The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 15: Apostles and Bishops in Early Christianity

628 Pages·2016·1.54 MB·English

by  Hugh Nibley

© 2004 The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon
Studies and Hugh Nibley and Associates, LC
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nibley, Hugh, 1910–
Apostles and bishops in early Christianity / Hugh Nibley ;
edited by
John F. Hall and John W. Welch.
p. cm. — (The collected works of Hugh Nibley ; v. 15)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59038-389-3 (hardbound : alk. paper)
1. Episcopacy—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30–
600.
2. Bishops—History—To 1500. 3. Apostolate (Christian
theology)—History
of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30–600. 4. Apostles. I. Hall,
John F. II.
Welch, John W. (John Woodland) III. Title.
BV670.3.N53 2004
262'.12'09015—dc22
2004023387
Printed in the United States of America 70582
Phoenix Color Corporation, Hagerstown, MD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Editors’ Preface
Overview
The Office of Bishop in the Early
Christian Church as a Whole
The Waxing and Waning of the
“Consensus”
An Apostle Is Not the Same as a Bishop
When Bishops Became the Highest
Officers in the Church
Seeing James as the Presiding Bishop of
the Church
The Bishop as an Office in the Lower
Priesthood
Dependence on Jewish Sources for
Church Practices Relevant to the
Bishop
The Jewish and Worldly Origins of the
Office and Title of Bishop
Changes in the Office of Bishop
Roman Origin of a Divine Office?
The Importance of Each Bishop
Becomes Tied to the Prominence of
His City
The Fight for Power
In Search of a General Authority
The Glories (and Duties?) of a Bishop
Are the Council and the Synod the
Apostolic Voice?
The Gospel of Bigness and Power
The Office of Bishop in the Church in
Rome
In Search of a Missing Link
Questions about the Account of the
Ordination of Clement as a Bishop
Finding (or Not Finding) the Bishop (or
Bishops) of Rome
Strife over the Elections of the Bishop
of Rome
The Establishment of an Episcopal
Hierarchy and College of Cardinals
The Roman Role and the Big Four
The Double Apostolate: Peter and Paul
Clement to the Corinthians—Proof of
Roman Supremacy?
The Leading Role the Roman Church
Did Not Play
Establishing a Connection with Peter—
A Return to Matthew 16:18
Emperors, Popes, Synods, and Rome
Claims of Apostolic Succession
The Argument of Diffusion
Editors’ Postscript
Editors’ Preface
In 1954 Professor Hugh W. Nibley taught a
class at Brigham Young University about the
office of bishop in early Christianity. It is
hard to imagine anyone better than Hugh
Nibley to shed light on this challenging and
intriguing topic. Fortunately, as he prepared
for class he typed his lectures virtually
word-for-word on his manual typewriter and
then read them out loud to his students in the
old-school tradition of truly delivering a
“lecture” (in Latin, lectura means “words
about to be read”). After these lectures were
delivered, Nibley set these “notes” aside and
went on to address other pressing demands
on his time. This publication now makes his
155 pages of typescript available for the first
time.
Bishops were as important in early
Christianity as they are in the church today.
In the New Testament, the duties and desired
attributes of the bishop are listed twice, once
in Paul’s first letter to Timothy and again in
his epistle to Titus. Bishops served during
the first Christian century in several areas of
the eastern Mediterranean—Jerusalem,
Corinth, Philippi, Smyrna, Ephesus, and
Hieropolis. Catholics claim that Peter was
the first bishop of Rome, and Eastern
Orthodox Christians assert that he was the
first bishop of Antioch. Most likely, Peter
ordained the first bishops in both of these
major centers.
The importance of this subject is
exceeded, however, by its complexity and
obscurity. One grapples to understand how
those bishops functioned, what authority they
possessed, how they related to the apostles
or other priesthood offices, and what
changes occurred in the course of the first
few centuries of the Christian era with
respect to these episcopal overseers.
Answers to these puzzles are buried deep
within the lines of many early Christian
writers, whose texts are often inaccessible to
the general reader. While Nibley draws
attention to many revealing details in the
early patristic literature, his forays into these
materials are adventuresome and exploratory
and thus were not intended to be definitive
or conclusive.
Although Professor Nibley never returned
to this research to see it through to
publication, the arguments he presented in
these lectures relate closely to other
materials he published around that same
time. In particular, The World and the
Prophets, volume 3 in the Collected Works