The compilation of the books is one of the biggest ways they pushed aside competing Gnostic texts and such. In 363, the council of Laodicea listed all of the present books except Revelation, which the Eastern churches did not like. The church of Rome on the other hand, really liked Revelations and also another dozen books that the Eastern churches weren’t too keen on. So you rarely see Revelations cited in any Orthodox service as they STILL don’t consider it “really” part of the Bible, 1600 years later. Long memories. But these semi-official/official lists were to prevent roll-your-own-Jesus accounts floating around that gave Jesus super-powers and stuff. Nicea was convened to combat Arianism which was a specific theological debate thing about the nature of Christ. They were having trouble reconciling with the Hellenistic notion of a “unchanging God” with other fluid aspects of Christian Godhead. It was the Quantum Physics of the day and the eggheads figured out an answer.

The compilation of the … [read full article]

 

The bridge needs to be rebuild immediately. Every day it’s down thousands of companies and people lose money because everything gets delayed. Sooner it’s built, the sooner people can get back to making the money they made before it crashed in. Lloyd’s will pay something. The shipping company will get sued and pay something. But the cost of rebuilding is too high for any of those folks to afford. meanwhile, everybody’s losing money with a downed bridge.

The bridge needs to … [read full article]

 

It’s a heuristic but it’s not ‘really’ true. Da Vinci came up with a set of artistic proportions – various “Golden Ratios” that seemed true enough and as rough estimates are as true as other stereotyped body ratios. Some people will find these to be accurate for themselves, some people won’t but Vitruvian man isn’t really “the ideal proportioned man” but more of an artist’s guide for something that looks reasonably human.

It’s a heuristic but … [read full article]