogma podcast,

00:33where we try to increase access

00:36to the academic study of the Bible and religion

00:38and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:42We have a great show for you today.

00:45We're gonna start off, Dan, with a segment

00:48that I like to call.

00:50All right, let's see it.

00:52- That's right, that's right.

00:54And then we'll move on to Dan.

00:56You're gonna be taking us through one of the urban legends--

01:00- One of the urban legends.

01:01- The spread far and wide.

01:03- Yes, in the world.

01:04- Yes, thanks.

01:05- So widely to Dan Brown, but--

01:07- Oh, Dan Brown, the thorn in your side.

01:12Another Dan, what's up with all the Dan?

01:16- I don't know.

01:17- I've got too many Dan's.

01:18- It's an issue.

01:19- Well, yes.

01:20Let's launch in with, I'm gonna make you say it again.

01:24- Okay, because I'm sure this is gonna become

01:27one of the favorite segments

01:29of the "Data Over Dogma" podcast, and it is.

01:31- All right, let's see it.

01:33(upbeat music)

01:35- So today's, all right, let's see it,

01:36is about the origin, traditions,

01:39and celebration of Easter.

01:43- Yeah.

01:44- Now, I have trawled the internet

01:46to find some of the most pervasive ideas about Easter,

01:51and I am going to present them to you, Dan.

01:53And we can talk about how they are 100% correct,

01:58and how Easter is actually a pagan holiday

02:01that the Christians just stole,

02:03because they're a bunch of festival-ruining thieves.

02:05So.

02:07- Did you troll the internet or trawl the internet?

02:10I wasn't too--

02:11- A little bit of both.

02:12- I trawl, they trawl, who knows?

02:13It's a little bit of everything.

02:14- That's fair.

02:16- What's fun about this segment is that our show

02:20is so often about dispelling myths

02:22and myths of information within Christianity.

02:25But this segment, I get to mess around

02:28with a lot of stories that have become prevalent

02:30among my people.

02:31(Dan laughs)

02:32It would be atheists.

02:33About Christianity, one of the narratives

02:36that I see a lot among atheists and non-Christians,

02:40and I will admit here that I have participated

02:43in spreading this, is that when early Christians

02:47were out trying to make the world Christian,

02:49they would go into a population,

02:51say, the pagans, for example,

02:54and they would try to impose Christian traditions

02:57upon them and make them stop doing their own celebrations.

03:01- Wow.

03:02(Dan laughs)

03:03- They do a pagan mean.

03:04But the pagans liked their own traditions

03:05and they would reject Christianity

03:07so the Christians got clever

03:09and they just started incorporating all of the pagan stuff

03:12into their traditions and voila, everyone became Christian.

03:16Now, obviously that is 100% true

03:18and there's no bit of falsehood in it,

03:19but we're going to test the theory anyway.

03:21- Yeah.

03:22- And our first test case will be Easter.

03:26So, are you ready Dan?

03:28Here we go.

03:29- Hit me.

03:30- Fact number one.

03:31The name Easter actually comes from the Sumerian goddess

03:36of love, war, and fertility, Ishtar,

03:40which was actually pronounced Easter,

03:43and she went to the world of the dead,

03:46she was killed and hung on a pole,

03:48and then she came back and the world had a rebirth and renewal,

03:51and that's where the Christians got the idea

03:53to make up the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

03:57Fact, boom, Christians.

04:00- So there's, it's an interesting mix in that story

04:05because some of this is based on some academic frameworks

04:09from the 19th century, some of it is accurate

04:12and a lot of it is not inaccurate.

04:15It seems to me that this is something

04:17that has developed over time as people kind of caught wind

04:20of scholarly discussions and concocted this kind

04:23of Frankenstein's monster of ideas

04:26about where Easter came from.

04:29But to start with Ishtar, so one wasn't pronounced Easter.

04:34This has, the deity Ishtar has absolutely no relationship

04:40whatsoever to Easter, but--

04:42- How dare you?

04:43(laughs)

04:45- The roots of that idea,

04:48I think come from a scholar named Fraser

04:52who published a very, very popular influential book

04:55in the 19th century called The Golden Bow.

04:57And one of the frameworks that he came up with for that book

05:01was this idea of the dying and rising God,

05:03that there was this kind of broad narrative template

05:08that was the origin of a number of different traditions

05:12regarding deities who died

05:14and then resurrected and it usually was associated

05:19with the cycle of the seasons.

05:21So for instance, fertility deities,

05:23those associated with the growth of vegetation

05:26and flora and fauna, basically died during the winter

05:30and that's why nothing grew.

05:32And then in the spring, they would resurrect

05:34and then everything would be able to come back to life.

05:37And this is associated with the storm deity Baal

05:40who is also known as Hadad and known by a number

05:43of other names in the Northwest Semitic Pantheon

05:46and also to some degree in the East Semitic Pantheon.

05:49So Mesopotamia, which is where we find Ishtar

05:53and the predecessor in Nana from the Sumerian Pantheon.

05:57And there are traditions, Anana's descent into the underworld

06:03involves her kind of storming the gates of the underworld

06:07but in order to progress deeper,

06:09she is stripped of accoutrements and clothings

06:13and things like that.

06:14And there's one version of the story that has her hung

06:17on a hook and remains there for three days

06:22and ultimately she is successful in coming back up

06:26from the underworld.

06:27And this narrative of descent

06:29and then ascent into the underworld,

06:32ascent from the underworld is conceptually parallel

06:36to the idea about death and resurrection.

06:39- Okay, for sure.

06:43- Yeah, okay, I'll give you that.

06:45Now for a long time scholars thought that this,

06:50we could take this conceptual template,

06:52say, okay, there's this dying and rising god idea.

06:55Well, that must be what's going on with Jesus

06:57and that must be why we have all these traditions,

07:00not just Baal, but, and there are a bunch of deities

07:03that are named along with this Tamuz and Osiris and Horus

07:08and some of them are more accurate than others,

07:11like Horus never resurrects.

07:12Osiris is brought back to life

07:15but there are, one day we'll get into that

07:17in one of these segments with Osiris and Horus,

07:21but the idea that Jesus' death and resurrection

07:26is patterned after this template

07:30doesn't really have much data to support it.

07:34The idea that this was something that people consciously

07:37or even unconsciously stole from earlier ideas

07:42in order to create these new stories

07:45doesn't fit the data we know about Jesus.

07:48If we take a just a totally critical look

07:51at the historical Jesus, what most scholars agree on

07:55is that there was an apocalyptic preacher

07:57who was talking about the kingdom of God

08:00and got executed by the Roman state

08:03and then at some point later, his followers

08:08started talking about him having resurrected

08:11or his having resurrected

08:13and the story develops from there.

08:15Years later, we have the composition of the Gospels,

08:20we have the Pauline Epistles just before that

08:22and the Christ tradition develops from that.

08:26The idea that this narrative was created,

08:31ex nihilo from whole cloth

08:34because somebody wanted to take these earlier traditions

08:37and superimpose it on this figure

08:39that they're making up called Jesus

08:42is not accepted by the overwhelming majority of scholars.

08:46It is in the overwhelming minority,

08:49the folks who think that this was all created from scratch.

08:54But the mythicists, as they are--

08:55The mythicists, yeah.

08:57Yeah, and the majority of mythicists

08:59are actually not specialists in Christianity

09:03and Christian origins in the New Testament.

09:05So the framework of the dying and rising God

09:08is something that most scholars don't think means much today.

09:12It's something that we impose on the ancient world

09:14to try to make sense of things,

09:17but that doesn't really have any real analytical value.

09:20So if you look--

09:21Well, even if you were a mythicist,

09:23you'd have to acknowledge that the Romans used crucifixion

09:27as a thing.

09:28So it's not like Ishtar or Isara, what was the other name?

09:33Inana.

09:34Inana, hanging on a hook or hanging on a pole

09:38would have been the prototype for a crucifixion

09:43when that was an actual thing

09:44that was occurring in the time.

09:46Yeah, and this is something that happens

09:47with a lot of apologetic approaches to the Bible.

09:50We have some similarities that are very, very vague.

09:54They're not very close.

09:55They're just kind of, eh, this feels like they're similar

09:58and people will squint at them

10:00until the edges blur and run together

10:03and now all of a sudden,

10:04we've got a direct genetic relationship.

10:07And that can happen with apologists

10:09just as much as it can happen with folks

10:11who are critical of the Bible

10:13and of the religions that are based on the Bible.

10:17So Ishtar and Easter,

10:19there are no data that support any relationship whatsoever.

10:23There is a discussion to be had regarding the way,

10:27the resurrection of Jesus,

10:28the traditions associated with the resurrection of Jesus

10:30and the broader story of Jesus's preexistence

10:34and birth and mortality and everything.

10:37There's a discussion to be had there regarding how

10:40there is influence from the broader Greco-Roman world

10:42and other traditions that may have been in circulation

10:45in that Greco-Roman world.

10:47But regarding trying to connect Ishtar to Easter

10:50through this idea of the dying and rising goddess,

10:53something that scholars don't take seriously today.

10:56- Okay, okay.

10:57Well, maybe it wasn't Ishtar.

11:00But the name Easter definitely wasn't originally

11:02of Christian origin.

11:04- That is correct.

11:04- Easter was named after Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess

11:09of the spring, Aostre, O, or Ostara,

11:13who we know a lot about, right?

11:16- So again, a mix of-- - Just so much.

11:18- Yeah, it's an embarrassment of riches.

11:21No, we are pretty sure that the name Easter comes from

11:26a Germanic spring deity of some kind name,

11:31Aostre or Ostara or something like that.

11:34And we have one source for that.

11:37In fact, we have about two sentences that establish that.

11:41There is a Christian named Bede,

11:44or some people pronounce it Bede,

11:47who lived I think in the ninth century.

11:50- Eighth century.

11:51- Eighth century, excuse me.

11:53Lived into-- - I was doing

11:54some research, baby, I got young one.

11:56(laughing)

11:57- Yeah, you caught me flat footed there.

11:59Eighth century, who wrote a text where he was basically

12:04just trying to account for a lot of dates and celebrations

12:08and festivals and things like that, a calendar system.

12:12And he notes that in this month that was,

12:16he calls Oster month.

12:19He says that they celebrate Easter,

12:21and this name was taken from this month,

12:23Oster month, and the name of the month

12:25was taken from this deity named Oster.

12:28And he says, who was celebrated with feasts in that month.

12:32And that is literally all that we know about this deity.

12:36And we have to, and we feel pretty confident

12:40that this was not being made up,

12:41that Bede was not just creating this out of whole cloth,

12:45but that this is based on data that he had available to him.

12:50And the only other piece of data that substantiates this

12:54is some inscriptions, some votive inscriptions

12:56from around the second or third century CE.

12:58So almost 500 years before Bede,

13:02that's used some variation on an Indo-European route

13:07from which Aostra or Ostarra probably derives,

13:11and it seems to have something to do

13:12with the idea of the dawn or the spring.

13:16And so-- - Sounds ironclad, man.

13:19This is good stuff.

13:20- So most scholars are happy to say yes, the name Easter,

13:23which these days really only exists in English and in German.

13:26All the other, not all,

13:30there are some, a couple of outliers,

13:33but the overwhelming majority of Christians

13:36refer to this celebration by some variation

13:39on the Hebrew word Pesach,

13:41which refers to the Passover

13:44because Easter is a Christian adaptation

13:47of the Jewish Passover.

13:48And so in English and German, we have this name Easter

13:52that most likely was taken from the month

13:55in which it was celebrated,

13:56and that month was most likely named after

13:59a Germanic spring goddess.

14:01- Okay, okay, fine.

14:03We got it named after a month,

14:05it was named after a goddess, it's kind of sorta,

14:08like, yeah, okay, fine.

14:10- It's just like Thursday is named after Thor.

14:15- Did Thor, that's right.

14:16- And if somebody did something every Thursday

14:18and said, "I'm gonna name this after Thursday,"

14:22and they called it "Thir" or whatever, "Thirrer,"

14:26that would be, you'd have about the same relationship.

14:29- That's right, okay.

14:31You know, one thing I really get a kick out of

14:33is that in multiple places that I looked on the internet,

14:37people claimed that Easter was named both after Ishtar

14:41and Eostra or Ostara.

14:44- Yeah, like pick a non-Christian origin story

14:48and stick with it, you don't get both.

14:50It's very funny to claim both things

14:54are the origin of this word

14:56when they are completely unrelated things.

14:58- Yeah, well, I think they're trying to multiply

15:00the argument, say if it's throwing spaghetti against the wall

15:04to see what's gonna stick.

15:05It's like, well, this doesn't work, whoa, bam,

15:08I got the draw four on you, so.

15:10- I got 10 of these, none of them are from Christianity.

15:14Anyway, okay, so Ostara, Eostra, whatever her name is,

15:18goddess of the spring, and the date,

15:21now this is more pagan origin stuff,

15:24the date of Easter is on the first Sunday

15:27after the first full moon of spring equinox,

15:31so spring and spring, as you can see,

15:35it just, all it makes is sense, it just lines up.

15:38I tried this one on for size.

15:41- Okay.

15:42- Eostra, Eostra, Ostara, whatever her name was,

15:46she had many symbols, two of which were bunnies and eggs.

15:51As a matter of fact, there is a legend of Ostara

15:55turning a bird into a hare that laid eggs,

16:00slam dunk, that was a slam dunk.

16:03- There's no coming back from that.

16:05This is a tradition that starts in the 19th century.

16:09It is most famously shared by one of the Grimm brothers,

16:14I don't remember which one,

16:16but the oldest attestation to this idea we can find

16:21comes from like the 1820s,

16:24and it's a folklorist and it does not seem

16:29to be based on any ancient data whatsoever.

16:31I don't know if there were oral traditions in circulation

16:35in the early 19th century from which these folklorists

16:38drew this or if they were consciously creating

16:41new traditions or if it was a dream they had,

16:44and that turned into this story,

16:47and I am confident that that has happened many times

16:51with stories that have been shared.

16:54So there are no data from before the 19th century

16:57that connect hairs and eggs with any pagan origins.

17:02The hair and the egg is associated with Easter

17:06through the internal kind of organic machinations

17:10of medieval European Christianity,

17:13and while there are oral traditions

17:15within neo-pagan traditions about these having gone back

17:19to medieval and earlier pagan roots,

17:23there are no data that support those oral traditions.

17:26Now it is true that there are not a lot of written texts

17:30for these traditions that most everything was passed on

17:33by oral tradition, but we can actually account much better

17:36for their organic development within medieval Christianity

17:41than we can as a borrowing or an appropriation

17:44from non-Christian European traditions.

17:47- Well, let me bring this up

17:48because this is something that confuses me

17:50and maybe you can help me out with this, maybe you can't.

17:52- I don't know, but it seems to me

17:54that even if the traditions of eggs and bunnies

17:59or hairs or whatever arose from Christianity,

18:04I don't see how they connect,

18:07and I did a little bit of research on this, not a lot,

18:09but I did a little research on it.

18:10I don't see how they connect to the crucifixion

18:13and resurrection of Christ, which is theoretically

18:16what the mass of Easter is meant to be celebrating, right?

18:20- Yeah, and so it seems like even,

18:23I mean, these are fertility symbols, aren't they?

18:26- So there are parts of the world.

18:29There are times in history where they have been used

18:32as different kinds of symbols of rebirth

18:34and sometimes of fertility.

18:37The egg in particular, even within early Christianity,

18:40we had these ideas of the phoenix rising from an egg,

18:45and this was a symbol of immortality or rebirth

18:48or things like that.

18:49And so we do have scattered instances where by themselves,

18:53they may be associated with fertility

18:55or something like that, but within Christianity,

18:58we have clearer origins for their connection to Easter

19:02and they seem to arise organically.

19:04So the egg, for instance, was one of the things

19:09that was avoided during the Lenten fast.

19:13So the 40 days of Lent where you, in medieval Christianity,

19:17you were not supposed to eat things like meat and eggs.

19:21And Easter was actually the day that you broke that fast.

19:27And in medieval Christianity, and still today,

19:31ironically, eggs keep longer than cheese, milk, meat.

19:36And so people had them around

19:39and so they were traditionally used

19:41as a means of breaking the Lenten fast on Easter.

19:44And so among the more elite levels of society,

19:48you have people exchanging eggs

19:51and even fake eggs, fabricated eggs

19:55that were decorated different colors

19:57as a means of celebrating Easter.

20:00And so they would be painted red for the blood of Jesus

20:02or they would be painted green or yellow

20:04to be associated with rebirth or with joy and things like that.

20:08So we can account fairly well

20:11for the association of eggs with Easter

20:15in a way that does not require,

20:16we reconstruct pagan origins.

20:19Now, it's not like Christianity did something entirely unheard

20:24of with the egg.

20:25We have, like I said, other examples of eggs being associated

20:29with rebirth, but not with this time period,

20:35not with this tradition.

20:38Bunnies is a little weirder.

20:40And I don't know that we can account

20:44for every step in the process,

20:47but if you look at medieval artwork

20:49featuring the Virgin Mary,

20:51she is frequently around bunnies,

20:55hairs to be more specific.

20:57And from what we can tell,

20:59this association arose because of an observation

21:03that the European brown hair and forgive me,

21:06I don't know the scientific name,

21:08but the European brown hair can conceive a second litter

21:11while it is still pregnant with the first.

21:13And so it can give birth and then shortly after

21:17can give birth again.

21:19So without having gone through a full gestational period,

21:22it can give birth again.

21:24And Europeans noticed this and it became associated

21:28with pathinogenesis or virgin birth,

21:30the idea that the European brown hair is giving birth

21:35and it didn't even have to go through the whole process

21:39of gestation, it didn't have to go through the mating process.

21:43And so it became a symbol in some artwork

21:46and some traditions and medieval Christianity

21:48for virginity, for virgin birth,

21:51became associated with Mary.

21:53And I think somewhere in the 19th century,

21:56the close association of the traditional date

21:59of Jesus' conception, which would be nine months

22:03before the traditional date of Jesus' birth,

22:06which would align very closely with the traditional date

22:09of Jesus' death.

22:11In other words, around the spring equinox,

22:14that proximity created this association

22:17between bunnies and the celebration of Easter.

22:20And so in the 19th century,

22:23as these traditions were firming up

22:25and becoming more formalized, you had hairs,

22:28you had eggs both being associated with Easter.

22:31And there may be traditions out there

22:36where bunnies are associated with that time period

22:38with fertility.

22:40I don't think I've ever seen anyone successfully draw a line

22:44between those traditions and the association

22:46of hairs with Easter.

22:48I think we can account for it much more confidently

22:51through this other more organic route.

22:55- Because if there's one thing we should associate bunnies

22:58with, it's virgins.

23:00They are virginal, for sure.

23:03- Yeah, as the great poet said.

23:07- You know, one thing that does make sense

23:10in all of this for me is that pagans certainly did have

23:15celebrations around the vernal or spring equinox.

23:20- Absolutely.

23:21- Spring is a big deal, at least in the cultures

23:24that have nasty winters.

23:25I spend every winter trying to survive until spring.

23:29And when I finally start seeing signs of it,

23:32as I did looking at my window this morning,

23:33which, oh, that was nice.

23:35I genuinely want to celebrate.

23:37So I imagine that there's no reason to not believe

23:42that there was, there were springtime celebrations.

23:48And, you know, the Christians had their own.

23:51What's funny to me about this is the myth

23:54that Christians stole a pagan celebration

23:59kind of glides over the fact that the Christians

24:02did steal a celebration for this one,

24:05which is Passover.

24:07They, like you alluded to it before.

24:10There already was a celebration right at this time

24:14in the tradition that Christianity grew up out of

24:18and that is Passover.

24:19So they stole it, they just didn't steal it from the pagans.

24:24- Yeah, stole is an interesting word.

24:27There's still a lot of, there are debates

24:29about what we call the parting of the ways.

24:31When did Judaism and Christianity become two different things

24:35rather than one version of the other?

24:39And so some people say steal,

24:42some people say it was an adoption or a borrowing.

24:46I'm not totally concerned with that.

24:50But yeah, this is an adaptation of the Passover.

24:54This is taking the Passover celebration

24:57and reorienting it toward the celebration of the resurrection.

25:02So in a sense, it's related in that the destroying angel

25:09passed over Israel in Egypt.

25:12And that is associated with them staying alive.

25:16And the celebration of Jesus' resurrection

25:18is acknowledging Jesus' conquering of death,

25:23victory over death.

25:25- But also, like the Bible does,

25:28I mean, I think it's John that has the crucifixion happen

25:33on or around Passover.

25:35- Yeah, yeah, this is happening on Passover

25:37and that has to do with the symbolism of Jesus

25:40as the Paschal Lamb, as the sacrifice.

25:45And you have the Passover, the Last Supper,

25:48associations as well, and particularly in John.

25:53And so this is all happening around the same time.

25:56So the fact that Jesus is dying and then resurrecting

26:00within a few days of the celebration of the Passover

26:03is why the celebration of Easter

26:06is closely connected with the spring equinox,

26:10the celebration of the Passover was associated

26:13with the spring equinox as well.

26:15It was not directly related,

26:17but it was based on Judaism's lunasolar calendar.

26:22So they had things that were based on the movement of the sun

26:25and other things that were based on the movement of the moon.

26:27And so the Passover was associated with lunar cycles

26:31and so closely associated as well with the spring equinox.

26:35Therefore, the resurrection and any celebration

26:38associated with the resurrection

26:39is also going to be associated with the lunar calendar

26:43and the spring equinox.

26:45- Which is not confusing at all

26:48and didn't mess me up as a kid in the slightest.

26:53- Yeah, why it was different every year.

26:55- We will get to the dating of Easter in our next segment.

26:59Thanks for this.

27:01I think that this has been a very successful,

27:04all right, let's see it, let's move on.

27:07- All right.

27:08(upbeat music)

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27:52- Thank you.

27:53(upbeat music)

27:55- All right, welcome to the next segment, Urban Legends.

27:58Today I want to talk about a source

28:00for a handful of different urban legends

28:02and that would be the Council of Nicaea.

28:05- Ah, yes. - Yes, that old chestnut.

28:09Held in 325 CE, attended by between 250 and 350 bishops

28:16and their attendants.

28:20Convened by the Emperor Constantine,

28:23this would be the first of the great ecumenical councils

28:27of early Christianity.

28:28The first attempt to try to achieve unity across Christendom

28:33or as much as Christendom, as much of Christendom

28:37as they could interest in joining them.

28:40Council of Nicaea has been accused of

28:43and blamed for a number of different things

28:46within the contemporary practice of Christianity.

28:49And so I want to go--

28:50- Yeah, it pops up a lot.

28:51- Surprising amounts.

28:53I think a lot of people had this idea

28:56that it was a bunch of dudes just sitting around a table

28:58thinking about how to control everybody.

29:02Based on TikTok, that's what it was all about.

29:05But I want to talk about what this was about,

29:09what went on at the Council of Nicaea,

29:11what some of the aftermath was,

29:13and then some of the things that along the way,

29:15we will pepper it with some things that are claimed

29:19about the Council of Nicaea.

29:21Now, the main thing that they were there to try to resolve,

29:25not the only thing they discussed,

29:27but the main thing that they were there to try to resolve

29:30was something known as the Aryan controversy.

29:32And this has nothing to do with World War I

29:37or World War II idea of Aryan,

29:40but there was a presbyter.

29:42There was an official within the Christian church

29:46in Alexandria in Egypt.

29:48So all the way up at the top of the Nile Delta,

29:51a city called Alexandria,

29:53which is one of the intellectual centers

29:57of the Mediterranean at this time.

29:59There was this presbyter named Arius.

30:02And for a while, Christianity had been trying to figure out

30:05how to think and talk about Jesus' relationship to God.

30:10Jesus is presented in the New Testament

30:12as having some kind of unique relationship with God

30:16that in some sense, they seem to be distinct,

30:20in some sense, they seem to overlap.

30:22And so since the second century,

30:25since apologists like Justin Martyr and others,

30:28people had been trying to figure out

30:29how exactly do we think and talk about this relationship?

30:33And so as the apologists applied a lot

30:38of Greco-Roman philosophical frameworks to this,

30:40we started talking about essence.

30:42And we started talking about,

30:45I think the word Trinity develops by the end

30:48of the second century CE,

30:50but it's not quite the idea as people understand it today.

30:54But this guy Arius was saying two things

30:57that upset a lot of the other Christians

31:01around the Mediterranean.

31:02He was saying that Jesus was not equal to the Father,

31:06but subordinate to the Father.

31:08And this was based on some texts from the New Testament,

31:13for instance, where somebody calls Jesus a good teacher

31:17or a master and he says, "Don't call me good.

31:19"Only one is good, the Father."

31:22And so there are a number of ways

31:23that Jesus' subordination to God is reflected.

31:27In the New Testament, so Arius was saying-

31:29- And even self-prescribed.

31:31- Yeah, yeah, this was Jesus describing himself

31:33as not on the same level.

31:35There's some unity there.

31:36There's a oneness in one sense.

31:39But you frequently have these hints that

31:42Jesus is not on the same level,

31:44is functioning subordinate to God.

31:47And Arius also said that Jesus was a created being.

31:52Now by this time, this idea that Jesus had been begotten

31:55had developed based on the description of Jesus

31:58as God's only begotten is not a great translation,

32:02but only son.

32:03And so this idea of begottenness

32:05is actually not what we think of today

32:07when we think of the Bible's lists of begat

32:10so and so and so and so begat so and so.

32:12But this idea is that Jesus was eternally begotten,

32:17meaning there was never a time when Jesus was not being begotten

32:22that Jesus is eternal in that he was begotten from eternity.

32:27And Arius was saying that doesn't make any sense.

32:32Jesus was begotten, sure, but in the sense

32:34that Jesus wasn't there and then Jesus was created.

32:39And so there was a time when the son was not.

32:43And that would mean there was a time

32:44when God was not the father.

32:47And this upset a lot of Christians around Christianity.

32:50And so this was had been debated among some central leaders

32:55and finally Constantine was like,

32:58all right, we're just going to do this thing.

33:01Everybody come to Nicaea, we're going to sit down.

33:04We're going to hammer this out.

33:07And so you have Arius who has a handful of supporters,

33:10maybe two dozen supporters who join him there.

33:13They're vastly outnumbered,

33:15but you have Eusebius of Nike Media

33:20who would later be the one to baptize Constantine

33:22on his deathbed who was a staunch supporter of Arius.

33:26You have Eusebius of Caesarea,

33:28who was one of Constantine's main advisors

33:32and who's responsible for writing a text

33:34called the Ecclesiastical History,

33:36which is one of our most important sources

33:39for the development of the early Christian church,

33:41who seems to like some of the things that Arius is saying,

33:45but not others, but he's going to side with Constantine

33:48no matter what happens.

33:50And then you have a bunch of the opponents

33:52who are primarily from Arius's hometown,

33:55folks like Athanasius, one of the most important thinkers

33:59of 4th century Christianity and others.

34:02And we have a variety of accounts of what went down,

34:07but they were mainly there to take on

34:09this Arian controversy.

34:10They read out from Arius's writings.

34:13We had a lot of debates.

34:14There's one account that says things got so heated

34:17that this guy, Nicholas, slapped Arius in the face,

34:21and this is the famous St. Nicholas.

34:24So this is Santa Claus, if you wed the idea together,

34:29who some people like to think of it as in punching Arius.

34:37So...

34:38(laughing)

34:39- Oh, Santa, how far you've fallen?

34:41- Well, you know, maybe David Harbor's new movie

34:43about what is it, "Violent Night"?

34:46Maybe there's something to that.

34:48- There you go, see.

34:50- But things got heated according to this one account.

34:53But ultimately it came down to a vote

34:57and there needed to be something written down

35:01or how we are going to understand this.

35:03The deliverable of this council was,

35:06this text is what we all agree on.

35:09And it took a while to arrive at this text

35:12and it was basically this creed.

35:14And I'll read the original version

35:16of the Nicene Creed in a moment.

35:18But the sticking point was what word are we going to use

35:23to refer to Jesus' relationship to God?

35:26And what they came up with was this idea

35:28of consubstantiality.

35:30In other words, the substance of Jesus

35:34is the exact same substance as the substance of God.

35:37They are of one substance.

35:40And so you cannot divide that substance.

35:42They are the same substance.

35:44And this doesn't mean the same kind of substance.

35:47So not like the material that I'm made of

35:51is of the same category as the material you're made of.

35:54The idea is-

35:55- They're both carbon-based.

35:56- Yeah, the idea is this material is the material

36:00that Jesus is also made of.

36:03So homosios is the word in Greek,

36:06which means same substance.

36:08And so this creed was written out

36:10and the bishops were threatened with exile

36:13if they didn't come up and sign this.

36:15And there's even a story about one of the bishops goes up

36:18and goes and slips a little Yoda or Iota,

36:22if you like.

36:24In there to create the word homosios,

36:27which would be like substance, similar substance,

36:30not same substance.

36:32And it didn't go well for him, but.

36:34- Did they have to start over?

36:36Did they have to write up over the thing

36:38that everybody had decided?

36:39- I'm sure they did, which would have been a hassle.

36:42But by the end of this,

36:44you basically have all but two bishops

36:46signing on to this Nicene Creed.

36:48So we've got Arias and these two other bishops,

36:50including Eusebius of Nicomedia,

36:53who are exiled to the land to the east of Illyria,

36:58I think is what it's called to the east of the Adriatic Sea.

37:04And this doesn't really settle the debate,

37:07but here is the creed that they came up with.

37:10We believe in one God, the Father Almighty,

37:12maker of all things visible and invisible.

37:15And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God,

37:18begotten from the Father, only begotten.

37:20That is from the substance of the Father,

37:22God from God, light from light, true God from true God,

37:25begotten, not made, of one substance, homosios,

37:30with the Father through whom all things came into being,

37:34things in heaven and things on earth.

37:36And we go for a while, but as for those who say,

37:40there was a time when he was not,

37:42and before being born, he was not,

37:44and that he came into existence out of nothing,

37:47or who assert that the Son of God

37:49is of a different hypostasis or substance

37:52or created or is subject to alteration or change,

37:55these, the Catholic and apostolic church anathematizes,

38:00or basically curses.

38:03This is what they were called to sign.

38:06- Yeah.

38:07- And this would be renegotiated in later councils

38:10and Calcedon and elsewhere.

38:12And this creed was kind of refined

38:14because questions later came up,

38:16well, wait a minute, if Jesus was of the same substance

38:19as God, how could he die?

38:22He seemed to be a human walking around,

38:24and we later have this idea of the hypostatic union

38:27where, well, his godly side was of the same substance

38:30of God, his humanly side was of the same substance

38:33as other humans, but 100%.

38:36- He's got many substances.

38:37That dude has a lot of substances in him.

38:39- And this hypostatic union is one of the mysteries.

38:43Basically, Jesus is 100% God, but also 100% man.

38:48So the math doesn't line up,

38:50but the philosophy can deal with that.

38:53So we have basically the authorities trying to nail down,

38:58look, we gotta agree on this,

39:01we gotta figure out how to do this,

39:03and they come up with this idea of homo usios.

39:05And there are even scholars who think

39:08that this was Constantine's idea based on his background

39:12and what some scholars label pagan monotheism,

39:16but it is an innovation on the debates

39:18that have been going on to that time period

39:21that basically was signed off on

39:24and that makes it authoritative.

39:26And so you've gotta work with that in the future.

39:28So the understanding of the Trinity today

39:32is rooted in what they signed off on at Nicaea.

39:36But this discussion isn't entirely about the Trinity,

39:39this is about--

39:41- Oh, thank God, we're gonna get to the codifying

39:43of the Gospel, of what the books of the Bible.

39:46- Right, so one of the theories

39:49that we have largely Dan Brown to thank,

39:52but he didn't come up with this idea,

39:54is that one of the things they discussed at Nicaea

39:57was canonizing the Bible.

40:00And there's also a similar theory about this council

40:04or this meaning in Gomnia,

40:07where the Jewish canon was canonized by early rabbis,

40:10also not a thing that actually happened.

40:13But this theory originates in a text

40:18called the Synodicon Vedas,

40:20which is basically an account of all the early synods

40:23or councils of Christianity

40:26and it's the true account of the synods.

40:29And it's from the 800s CE.

40:32So it gives a bunch of accounts,

40:36but also kind of elaborates on expands on these stories.

40:39And there are injections of kind of myths and legends.

40:43And so one of these is associated with Nicaea,

40:45where they said they stacked up all the books,

40:48all the scriptural books on a table.

40:50And then miraculously, all of the books

40:53that were part of the Apocrypha fell to the ground.

40:56And that was how they knew that this, our canon,

40:59has been given divine approbation.

41:02And this is something we see a lot in the Bible

41:04in the Apocrypha in other places,

41:07where something that people want to be authoritative,

41:10you come up with a story for a miracle

41:13that shows God approves, therefore it's now authoritative.

41:18- And in this case, that miracle is gravity.

41:21- Gravity, exactly.

41:25- And this gets picked up by,

41:28people ignore it for a long time.

41:3018th century-ish, we get some writers, 19th century.

41:34Voltaire, for instance, is one who repeats this tradition.

41:38And then I assume through Voltaire,

41:41Dan Brown works this into the Da Vinci Code.

41:44And I think that is the great popularizer of this idea

41:48that the biblical canon was decided at Nicaea,

41:51and there's absolutely no truth whatsoever to that.

41:55There are no data.

41:56- I think you've just shocked the world.

41:58You've just shocked the world.

41:59- Well, Dan Brown didn't bring us perfect, true things.

42:04Next thing you're gonna be telling me

42:05that Jesus' mom isn't buried in the loot.

42:08What are you talking about?

42:10- Well, he took the money and ran,

42:13so I don't think he's much concerned for this debunking.

42:18But yeah, this is something that feeds into

42:21a lot of other theories about where the Bible came from,

42:24because people have this idea that we had this Bible,

42:27and it was full of all these awesome extra books.

42:30And then conniving men came around

42:33and sat around big oak tables and said,

42:36"I don't like that book.

42:37"It doesn't allow me to control people,

42:39"so I'm taking it out."

42:41And that's really not how the biblical canon develop,

42:43but there were other things that were discussed at Nicaea.

42:47The other two main issues were, one,

42:50how to determine the date of Easter,

42:53because this is something that confuses children

42:57the world over when they're like,

42:59"Why is Easter on this day, this year?"

43:02And it sounded different.

43:04Yeah, just let me know.

43:05- I just wanna know the date of Easter.

43:07I just wanna be able to plan.

43:09- Well, prior to Nicaea,

43:11it had been tethered to the date of the Passover,

43:16which was based on lunar cycles and the spring equinox.

43:21And so one of the things that they haggled over at Nicaea was,

43:25we wanna come up with a way to determine the date of Easter

43:28so that we don't have to just arbitrarily,

43:32let me back up a little bit.

43:34Around this time period, when they determined the date,

43:37they had to send out letters to all of Christendom

43:41so that you would go to church and they would be like,

43:44"Okay, we got a letter from Rome

43:47"and Easter's gonna be on this date this year."

43:50Because they didn't really know

43:52what the mechanism was for determining that date.

43:55And so they wanted to create something

43:56that was consistent, so anybody anywhere in the world

44:00could say, "Oh, well, that's when this is,

44:01"so that's when Easter will be."

44:03And what they came up with is the date of Easter

44:08will be determined by, I think as the Sunday after or on,

44:13the first full moon after or on the spring equinox.

44:19So it can shift significantly in that time period,

44:23but this decoupled it from the date

44:26of the celebration of the Passover

44:28so they weren't associated so closely with Judaism,

44:32they could be kind of on their own.

44:34And it also allowed people to figure out the date

44:36on their own without having to wait for the festive letter

44:39to come from Rome or from wherever.

44:42So that was item two on the docket at Nicaea.

44:46And then after that, we have a bunch of ecclesiastical rules

44:51and regulations.

44:52Now, these were referred to as canons in the early church

44:57because a canon is just a ruler or a regulation.

45:00And so we associate canon today with a biblical canon,

45:04but in early Christianity, they use canon

45:06to refer to canons of faith, ecclesiastical canons,

45:10as well as biblical canons.

45:11So I wonder if that's one of the, one of the confusions,

45:15one of the things that makes people think

45:17that maybe they talked about the biblical canon.

45:19- That's interesting, that makes sense to me.

45:21Yeah, if we're talking about canons and then, yeah, I get,

45:24I mean, it kind of makes sense,

45:27but what it then leads to is somebody just making some stuff

45:32up on a whole cloth about the canonization

45:36of the Bible itself.

45:37- And well, it's not as sexy if you can't,

45:41if you can't deploy it for a TikTok video.

45:46And these regulations that were developed,

45:49I think they were a list of about two dozen things

45:51and it was mainly associated with rejoining the church

45:55after excommunication and rules about excommunication

45:58and rules associated with some of the different hierarchies

46:01within the church.

46:02They're not incredibly interesting,

46:05they're not incredibly important,

46:07but those three main things were what Nicaea did.

46:11First and foremost, this was about resolving

46:13the Aryan controversy and it resulted in the Nicene Creed

46:17in the exiling of Arius and a couple of the bishops

46:21who supported him.

46:23It resulted in basically the foundation

46:26of the modern concept of the Trinity.

46:29And then we decided on the date of Easter

46:32and then we basically wrote down a handful of rules

46:35about excommunication, about rebaptism in the church

46:38and about rules for priests and the clergy.

46:41So it must have been nice to be able to take a handful

46:46of weeks off to just go ride in a carriage down to Nicaea

46:51and hang out and argue with bishops

46:54and watch a dude get punched.

46:56I can imagine it was an enjoyable experience

46:58for those involved, but yeah, it definitely was not a place

47:03where the biblical canon was developed.

47:04It was not a place where Constantine invented Christianity.

47:08This is another urban legend that I hear about a lot

47:11in this idea that in 325 Constantine kind of decided,

47:15all right, this is what Christianity's gonna be

47:18and the goal was to make it so it was easier

47:21to control people.

47:23This was an attempt on the part of Constantine

47:25to try to achieve some unity.

47:27For the most part, he let them do what they wanted to do.

47:31He was there to kind of put his finger on the scale

47:35when he wanted to, but for the most part,

47:37it was like, I don't care what you figured out,

47:39just figure it out so that we can stop infighting.

47:43And of course it didn't stop the infighting you still had.

47:46You had a later Aryan emperor come arise to the throne.

47:50So some people were brought back from exile then re-exiled.

47:54So it didn't really--

47:56- Fortunately, all of the infighting

47:58and Christianity is over and finished by now.

48:01- Unfortunately, we've finally gotten rid of it.

48:03Go team.

48:04- Yeah, who would have known all it took was one emperor

48:09to just lower the boom on Christianity

48:12and get everybody to stop fighting.

48:14But yeah, that is any other urban legends

48:18that you have heard associated with Nicaea

48:21'cause those are the main ones from me

48:22and hopefully that clarifies things for folks.

48:25- Yeah, I think that's great, I think that's great.

48:28You've blown some minds here.

48:30- I know that when you first saw you talk about this

48:33on TikTok, my mind was blown 'cause I was certain

48:37that some of those myths were true.

48:39But there we go, I'm glad that we've cleared that up.

48:43We now know Easter's so easy to reckon.

48:46It's just the easiest thing in the world.

48:48And thank goodness for that creed

48:52'cause it's not confusing in the slightest.

48:55- Yeah, that didn't cause any problems.

48:56That hasn't caused any rifts within Christianity.

49:01And at the same time, there were other Christian groups

49:06who are not a part of this.

49:08And you had some schisms later on,

49:10you have the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahodo church

49:14down in the kingdom of Axum

49:16and what is today Ethiopia that wasn't a part of this.

49:21Yeah, a lot of people talk about this

49:24as if it was truly universal, but it was not entirely

49:28representative and things have changed a lot since then.

49:31But still a fascinating thing to study.

49:33Scholars are still trying to learn new ways

49:37of thinking about this, learn new facts about this.

49:39In fact, I'm reading a book right now

49:42called "Constantin and the Divine Mind,"

49:45which is about whether or not

49:47Constantine should be considered a monotheist.

49:51- Interesting.

49:52- Yeah, well, maybe we'll have to tackle that

49:55in another other future date.

49:56- Yeah, a little bit.

49:57- Now we'll just set some urban legends to rest.

50:02- Yeah.

50:03- Thanks so much, Dan.

50:04- Until next time.

50:05- And that's it for this week's show.

50:07If you have any questions or comments

50:09that you'd like to address our way,

50:11feel free to write into us.

50:12Contact at dataoverdogmapod.com is the address to write to.

50:17If you'd like to contribute to us,

50:20be part of making this show go,

50:24please feel free to do so.

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50:30and do give a per episode donation there.

50:34Then you'll be one of our favorite people

50:36in the whole wide world.

50:37And as for favorite people,

50:40thank you, favorite person, Dan,

50:42for enlightening us once again this week.

50:45- Well, thank you, favorite person, Dan.

50:47I appreciate your time.

50:48I appreciate everybody who's listening.

50:50And yeah, look forward to a lot more of this.

50:54- Yeah, we'll see you again next week.

50:56Bye-bye. - Bye, everybody.

50:57(upbeat music)