Constantine’s Bible

Author: Dungan, David L.

Biblical studies & exegesis

Published on 22 December 2006 by SCM PRESS in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 238 pages
216 x 140

Most college and seminary courses on the New Testament include discussions of the process that gave shape to the New Testament. Now, David Dungan re-examines the primary source for this history, the Ecclesiastical History of the fourth-century Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, in the light of Hellenistic political thought. He reaches startling new conclusions: that we usually use the term ‘canon’ incorrectly; that the legal imposition of a ‘canon’ or ‘rule’ upon scripture was a fourth- and fifth-century phenomenon enforced with the power of the Roman imperial government; and that the forces shaping the New Testament canon are much earlier than the second-century crisis occasioned by Marcion, and that they are political forces. Dungan discusses how the scripture selection process worked, book-by-book, as he examines the criteria used – and not used – to make these decisions. Finally, he describes the consequences of the emperor Constantine’s tremendous achievement in transforming orthodox, Catholic Christianity into imperial Christianity.