Stories

Short guided tours. Each step links to people, places, councils, or catalog editions. They are original summaries, not quotations from a modern textbook.

• How the New Testament canon formed

  A slow argument about which books to read in church, not a single vote that invented the Bible.

• The road to Nicaea

  From a local quarrel in Alexandria to an imperial council, without pretending the creed ended the fight.

• The Nag Hammadi discovery

  What the 1945 codices are, and what they do not prove about 'the gnostics.'

• Gnostics and their critics

  Second-century arguments about the creator, the scriptures, and who may teach.

• The Dead Sea Scrolls

  Jewish manuscripts from the centuries around the turn of the era, found again in the twentieth century.

• From Constantinople to Chalcedon

  How a dispute about Mary's title became a permanent split over Christ's person.

• Persecution, lapse, and schism

  What the Roman state did, and what Christians did to each other afterward.

• Augustine's Africa

  A bishop, two controversies, and the limits of his map of his enemies.

• Athanasius against the world

  Who opposed the Nicene wording, what they argued, and how that side lost after Athanasius was already dead.