Nicea Myths:
Common Fables About
The Council of Nicea and Constantine

It amazes me how many Nicea myths exist on the internet today.

We are going to address two. These are fables. They did not happen. I'm going to show you how you can know that.

Constantine changed the Bible at the Council of Nicea
The Council of Nicea changed the Sabbath day to Sunday

We don't really have to address the second one thoroughly, since I already have a page on the subject. We will give a brief, shortened explanation below.

However, let's start with the Bible.

Nicea Myth #1: Did Constantine and the Council of Nicea change the Bible?

There is absolutely nothing factual about this. The Council of Nicea never addressed the books of the Bible.

Proving something negative is always tricky. I can't show you a quote where someone from the 4th century said, "We didn't address the books of the Bible, no matter what they say in the 21st century."

I can, however, show you what they did talk about.

The Available History On the Council of Nicea

There is a lot of primary material left from the Council of Nicea. There is a letter from Eusebius back to his church at Caesarea. There are letters from Constantine and from the council to the churches of the empire. There is a record of the 20 "canons" [this just means "rules"] passed by the council.

Primary Materials

Almost everyone learns about events from "secondary," "tertiary," or even further removed sources.

Those terms mean that you're hearing about something second- or thirdhand rather than from an eye-witness. "Primary material" means something written by an eye-witness.

The only way to separate false histories from true ones—fables from fact—is to look at primary sources. One secondhand source does not negate another secondhand source.

This page gives you access to firsthand sources on the Council of Nicea. If you decide to make use of the links to get the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series, you'll have access to primary sources on Constantine, too. Unfortunately, the volume addressing the councils and the volume addressing Constantine are in two different series.

That's a lot of money. You can read those volumes online for free at www.ccel.org.

In other words, we know exactly what the council addressed.

They didn't address the Bible. There is no discussion or mention of the books that should be in the Bible in any of the letters, histories, canons, or the creed.

It's just not there.

A Real History of the Bible

We can tell what books were used as Scripture by the early churches.

We have letters and books dating all the way back to A.D. 96, just 60 years after Jesus died and over two centuries before the Council if Nicea. Those letters quote certain books as Scripture.
There are lists of the books constituting Scripture dating back to around A.D. 160 (the Muratorian Fragment, for example, but there are several before Nicea).

What you find from these sources is that the Bible has always been basically what it is today.

If your concern is a particular book or version (did the 2nd century Bible match the King James Version?), then the differences are significant. Up to four books of the Maccabees, the Book of Wisdom, the Shepherd of Hermas, and others are sometimes included in the 2nd century canon. Books like James and 2 Peter are often left out. Hebrews is questioned on into the 4th century.

However, if your concern is whether gnostic books like the Gospel of Thomas are included, they weren't.

Never mentioned. Gnostic gospels didn't disappear in the 4th century; they disappeared from the day they were written, never used by the church ever.

Sorry.

Nicea Myth #2: Did Constantine
or the Council of Nicea
Change the Sabbath to Sunday?

This fable stems from the fact that there was a controversy over the celebration of Passover in the early church.

The early church celebrated the Jewish Passover, which occurred on Nisan 14 by their calendar. Nisan 14 could fall on any day of the week, so some churches liked to celebrate Passover on the Sunday nearest Nisan 14.

That "Quartodeciman Controversy," as it was called, hit some high points in the 2nd century. Around A.D. 150, when Polycarp, the venerable bishop of Smyrna, was quite old, he went to Rome to discuss this issue with Anicetus. They decided that each church would continue to celebrate Passover according to their own traditions, as each had received different traditions from their respective apostles (from a letter from Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, to Victor, bishop of Rome, preserved in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History V:24, A.D. 323).

A generation later, Victor, the bishop of Rome, decided to excommunicate any church that did not celebrate Passover on Sunday. Irenaeus and another bishop, Polycrates, wrote Victor to help him recover from this insanity. Once again, the issue was settled with each church continuing their respective tradition.

The Quartodeciman Controversy
and
the Council of Nicea

Each church doing its own thing could not last (too bad). At the Council of Nicea it was finally decided that Passover would be celebrated on the Sunday nearest Nisan 14, not on Nisan 14 itself.

This is the only way in which the council addressed the issue of Sunday, the 1st day of the week.

Note that the Council of Nicea issued a creed and twenty canons. That's all.

There were letters issued by Constantine, by the council, and by Eusebius of Caesarea, but those letters do not introduce any issues that are not in the creed and canons.

Thus, anything found outside the creed and the canons of Nicea, both available on this site (links in the last paragraph), is just a fable.

Constantine and the Venerable Day of the Sun

One thing that is not a myth is that Constantine remained the high priest of the pagan religion until his deathbed (Re: Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church). At that time, he retired from being emperor, renounced his position as leader of the pagan religion, and was baptized as a Christian.

So it is true that Constantine had reason to honor the 1st day of the week as the day of the sun.

However, Christians had already been celebrating the first day of the week as the Lord's day since apostolic times:

In A.D. 110, Ignatius wrote a letter to the church in Magnesia mentioning that even the Jews who had become Christians no longer observed the Sabbath but were living in observance of the Lord's day (ch. 9).
In A.D. 130 or earlier, the Letter of Barnabas explains that Christians observe the eighth day, the day of new beginnings, and the day on which the Lord rose.
In A.D. 150, Justin Martyr says that on "the day called that of the sun," Christians come together out of the cities and countryside to study the Scriptures and have communion.
In A.D. 200 (or so), Tertullian says that the practice of not kneeling or fasting on the first day of the week is a long standing practice with Christians, possibly going back to the apostles (De Corona 3).

So you see it is apparent that Constantine did not need to change the Sabbath to Sunday. In fact, Christians had a quite different view of the role of the Sabbath in the Christian life.

Nicea Myths: Conclusion

I hope that whenever someone tells you something about what happened at Nicea that you will look at the creed and canons of the Council of Nicea and set them straight. Together we can spread the truth and end the fables.

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