Jesus Before Constantine
The Church, Her Beliefs, and Her Apologetics
Doug E. Taylor
Foreword by Gary R. Habermas
Jesus Before Constantine
The Church, Her Beliefs, and Her Apologetics
Copyright © 2020 Doug E. Taylor. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. www.Lockman.org
To my wife—the mother of my children, Kathryn
When you became a Christian your biological family essentially severed all ties with you because of the differences each of you understood with respect to the person of Jesus. Yet you have never wavered in your belief of the gospel message of the eternal deity, physical death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus. You have asked questions that made me dig deeper and look harder for not only what we as Christians believe, but also to know why we believe what we believe. Over the years you saw something in me that I never saw or could have imagined of myself, and it was you who encouraged me to pursue graduate school and my doctorate. Without you, this book would never have happened.
Figures
4.1 Causal Factor Types and Problem Categories | 125
4.2 Major Root Cause Categories Irrelevant to This Research | 127
4.3 Major Root Cause Categories Relevant to This Research | 128
4.4 Root Cause Types and Root Causes | 129
4.5 Root Cause #1 | 130
4.6 Root Cause #2 | 133
4.7 Root Cause #3 | 135
4.8 Root Cause #4 | 137
List of Abbreviations
1 Apol. Justin Martyr, First Apology
1 Clem. First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians
3 En. 3 Enoch
Apol. Aristides, Apology
Adv. haer. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses
Adv. Jud. Tertullian, An Answer to the Jews
Adv. Marc. Tertullian, Against Marcion
Adv. Prax. Tertullian, Against Celsus
Ag. Ap. Josephus, Against Apion
Apol. Tertullian, Apology
b. Ber. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot
b. Sota Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sotah
Contra Cels. Origen, Against Celsus
De bapt. Tertullian, On Baptism
De carn. Chr. Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ
De civ. Dei Augustine, The City of God
De jejun. Tertullian, On Morality
De mon. Tertullian, On Monogamy
De pat. Tertullian, On Patience
De praesc. haer. Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics
De princ. Origen, De Principiis
De res. Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh
De pud. Tertullian, On Modesty
De virg. Vel. Tertullian, On the Veiling of Virgins
Dem. Apol. Pr. Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching
Ep. Cyprian, Epistles
Hist. Eccl. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History
Ign. Eph. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians
Ign. Mag. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians
Ign. Rom. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans
Ign. Smyr. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans
J.W. Josephus, Jewish Wars
Misc. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies
Paed. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor
Pol. Phil. The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians
Prot. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen
Ref. Hippolytus, Refutatio
Strom. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata
Trypho Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho
Abstract
“The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.”1 Why Christianity from its inception grew in numbers has remained a relatively stable and uncontested topic. Moreover, recent history has seen a move by some scholars to claim not one but multiple Christianities existed in the first three centuries. No study, however, has approached the growth of Christianity as being a result of positive apologetics and then defended that there was but one Christianity from the beginning through the use of root cause analysis. After proposing an early fixed understanding of those core beliefs that established one as being Christian, this study treats the characteristic teachings of Ebionites, Docetists, and Marcionites through the filter of root cause analysis toward supporting the claim that from the origin of Christianity there has been only one Christianity, and that Christianity grew through the use of a positive apologetic.2
Foreword
Over several decades of full-time study on the resurrection of Jesus, observing carefully the current state of this research since the late 1960s, I have observed many research trends. Several time periods during the past two thousand years going back to the earliest church have consistently received far less attention especially when compared to the latest trend—the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus during the latter two decades of the twentieth century. When major studies do emerge from these less-represented periods, they are often PhD dissertations that focus on minute questions that do not evoke as much interest.
Several crucially important time frames and topics exist and likewise need to be pursued. Making such efforts more important are the increasing number of studies during recent decades that claim that second-century AD Christianity in particular was partially or even widely divergent during this time. Some authors seek to give the impression that second-century Christianity basically presented a smorgasbord of historical and theological options, from which seekers could choose their preferred version, as if it were simply a matter of personal preference.
Into this suggested milieu has come a significant and impressive study by Doug Taylor, entitled Jesus before Constantine (Wipf and Stock, 2020). While a fair number of volumes address subjects from the writings of the early apostolic fathers into the mid-third century,