Destruction of myths about medieval armor, weapons, their purpose and strength. Destruction of the myth: What came first - the chicken or the egg?
Hello, dear readers!
Well, here we are in the new year, with which I congratulate everyone... And our column continues!
The myth of the cowardice of those who turn the other cheek.
But I tell you: do not resist evil. But whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other also to him; (Matt. 5:39)
I once, as a young hippie, respected Baptists for their pacifism. Years have passed. I studied Baptistism deeply from the inside and was surprised to see that there was little left of pacifism. Too many brothers have become warlike, and they don’t consider it a sin to beat their neighbor (if he gets into trouble)... The pacifists remained in the minority...
A good American friend of mine is a minister of the Church. By civilian profession, he was a military pilot and flew bombers. He is a typical American and does not consider his civilian profession something bad. He left her not because his conscience condemned him, he simply wanted to devote more time to serving.
During the years when the US bombed Kosovo and Russian-American relations were strained to the limit, I asked him:
Say, my friend and brother in Christ: God forbid, a war will now begin between our countries. Are you going to fly bombs at me and my children?
It’s a difficult question... - my friend answered and even became a little sad. Apparently he never even thought about it seriously...
Moreover, at the official Baptist forum, pacifists are called almost cowards.
Of course, sometimes this accusation may be fair. It is more convenient for a coward to call himself a pacifist.
By the way, I’m also not the ideal of courage; I’m often a coward, too, like poor Vanya. But being a pacifist is still not easy for me.
I remember, already being a believer and an ordained minister, I personally beat a drunken neighbor who used obscene language towards my wife. Then, however, I had to repent before God for not finding another way to stand up for the honor of my beloved woman.
It seems to me that for us humans, an attempt to respond to evil with violence is not a manifestation of courage, but, at a minimum, a lack of imagination. At the most, a lack of understanding of what grace is is always a sign of an inability to love...
Today I will give many quotes as arguments:
There is one wonderful scene in the Gandhi film in which Gandhi tries to explain his philosophy to the Presbyterian missionary Charlie Andrews. Walking together through a South African city, both suddenly discover that their path is blocked by bandits. Reverend Andrews, seeing the threatening appearance of the gangsters, decides to run away from them. Gandhi stops him: doesn’t the New Testament say that if an enemy hits you on your right cheek, then you must offer him your left? Andrews mutters that he thought the phrase was being used figuratively. "I'm not sure about that," Gandhi replies. "I think what he meant was that you have to be brave - be willing to take a blow, a lot of blows, to show that you will not give in, and you will not be broken. And when you do that, something will resonate in human nature, something that will lessen his hatred and command his respect. I think Christ had this in mind, and I have seen it work."
F. Yancey "The Jesus I Didn't Know."
A pacifist is not a coward. The shame of modern Christians is that the ideas of Jesus Christ are better understood by Hindus than by ministers.
A true pacifist does not indulge evil. He resists, but not with his fist, but with love for the lost sinner.
The Catholic poet Paul Claudel emphasized that this phrase is not about non-resistance to evil, but about resistance, about the use of the most powerful means that a person has. Turning the cheek does not mean running away, humiliating oneself, or surrendering to fatalism. “This is an offensive movement, full of danger and threat. For we are hit on the cheek, but we are struck in the very heart. This is an armed attack. By turning our left cheek, we ourselves become the attackers, turning our offender into an offender of God. And then the offender no longer hit us He beats God, who will inevitably answer him, and His answer will be righteous judgment, or rather, as we hope, love" (P. Claudel. A Drop of Divine Honey. M., 2003. P. 132 quoted from Ya. Krotov "To Gospel. http://krotov.info/yakov/4_evang/1_mt/05 _39.htm).
Of course, no pacifist will imitate the Schwartz king, who “... when they strangled his wife, he stood nearby and kept repeating: “Well, be patient, maybe it will work out!”
The violence needs to stop. Otherwise it will be a sin against your neighbor. But stopping violence with violence is stupid.
People don't fight because they're afraid the world will end. On the contrary, people fight when they decide that the world is strong enough to fight in it. No one will shoot even at their worst enemy while on board an airplane, where a tiny hole in the wall will cause disaster. The aggressiveness of a person is the aggressiveness of a materialist, confident that matter will endure everything. It will always be the same. The good news says that the world is fragile... Therefore, stopping violence is not only necessary, but also possible, and the world will not perish from this, but will only become stronger.
Hitting a rapist in the head is easy (for me, for sure). This does not require love, God, or the Gospel. But to make sure that the rapist does not do evil, but changes - this is where our faith and real miracles are needed, and not falls from “holy jackets.”
And the Apostle Paul advised overcoming evil with good (Rom. 12:21).
Of course, it would be naive to advise something like: “If they want to attack you, then group up and quickly do some good to the attacker!”
The path of nonviolent resistance is longer, but always more effective.
We will say to our most bitter opponents; "We will match your ability to inflict suffering with our ability to endure suffering. Do with us what you want, and we will love you. We will never submit to your unjust laws, since disobeying evil is as much a moral duty as promoting good. Throw us into prisons, and we will continue to love you. Destroy our homes and threaten the lives of our children. On dark nights, send your murderers and rapists, dressed in caps, into our houses so that they beat us half to death, and we will love you. But rest assured that we will defeat you with our ability to endure suffering. And the day will come when we will gain freedom, but this freedom will not be for us alone. We will appeal to your heart and mind so much that we will win them over to our side, and our victory will be a double victory."
I know a man named Dapozzo. He is a French evangelist. Ever since he was in the concentration camp, he has had a crushed hand. It was he who told me one story that I will never forget: “Once during lunch in a concentration camp the chief called me. They took me into a room where the table was set. There was only one cutlery on the table. The camp chief came. I had wolf hunger. The head of the camp sat down at the table, and they presented him with fantastic dishes, one after another, while I had to calmly stand and watch. With all his appearance he showed me how tasty it was for him, and I was dying of hunger. But there was more not enough. At the end they brought him coffee, he put the packages on the table and said: “Look, your wife from Paris sent you cookies!” I knew that they had bad food there, how my wife had to save money to bake these cookies. And so, the head of the camp eats it. I asked him: “Give me at least one, I won’t eat it, but at least take it as a memory of my wife.” But, laughing, he ate every last one.” This was the moment when irritation reaches its highest point - hatred! Dapozzo continued: “At that moment it became clear to me what it means: “... the love of God has been poured out into our hearts.” I could love this man, I thought: “You poor man! There is no one who could love you. Only hatred surrounds you! How good it is for me to be a child of God!" Do you understand? Dapozzo could have sympathy and mercy for him. This man did not irritate him. The boss felt it: he jumped up and ran out! After the war, Dapozzo once visited him. He turned pale: " Do you want revenge?"
I’ll say right away - not mine, but brazenly communized. Author - Nickel0re (by the way, in his profile there are two posts about the skill of knightly combat, well, you never know... someone will be interested...), resource - Pikabu, link to the post.
Too often, “history” channels feed viewers half-truths or outright lies when it comes to the Middle Ages, in particular about armor, chain mail, weapons, as well as their purpose and durability. I’ll give you two examples of videos that still sometimes make me cringe.
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Let's look at this video from the moment of testing swords on leather “armor”. Let's start with the fact that no one used leather “armor” as such in the Middle Ages. Leather boiled in beeswax, only sometimes, was the basis for brigandines/plate armor, and occasionally gloves with steel inserts and bracers. In the absence of money for chain mail or steel, the fighters used hard jackets made from several layers of textiles. They were called gambesons.
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This video tests the resistance of a gambeson to all types of sword strikes. As tests have shown, it is quite capable of protecting against slashing blows, and given the fact that in battle there is constant movement of two sides, there will be very few stationary targets, and therefore the gambeson will be better able to withstand blows.
Let's continue.
Further in the first video, during the test of the bastard's sword for penetration on the breastplate (which is a tin, not a real hardened breastplate, and I will prove this to you later), the presenter turns to the “expert” and says that “the sword did little damage,” to which The expert replies, “He did what he was created to do.” At that moment, my seat reached critical temperatures and I almost melted the battered chair. The bastard sword was not created to make small holes in tin "armor", but to pierce the weak points (joints) of the armor. The sharp tip easily passed through the rings of chain mail about two centimeters, and then required the application of force to destroy the rings and subsequently kill the enemy.
The test below uses Corsica. Using all his strength, Thrand drives the tip of the polearm's tip into the already dented breastplate only 1 cm. Now think about what kind of nonsense the breastplate is made of in “ historical analysis“if he breaks through with a bastard sword that was previously dulled on a log. Most likely the bib is a theatrical prop.
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Then it’s better, the breastplate is simply wrinkled by the katana. Somewhere on our dear Mother Earth, while watching these sensational shots, reenactors, buhurt workers and members of HEMA cried in horror and pain, and samurai would turn over in their graves if they knew what was being done with their weapons. I don’t even know where to start... The katana was a secondary weapon and was intended to be used only against light types of armor and against opponents without armor in general. Everything in this program is so false that even the katana is not authentic. “Why?” - you ask. Yes, because due to the specifics of hardening and the lack of metal in Japan, the back of the sword was much softer than the hardened blade, and if this blow had been made using a historically accurate katana, the sword would most likely have simply bent (even when hitting this wretched tin).
Now look at the blow of a sword blade on real armor. Notice anything important? There wasn't even a scratch left.
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(I fully understand that this is a katana strike on an immovable sword, and not on armor. The screen serves only to facilitate visualization.)
Now let's look at another gem of the History Channel.
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Here the brave guys carry out exclusively thorough tests of chain mail, taking into account all important parameters, such as: strength/hardening of chain mail rings, type of their connection, compliance of the human body, etc. (Sarcasm)
Again, it is difficult to choose where to start because... everything that you saw with your own eyes, dear readers, is bullshit. Firstly, chain mail rings are made of soft, unhardened steel. Secondly, they are trimmed, not riveted, like historically true chain mail (this plays an important role in strength because trimmed chain mail can be torn by hand. Unfortunately, I didn’t find a video of chain mail tearing, I’d be glad if someone could help him find in comments). Thirdly, the chain mail is put on a wooden stand leaning against a stone, which in no way reflects the equipment of the warrior who wore a gambeson under the chain mail and did not stand still in anticipation of a blow (on this moment The ideal option for testing armor is a torso suspended from a rope with armor on it. In this way you can display the compliance of the human body.)
Below I have provided a comparison of the strength of mild steel chain mail with butted ends and hardened steel chain mail with riveted ends. As you noticed, the first type of chain mail I mentioned does not withstand blows from the word completely.
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And finally, from the 4th minute a terrible bacchanalia begins (at least for me). Bald from Brazzers, wanting to explain some aspects of fighting with a shield, shows us two brave friends who seem to have reconsidered Hollywood films. Neither of them is using their shield as intended and both are wide open to get hit, in moments like this I imagine spamming attacks in Dark Souls and Skyrim when the character forgets about having a shield and just swings from left to right. One of them seems so confident in his victory that he thought about Odile’s pirouette in “Swan Lake” and decided that he is not a fool and can do it too, while he opens his back to attack the enemy, who stands rooted to the spot and waits his destiny in the form of a bream with a shield in order to later go to Valhalla.
This is how you should hold a round shield, the left side is constantly covered with a shield, and the right with a sword.
HOW MANY LEGS DOES AN OCTOPUS HAVE?
MISCONCEPTION: 8
ACTUALLY: 2
With the help of two rear tentacles, it moves along the seabed, and with the other six it eats. As a result, today's marine biologists tend to classify octopuses as animals with a pair of legs and six arms.
Additionally, the octopus' tentacles contain two-thirds of the octopus's brain - about 50 million neurons - while the remaining third is shaped like a doughnut and is located in the octopus's head, or "brain cape." Each of the limbs has great independence. The severed tentacle continues to crawl and (in some species) live for several months. The arm (or leg) of an octopus lives by its own mind.
WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE - THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG?
MISCONCEPTION: CHICKEN
REALLY: AN EGG
As geneticist J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964) noted, “The most frequently asked question is, 'Which came first, the chicken or the egg?' The fact that it is still asked suggests one of two things: either many people have never been taught the theory of evolution, or they simply do not believe in it.”
Birds evolved from reptiles, which means the first bird hatched from an egg laid by one of the reptiles.
Additionally: to find out what color egg a particular chicken will lay, look at its earrings. Hens with white earrings lay white eggs, and those with red earrings lay brown eggs. Color chicken egg depends solely on the breed of bird - it has nothing to do with food.
HOW MANY STATES ARE THERE IN THE USA?
MISCONCEPTION: 50
ACTUALLY: 46
And we are being misled by Massachusetts, Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania, which are officially commonwealths.
The fact is that this status does not give them any special constitutional powers, since they themselves chose this word at the end of the Revolutionary War of 1775-1783. These commonwealths called themselves that to make it clear that they preferred to no longer be colonies governed by the English crown, but became states governed “by the general consent of the people.”
Virginia was one of the thirteen original American states and was the first to declare itself a commonwealth in 1776. Since then, the American national flag has had thirteen red stripes. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts soon afterwards joined as a commonwealth, and Kentucky, originally a county within Virginia, declared itself a commonwealth in 1792.
WHICH ANIMALS THAT EVER LIVED ON OUR PLANET IS THE MOST DANGEROUS?
MISCONCEPTION: COBRA, SHARK, BIG CATS
REALLY: MOSQUITOES
A good half of the people who have died in the entire history of mankind - something like 45 billion - were killed by female mosquitoes (males only bite plants).
The mosquito (or mosquito) carries more than a hundred potentially fatal diseases, including malaria, yellow fever, dengue, encephalitis, filariasis, and elephantiasis (elephantiasis). Even today, every twelve seconds this insect kills one of us. There are currently 2,500 known species of mosquitoes, 400 of which are members of the anopheles family, and 40 of which are capable of transmitting malaria.
Additionally: female mosquitoes are attracted to moisture, milk, carbon dioxide, body heat and movement. Sweaty people and pregnant women are much more likely to be bitten.
HOW MANY CRABS IS IT REQUIRED TO PRODUCE A KILOGRAM OF CRAB STICKS?
MISCONCEPTION: 10 AND MORE
IN FACT: NONE
Their recipe appeared in 1970 in Japan and has remained virtually unchanged since then.
From time immemorial, crab meat has been an integral attribute of Japanese food. national cuisine. And its number is steadily decreasing. Which, in turn, leads to higher prices for crab meat. And Japanese chefs began to intensively search for a replacement for the delicacy.
They took the Kamaboko dish as a basis. To prepare it, fillets of fish from the cod family are used; their meat is pure white. The fillets are chopped and then pounded. The result is the so-called surimi minced meat. Potatoes, soy sauce, starch, egg powder and flavorings are added to it.
The mass is formed into oblong sticks and evaporated. During this procedure, fat is removed from the meat. The process is completed by applying a strip of food coloring, which gives the sticks their characteristic crabmeat character. pink color. That's all, actually.
So, apart from the name, there is nothing crab in the product!
FROM WHERE DID MAN COME FROM?
MISCONCEPTION: FROM MONKEYS
IN FACT: HUMANS AND APEES HAVE A COMMON ANCESTOR
A common misconception of humanity is that man descended from monkeys, although this is far from true. And not even from anthropoids.
The theory that man descended from apes was put forward, as you know, by Charles Darwin, who had only a church education - he was a Protestant priest, and not a biologist. Who would need to impose such a theory? The answer is simple - whoever has the desire and money for PR in newspapers.
The ape and Homo sapiens descended from the same common ancestor, but until now scientists have not been able to find it. This elusive guy lived from 8 to 5 million years ago during the Pliocene era.
Further along the chain, this creature came from the squirrel-like tupaya, one from the urchin, the other from the starfish. Recent comparisons of the genomes of humans and our closest relative, the chimpanzee, suggest that we diverged much later than initially thought. This means that before we finally diverged 5.4 million years ago, we most likely interbred and produced a hybrid species that has not been recorded anywhere and is now extinct.
Despite the fact that not a single piece of evidence existing in our time excludes the possibility that man could have originated anywhere on the planet, the African theory of the spread of the human race is still considered the most plausible.
Research by scientists at the genetic level confirms that one of the first populations outside Africa were the indigenous inhabitants of the Andaman Islands. The islanders lived in absolute isolation for 60 thousand years - longer than the aborigines of Australia.
Nowadays, there are less than 400 indigenous Andamanese left. About half of them belong to two large tribes: the Jarawa and the Sentinelese, who have virtually no contact with the outside world. This group of about one hundred Sentinelese leads such a solitary life that no one has ever been able to learn their language.
Other Andamanese languages form their own group - the oldest in South Asia and not related to any other language group. There are only five numbers in their dialect: “one”, “two”, “one more”, “a few more” and “all”. Moreover, they have as many as twelve words to describe various states of fruit ripeness, two of which simply cannot be translated.
The Andamanese are one of two tribal groups in the world that have never learned to make fire to this day (the other group is the Ake pygmies, who live in Central Africa). Instead of making fire, they have an ingenious procedure for storing and carrying smoldering logs and burning coals in clay vessels. The coals have been maintained in this state for thousands of years and most likely date back to prehistoric lightning strikes.
It may seem unusual to some, but the indigenous people of the Andaman Islands have a concept of God that is quite familiar to us. Their supreme deity Puluga is the invisible, permanent, immortal, omniscient Creator of all things except evil; he gets angry when we sin and comforts those in distress. To punish people for their sins, Pulugu sent a storm and a great flood.
In 2004, the tsunami hit the Andaman Islands with its full force, however, as we know, none of the native tribes there were practically harmed.
All that you know very well, and therefore are not even going to read the post, but still.
Columbus proved that the Earth is round
Judging by the book of the American author Irving Washington, this was so. Everyone thought the Earth was flat, but Columbus convinced everyone otherwise. In fact, from the 4th century B.C. no one thought that the Earth was like a flat pancake. Columbus could not prove in any way that the Earth was round, since he himself did not believe in it! He believed that the Earth was pear-shaped. He had never been to America, but only got to the Bahamas, which are pear-shaped.
Even if you believe in a higher power (weakness, especially on Monday mornings), then with a thorough study of the Bible you will not find anywhere that Eve ate an apple, and not a pineapple, a banana, or even a coconut. The modest “fruit” appears there. Nobody argues, maybe it was an apple.
Everyone is simply sure that Newton uttered a wonderful law after it flew into his tower. And how can you not believe it - Voltaire himself spoke about this in his essay about Newton! And he could only find out from one source who had information before the publication of the essay - from Newton’s sister, Catherine Conduit.
Mickey was drawn by Ub Iwerks, who was incredibly fast at drawing and was invaluable as a cartoonist. But when voice acting appeared, yes, Disney personally began to speak for Mickey.
In 1766, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote about an event that supposedly happened 25 years earlier. Allegedly, when Marie Antoinette learned that people in the French village did not have enough bread, she offered them cakes to eat. The problem is that in those years Maria was 11 years old and still lived in her homeland in Austria.
Van Gogh, who barely sold one painting in his life (people of that time understood the quality of his paintings much better), before committing suicide allegedly decided to start with the ear. However, he sawed off not everything, but a tiny piece of the left lobe. What can you do when you're drunk...
Many are sure (at the suggestion of school teachers) that the boy realized the ambitions that arose due to an inferiority complex associated with growth. In fact, his height was 168 cm, which was higher than the average Frenchman of those years.
Sir Walter Raleigh is an explorer, ladies' man and one of the most mysterious and mythological figures in English history. Modern portraits depict him as exceptionally handsome, although no real portraits of him have been found. He was considered a ladies' man, and supposedly pleased Queen Elizabeth I of England. Is it true that he threw his cloak into a puddle so that the queen could cross it? Not true. It is true that he did not return from his trip to America with the first potatoes and tobacco in English history. Although Reilly is said to have introduced the potato in 1586, the first potato crop was actually harvested in Spain in 1585, after which it quickly spread throughout Europe and even “crossed” the English Channel. Tobacco was brought to France by Jean Nicot in 1560 (nicotine got its name from his last name). So smokers around the world are in vain accusing Sir Walter Reilly of spreading the bad habit.
Everyone knows two things about Magellan: that he traveled around the world, and that during this trip he was killed in the Philippines. One excludes the second. In fact, Magellan went exactly halfway: Juan Sebastian Elcano, his deputy, completed the journey.
William Shakespeare is known as greatest playwright in the history of mankind. However, most of his plays were not his own creations - rather, creative adaptations of stories, histories and legends. The play “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” according to historians, was based on an ancient Scandinavian legend.
1093 patents: Edison is a great inventor. But most of his inventions were made by unknown members of his laboratory. And, besides, four decades before Edison was born, electric light was discovered by a certain Davey Humphrey. His lamp could only burn for 12 hours at a time, and Edison just had to find the right filament material to keep the lamp burning continuously. Yes, an achievement, but not a discovery.
December 25 - Christmas. But there is no evidence, in the Bible or anywhere else, that Jesus was born on this day. But why was December 25th made the birthday of Jesus? Maybe because on this day the Hellenes celebrated the day of the god Mitros, born of a virgin, and at the same time it was the Day of the Shepherd?
Everyone knows that George Washington was the first of 43 US presidents. But no! The first was Peyton Randolph - he was the one chosen by the revolutionary Congress. His first step in high office was the creation of the Continental Army to protect against British troops and the appointment of General Washington as commander in chief! Randolph was succeeded in 1781 by John Hanson, who sent a congratulatory letter to George Washington after his victory at the Battle of Yorktown and signed "I, John Hancock, President of America." And Washington became the first popularly elected president of the United States, but the fifteenth in a row.
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Original taken from vsekh in Mythbusting on Thursdays...
The Myth of Timothy's Ordination
I remember being shocked a dozen years ago when I heard a series of sermons in a Baptist church about the so-called “New Testament priesthood.” It was assumed that in the Church of the New Testament there should be special people who should be called “priesthood” and only they have the right to perform “sacred rites”, such as: baptism, communion, marriage, blessing of children, consecration of houses of prayer, etc.
Then it seemed to me that this violates the fundamental Protestant conviction about the universal priesthood of believers, since again, according to the Old Testament model, it obliges us to have mediators between us and God, while there is only one such Mediator in the New Testament - Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:5) . I still believe that although each member of the Church has his own unique gift, our status before God is absolutely the same and there is no need to wait for an ordained minister to perform, for example, the breaking of bread. We have different functions in God's economy, but the same status before God.
However, this is not what we are talking about. (We'll talk about this some other time).
But one thing especially alarmed me then - the verse was used to substantiate the doctrine of the “caste of New Testament priests”:
Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the priesthood. (1 Timothy 4:14)
It is interesting that for some reason the word “priesthood” here translates the word “πρεσβυτέριον” - “presbytery”, “council of elders” or “council of elders”. The word “elder” in the New Testament is very often not translated at all, either translated as “elder” or “elder”, so it is strange that it is in this place that the text seems to be veiled.
And I wondered why Orthodox translators made such a substitution?
The answer is simple: to support the Orthodox myth that Timothy was the bishop of Ephesus, and therefore belonged to the highest of the levels of the priesthood.
After all, the Orthodox and Catholic Bishop is a Bishop - the head of several local churches. As a rule, he alone commands the churches of large regions consisting of several cities.
And according to Orthodox teaching, a bishop cannot be ordained by presbyters, but only by bishops. Elders, from the point of view of Orthodox theology, generally do not have the right to perform consecration (ordination), so the Orthodox translator had no choice but to hide the clear teaching of Scripture to the contrary.
The fact is that New Testament makes no difference at all between the ministry of a bishop and a presbyter. These are synonymous words. “Bishop” is a guardian, an overseer. "Presbyter" is an elder. These words are often used interchangeably in the New Testament. (And some of the Orthodox researchers agree with this).
For example, in Acts chapter 20, Paul “sent to Ephesus, ... called elders church" (Acts 20:17), and then in verse 28 names the same group of leaders bishops : “Take heed therefore to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit hath made you guardians (in Greek “episkopus”), to shepherd the Church of the Lord and God, which He purchased for Himself with His Blood.” (Acts 20:28).
In his letter to Titus, Paul commands: “...that you complete what is unfinished and set it in all the cities elders , as I commanded you: if anyone is blameless, the husband of one wife, has faithful children, not reproached with debauchery or disobedience. For bishop must be blameless, as God's steward..." (Titus 1:5-7)
Thus, we see that the bishop and the presbyter are one person.
In New Testament times, local churches were governed either by apostles and prophets or by bishops and deacons.
This is evidenced by the ancient Christian text “Didache”: “Ordain for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, meek and not money-loving men, both true and proven, for they also fulfill for you the ministry of prophets and teachers. Therefore, do not despise them, for they are your venerables along with the prophets and apostles.” (Didache 15:1,2)
Those. in each local church there were SEVERAL bishops, who were sometimes called presbyters.
The New Testament also testifies to this: “Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, bishops and deacons...” (Phil. 1:1) (It is clear that the Philippian church did not know the three-tier hierarchy). And Acts chapter 15 tells us that the Jerusalem church was governed by the apostles and elders. Thus, we again see the interchangeability of the terms “bishop” and “presbyter.” We especially note that there were several of them in the local church, and not just one.
However, by the second century significant changes had been made to New Testament terminology. Mainly thanks to Ignatius of Antioch. For some reason he decided that among the presbyter-bishops there should be one main one. And so he should be called a bishop, and the rest presbyters.
It should be noted that even Ignatius does not yet speak of the bishop as the head of SEVERAL local churches. According to Ignatius, a bishop is simply the chief elder of one local church. Judge for yourself:
“Therefore, just as the Lord, without the Father, in His unity with Him, did nothing, either by Himself or through the apostles, so do you do nothing without the bishop and elders... but in the general meeting may you have one prayer, one petition, one mind, one hope in love and in immaculate joy.” (Magnesians, chapter 7) Here we see that the bishop and the elders are members of the same assembly.
Ignatius also does not build a clear hierarchy: bishop - presbyter - deacon, as modern Orthodox and Catholics do.
“...since the bishop presides in the place of God, the presbyters take the place of the council of the apostles, and the deacons, most sweet to me, are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the ages, and finally appeared visibly. Therefore, everyone who has entered into cohabitation with God, respect one another, and let no one look at his neighbor according to the flesh, but always love one another in Jesus Christ. Let there be nothing between you that can divide you; but be in unity with the bishop and those who preside, in the image and teaching of incorruptibility.” (Magnesians, chapter 6)
We see that according to Ignatius, the bishop is like God, the elders are like apostles, and the deacons are like Jesus Christ (!).
Strange, right?
Is Christ, from the point of view of Ignatius, lower than the apostles? No way! Therefore, Ignatius is not talking about hierarchy, but about functions: the bishop commands (presides), the presbyters teach (perform the function of the council), and the deacons serve like Christ (and even Ignatius himself clearly prefers the diaconal service - sweetest to me).
And his bishop is inseparable from the presbyters and deacons, just as God is inseparable from the apostles and Christ: “...to prosper in the flesh and in the spirit, in faith and love, in the Son and the Father and in the Spirit, in the beginning and in the end, with your most worthy bishop and with beautifully woven crown of your presbytery and deacons in God. Obey to the bishop and each other how Jesus Christ obeyed the Father in the flesh, and the apostles obeyed Christ, the Father and the Spirit, so that there would be unity together, bodily and spiritual.” (Magnesians, chapter 13)
However, Ignatius did his job - he gave rise to a change in New Testament terminology (he always has one Bishop, not several) and, as a consequence, to the emergence of the myth of a three-tier, hierarchical priesthood. This myth was picked up, and later Irenaeus of Lyons further elevated the role of bishops. And off we go...
The myth led to a distortion of the text of Scripture in the Synodal translation, as well as to a distortion of relations in the local church and its management. And even some Protestants suddenly, unfortunately, became carried away by this myth.
I'm sure it shouldn't be like this!
Pavel Begichev pavel_begichev
__________________________I am afraid that you attribute to Ignatius the creation of what he only states as having been created in the Church by his time. And the fact that the hierarchical system that exists today developed over time, and was not an initial given, is not at all denied by the Orthodox Churches. Well, that's if you don't count the marginal freaks. Those may indeed believe that already under the apostles the Russian Orthodox Church or the Pope (depending on the freak’s church affiliation) was in the ball.
The structure of the hierarchy in the Church developed already at an early stage, when Christians were still persecuted and their truth cannot be questioned even by neo-Protestants, who contrast themselves with the already nationalized Church of the post-Constantinian period, with their councils, dogmas, popes and patriarchs. Therefore, it is not very reasonable for neo-Protestants to criticize the three-part hierarchy system as something that violates biblical norms. But it would not hurt to criticize the excessive sacralization of the highest hierarchy, although such criticism is more appropriate from orthodox theologians. However, there may be some benefit from external criticism.
Neo-Protestants can create any structure of governance and shepherding for themselves. It is up to them to understand what is “right” based on their own interpretations of Scripture. They can even live in the likeness of the original Jerusalem community, a commune, when there were no elders or deacons, and the people sold property and gave it to a common fund collected and distributed by the apostles. Another thing is where will you get the apostles? Will you nominate it yourself? Or will there be those who will nominate themselves? However, the practice of amateur pastoring and apostolate is a natural practice of neo-Protestantism. Without this, there would be no neo-Protestantism itself, as well as marginal, pseudo-Christian sects such as Jehovah's Witnesses.
In a strict sense, the main difference between the Orthodox Churches and neo-Protestantism is precisely the origin of the hierarchy, and not its structure. You probably know that the Orthodox claim the truth of their hierarchy based on succession from the apostles, while the hierarchy (and, of course, it exists) of the neo-Protestants arose spontaneously. Some James about three hundred years ago, or some Vasya last year, read the Bible, realized that he was chosen by God and had the mission of restoring the Church and declared himself a “prophet”, gathering a “church” around himself, and from this James or From Vasya comes the continuity of certain neo-Protestants.
Therefore, apostolic succession in the Church is where the subject for discussion is. And the structure of the church hierarchy is just an application. The structure can be absolutely anything, even three times artificial and new, but the continuity of the Church from the apostles cannot be bought in a store.
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