That can be the next area to look at. Cheers!

It’s deeply stupid stuff, when all is said and done. All that needs to happen is a slight change in fashion — for Jews to go out of fashion and supporting them to become politically incorrect –, and we will be back to the situation where similar arguments about an early “semitic” church were used by the Nazis to mess about with church history.

Whatever our views, in my opinion we all need to have the raw facts right.

Note that Constantine did not make Christianity into the official religion of the state. That was Theodosius I, ca. 390 A.D. He legalised Christianity. He didn’t really pass laws against paganism, for the obvious reason that it was the state religion. But he did act against a couple of cults that were morally very degenerate — I’m thinking of Baalbek here.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130510075521.htm

If it comes through, or if you don’t want links posted here, just delete this comment. I don’t want to spam your comments, I just want to help the search engines to elevate this information because it’s so obfuscated by the tide of misinformation out there.

http://www.onefaithonechurch.com/index.php/a-fraud-the-so-called-constantine-creed/

It’s essentially Jewish anti-missionary propaganda, but it hooks people in because they often don’t know their history, nor even what the Biblical account actually means. People are accustomed to a fairly simplistic Christian dogma, essentially formed in the Middle Ages in the Reformation, which answers very different questions to those of New Testament times.

The Christian message has, for many, been turned from “both Jews and Gentiles are justified and included in the elect people of God exclusively through the agency of Christ”, into “believe in Jesus or go to hell”. Clearly, such a message is ill-equipped to navigate the kind of Judaising concerns that Paul was actually engaging with, and leaves people vulnerable to, “why don’t you observe the Sabbath?”

In addition, Constantine understandably made a number of edicts outlawing other religions when Christianity was Established in the Empire. The exclusions, imprecations, anathemas and criticisms against the Jewish practices (and, of course, against the pagans, too!), are now read, through Jewish sensibilities, as “anti-semitic”, instead of as “exclusivist Christian”, which is the spirit in which they were written.

There is, I fear, no greater hindrance to proper understanding than anachronism. This, of course, is why your efforts, here and in your other work in antiquities, are so valuable.