"… Asia Minor rather than Syria or the East seems [to have been] the chief sphere of Seleucid activity..." — Edwyn Robert Bevan (1902)

When Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C., his family, his generals and his closest friends spent the following decades trying to sort out the future and face of Hellenism in a post-Alexandrian world. It was not a simple undertaking. The process was riddled with murder, backstabbing, betrayal and geopolitical intrigue that spanned four decades and three continents. Alexander's potential successors, the Diadochi, as history would come to know them, were reduced from about 20 in 323 B.C. to just five viable family lines after the Battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C.. The Diodochi were subsequently reduced to four in 288 B.C. when one of the family lines was reduced to obscurity and no longer in contention. In 281 B.C. at the Battle of Corupedium, the Diodochi were reduced to just three. There is a great deal of history to sort through to understand the reduction of the Diadochi, how they related to each other, and how they understood the boundaries of their dominions. However, if we are to take seriously the prophetic implications of the visions of Daniel, the period between 288 and 281 B.C. is of paramount importance, and we should become familiar with it. No eschatology can be complete without understanding it. It is the only post-Alexandrian period during which Hellenism enjoyed exactly four successor kings in Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria and Macedonia—north, south, east and west—respectively. Their identities and territories matter.

Their identities and territories matter to us first because the Book of Daniel repeatedly describes—both explicitly and figuratively—four successor kingdoms after Alexander, "divided toward the four winds of heaven" (see Daniel 7:6, 8:8, 8:22, 11:4). Before 288 B.C., there were too many kings, and after 281 B.C. there appear to be too few. Something significant happened during those seven years in the early 3rd century B.C., and as we shall demonstrate, the contemporary Greek world took note of it. They knew very well that Alexander's dominions had been divided four ways, a status quo that endured even when only three families of the Diodochi remained.

Second, their identities and territories matter to us because the ensuing conflict between the king of the north and the king of the south occupies a significant portion of the narrative of Daniel 11. Each king is repeatedly invading the other's territory. Unless we can identify their territories, we can make no sense of the conflict. What makes the chapter especially challenging is that the nations and boundaries of the warring kings are never explicitly described. The angel refers repeatedly and explicitly to countries, regions, territories, cities and other locations with varying degrees of geographic specificity: Media (v. 1), Persia (v. 2), Greece (v. 2), Egypt (vv. 8, 42, 43), Israel (i.e., the glorious land, vv. 16, 41, 20, cf. Ezekiel 20:15), the Greek Isles (v. 18), Chittim (v. 30), Edom, Moab and Ammon (v. 41), Libya, (v. 43), Ethiopia (v. 43), and the temple mount (v. 45). Yet despite the extensive use of specific geographic designations, the angelic narrator nonetheless refrains from referring to the territories of the warring kings except by the cardinal directions, north and south. Their boundaries are unknown to us except in the fulfillment of prophecy.

Although the text does not actually specify it, the king of the north has traditionally been identified with the territory of Syria. We propose that upon examination of the Scriptural evidence and the historical record, the king of the north should instead be identified with Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) and Thrace. We do not deny that the early prophecies of Daniel 11—from verses 5 to 39—deal exclusively with a Syrian king in conflict with an Egyptian king. In fact we insist that such is the case. What we shall demonstrate, however, is that the Syrian king is called "king of the north" only during the periods when he held both the eastern crown and the northern crown, reigning over both Syria and Asia Minor. Although the Syrian king fulfills the prophecies of Daniel 11:5-39, he is never called "king of the north" unless he is actually ruling over the northern territory of Asia Minor and Thrace.

This, of course, has significant implications for our understanding of Daniel 11:40-45, the last time the "king of the north" is mentioned in Scripture. But let us for now turn our attention to the Diadochi.

Reduction to Five (323 - 301 B.C.)

The most notorious reductions of the Diadochi were performed by Alexander’s own bereaved mother, Olympias, and his general Cassander. Olympias murdered Alexander’s half-brother Aridæus in 317 B.C. (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History,Book 19.11.5), and Cassander then murdered Olympias in 316 B.C, to safeguard his claims to the Macedonian throne (Diodorus Siculus, Book 19.51.4-5). Cassander then put to death Alexander’s mistress, Barsine, and his son by her, Hercules, in 309 B.C. (Diodorus Siculus, Book 20.28.1-3; Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.7.2; Justinus, Epitome 15.2) and eliminated Alexander’s wife, Roxanne, and her son Alexander IV in 310 B.C. (Justinus, Epitome 15.2, Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.7.2).

With Alexander’s mother, wife, mistress, brother and sons removed from the picture, the remaining Diadochi each began to claim the right of succession. Alexander's general, Antigonus, was first to take the crown, claiming it also for his son Demetrius as co-regent (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Book 20.47-53; Justinus, Epitome 15.2). Alexander's other friends and generals—Seleucus, Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Cassander—quickly followed suit and took crowns as well (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Book 20.53.2-4; Justinus, Epitome 15.2; Plutarch, Life of Demetrius 18:1-2). Fearing the growing dominance and belligerence of the co-regents of the Antigonid line, “Ptolemy and Cassander, forming an alliance with Lysimachus and Seleucus, made vigorous preparations for war by land and sea” (Justinus, Epitome 15.1). Antigonus in turn summoned Demetrius to his side “since all the kings had united against him” (Diodorus, Book 20.109.5).

This was the prelude to the watershed Battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C. where Antigonus and Demetrius together “made war against a coalition of four kings, Ptolemy, son of Lagus, king of Egypt, Seleucus, king of Babylonia, Lysimachus, king of Thrace, and Cassander, son of Antipater, king of Macedonia” (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Fragments of Book 21.4b). At the conclusion of that battle, Antigonus was dead (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 29.5) and Demetrius was on the run with only 5,000 soldiers and 4,000 horses remaining (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 30.1). The remainder of Alexander’s empire was thus left to the victors, Ptolemy, Cassander, Seleucus and Lysimachus (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 30.1). Or so it would seem. But it would be a mistake to count out the Antigonid line so soon. Demetrius had been defeated but he was not dead. He had merely retreated to fight another day.

Defeated but not destroyed, Demetrius retired to Ephesus to regroup (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Fragments of Book 21.4b; Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 30.2; Eusebius, Chronicle (p. 247)), “and gathered up … the remnants of his [father’s] imperium” (Justinus, Prologi, XV). He retained Cyprus and controlled the eastern Mediterranean Sea (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 33.1-4). Within a few years he was a regional superpower again, fielding both an army and a navy almost as impressive as any that Alexander had ever deployed (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 44.1). Ipsus had not reduced the Diadochi to four. It had only reduced them to five:

• The Antigonid Line: Demetrius, son of Antigonus; • The Seleucid Line: Seleucus I “Nicator”; • The Lagid Line: Ptolemy I “Soter,” son of Lagus; • The Lysimachæan Line: Lysimachus of Thrace; and • The Antipatrid Line: Cassander of Macedonia

Reduction to Four (301 - 288 B.C.)

Within four years of Ipsus, Cassander died, leaving his unstable Macedonian kingdom to his three sons, Philippus, Alexander and Antipater. Philippus “died soon after his father,” and the remaining two “were perpetually at variance” (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 36.1), and Demetrius was now threatening the unstable kingdom. Lysimachus, king of Thrace and with vast holdings in Asia Minor, failed to persuade the warring brothers to make peace with each other (Justinus, Epitome 16.1). Demetrius soon had Cassander's son, Alexander, killed (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 36:1-6), and then convinced the people of Macedonia that it would be unfitting for anyone in Cassander’s line—which was responsible for the murder of Alexander’s mother, wife, mistress and children—to occupy Alexander’s former throne. Accepting this rationale, the people made Demetrius king of Macedonia in 294 B.C. (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius 37:2-3; Justinus, Epitome 16.1).

About this time Ptolemy had taken back Cyprus from Demetrius (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 35.3) and maintained control of his territories in “Egypt, with the greater part of Africa, Cyprus, and Phoenicia” (Justinus, Epitome 15.1). Seleucus was firmly entrenched in the eastern provinces “from India to the Syrian Sea” (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 32.7) and Demetrius was king of Macedonia. With Cassander’s line no longer in contention for a crown, the Diadochi had been reduced to four.

With only four left, each of sufficient strength to engage but not dominate the others, new alliances formed. Seleucus married Demetrius’ daughter in an attempt to forge an east-west alliance with Macedonia. Lysimachus and his son each married a daughter of Ptolemy, in an attempt to forge a north-south alliance with Egypt (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 31.5). The alliances did not last long.

Demetrius seized Cilicia from his new brother-in-law, and refused Seleucus’ offer to purchase it back from him (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 46.7). Nor would Demetrius cede to him control of Tyre and Sidon (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 32.7). Demetrius, having now regained his strength (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 31.3) was also “master of Macedonia and Thessaly,” as well as a “great part of Peloponnesus too, and the cities of Megara and Athens” (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 39.1). Attempting to restore the empire of his father (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 43.2), he now set his sights on Asia Minor. He raised an army of 98,000 men and 12,000 horses and was building 500 ships (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 43.3-4), preparing “such an armament for the invasion of Asia as no man ever had before him, except Alexander the Great” (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 44.1).

With Demetrius renewing his belligerence, the others—Seleucus in the east, Ptolemy in the south, and Lysimachus in the north—had no option but once again to form an alliance against him. They invited Pyrrhus, king of Epirus to join them (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 44.1). As Lysimachus invaded Macedonia from Thrace, and Ptolemy sent a fleet from Egypt, Pyrrhus was troubling Demetrius from the west, and in the end, Lysimachus and Pyrrhus divided Macedonia between themselves (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 44.2-3).

Despairing, but not defeated, Demetrius’ hope for a kingdom seemed to be entirely extinguished. "[A]nd yet," Plutarch informs us, "it broke out again, and shone with new splendour. Fresh forces came in, and gradually filled up the measure of his hopes.” Demetrius “collected all his ships, embarked his army, which consisted of 11,000 foot, besides cavalry, and sailed to Asia,” hoping to take some of Lysimachus’ territories in Asia Minor (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 45:4). He marched through Caria and Lydia, and on to Phrygia in Asia Minor “with an intention to seize Armenia, and then to try Media and the Upper Provinces” of Asia Major (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 46.7). Lysimachus’ son, Agathocles, followed at a distance through Asia Minor, cutting off Demetrius’ supply lines, and when Demetrius crossed the Taurus Mountains into Cilicia, Agathocles sealed off the mountain passes, trapping him there (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 46.7-47.2). Seeing Demetrius unable to retreat, Seleucus recognized the opportunity to recover a coveted territory. “Seleucus marched into Cilicia with a great army,” and engaged in multiple skirmishes and battles with Demetrius, and at some considerable cost finally gained the upper hand (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 47.5-49).

Hungry, and without options, his forces diminished by plague, famine, attrition and abandonment, Demetrius finally surrendered to Seleucus, and was held under arrest until his death (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 47-50). In 288 B.C., while in Seleucus’ custody, Demetrius formally abandoned his ambitions, and released his claim to the crown by a letter to his son, Antigonus Gonatas, ceding to him his "cities and all his remaining estates” (Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, 51.1). It is at this point that Antigonus Gonatas took the crown in his father’s stead, but was not to regain control of Macedonia for another ten years (Eusebius, Chronicle (p. 237)). After Demetrius’ abdication, a period of chaos resulted as rulership of Macedonia changed hands repeatedly, but finally returned to Antigonus Gonatas, and remained in Antigonid hands for more than 100 years, until Macedonia finally capitulated to Rome in 168 B.C. (Eusebius, Chronicle (p. 239)).

Thus, were the lines of the Diadochi finally reduced to four, and it is here at last that we can identify their respective territories. Lysimachus was in possession of Thrace and the territories within the Taurus Mountains of Asia Minor to the north; Ptolemy was secure in Egypt, Africa, Cyprus, and Phoenicia to the south, also having gained control of the southern coast of Asia Minor, just a sliver of land south of the Taurus Mountains; Seleucus had taken all the territory east of the Taurus range from Cilicia and Syria to Babylon; and Demetrius' son, Antigonus Gonatas, was claiming sovereign rights over Macedonia in the west.

Reduction to Three (288 - 281 B.C.)

Four kingdoms were thus established—north, south, east and west—forged over a 35-year period in the chaotic crucible of a post-Alexandrian world, resulting in what would turn out to be a brief, unsustainable equilibrium. Each king kept his covetous gaze warily focused on his neighbor's territory, and in 281 B.C., the equilibrium collapsed. Seleucus crossed the Taurus Mountains into Asia Minor and engaged Lysimachus at the Battle of Corupedium. He defeated and killed Lysimachus, and shortly thereafter, Seleucus himself was murdered after his conquest of Thrace (Pausianas, Description of Greece, Book 1.16.2). His son, Antiochus I, thus took the crown and ruled over the territory.

The Seleucid Dynasty in Asia Minor (281 - 190 B.C.)

The outcome of the Battle of Corupedium is one of the most remarkable and most frequently overlooked facts of post-Alexandrian Hellenism. From this point forward, until the Battle of Magnesia in 190 B.C., the Seleucids reigned in Asia Minor. They retained their territories in the east, but lived in, and reigned primarily from, the north, holding court in Sardis and living in Ephesus.

Esteemed historian of the Seleucid dynasty, Edwyn Robert Bevan, arrived at precisely this conclusion in his two-volume work, The House of Seleucus. Once Seleucus defeated Lysimachus at Corupedium, the descendants of the Seleucid line made their home quite comfortably in Asia Minor and Thrace, and in fact preferred it over their other dominions. It was the seat of the Seleucid empire until their catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Romans at Magnesia. It is only then that the Seleucids go back to being “Syrian” kings. Of this astonishing fact, Bevan writes,

“… Asia Minor rather than Syria or the East seems, till after Magnesia, the chief sphere of Seleucid activity. One may well believe that it was the part of their dominions to which the Seleucid kings attached the greatest value. It is never so inappropriate to speak of the dynasty as ‘Syrian’ as in these earlier reigns.” (Bevan, Edwyn Robert, The House of Seleucus, vol 1, London: Edward Arnold (1902) 150-51)

“Asia Minor was in fact considered the real home of the earlier Seleucids.” (Bevan, The House of Seleucus, vol 1, 151n)

It is from Asia Minor that the Seleucids administered their vast empire, from 281 B.C. onward, until Magnesia. Shortly after Corupedium, Seleucus was murdered in Thrace (Pausianas, Description of Greece, Book 1.16.2) and his son, Antiochus I stepped in and ruled over the territory. Antiochus I’s activities within the Taurus Mountains were extensive, and we have numismatic evidence that Antiochus I’s rule was recognized as far as Thrace, for coins have been found in Europe bearing his name and image (Ernest Babelon, Catalogue des monnaies grecques: Les rois de Syrie, d’Arménie, et de Commagène (Bibliothèque nationale (1890) XLVIII).

When Antiochus I died (261 B.C.), his son Antiochus II rose up in his place, earning the appellation Theos for rescuing the Bithynians from the tyrant Timarchus (Appian, History of Rome, The Syrian Wars, 65; OGIS 26). At times, Antiochus II is found pressing his affairs well into Europe, as when he “besieged Cypsela, a city in Thrace,” for “he had in his army many Thracians of good rank and family” (Polyaenus, Strategems, Book 4, Chapter 16.1). Antiochus II reigned in Asia Minor until his death in 246 B.C.. His son and grandsons after him would call Asia Minor home, and would continue claiming sovereign rights to the northern territory for another six decades.

The Two Wives, and Two Kingdoms, of Antiochus II

This obscure period during which the Seleucids lived, loved and reigned in Asia Minor and Thrace is significant to us because the 11th chapter of Daniel does not even make mention of the "king of the north" until the reign of Antiochus II (261 to 246 B.C.) by which time the Seleucids had been established in the north for generations. It is only when Ptolemy, "king of the south," arranges the marriage of his daughter, Berenice, to Antiochus II that the "king of the north" is mentioned in the narrative:

"...for the king’s daughter of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement..." (Daniel 11:6)

The year is 252 B.C., and Antiochus II is currently living in Ephesus with his wife, Laodice. But Ptolemy has made an offer that he cannot refuse. Lest his most precious properties in Asia Minor fall into the hands of Berenice by marriage, Antiochus II hastily deeds them to Laodice as part of the terms of divorce, recording the settlement in temples throughout Asia Minor and Thrace (Orientis graeci inscriptiones selectae (OGIS) 225).

His Northern kingdom thus arranged, Antiochus II crossed the Taurus Mountains to Antioch to be with Berenice in the East. The divorce, however, had been but a formality. Antiochus II in reality was maintaining “two wives, Laodice [in Ephesus] and Berenice [in Antioch], the former a love-match, the latter a daughter pledged to him by Ptolemy [II]” (Appian, History of Rome, The Syrian Wars, 65). The arrangement in Syria would not last long. Political necessity had brought him to Antioch, but love brought him back to Ephesus. The Taurus Mountains could not keep Antiochus away from his first love, and before he dies, he is back in the arms of Laodice (Eusebius, Chronicle). But Laodice does not suffer bigamists well, and is believed to have poisoned him (Appian, History of Rome, The Syrian Wars, 65), lest his affections drift eastward again to Syria, and her children lose their crown rights to the interloper queen from Egypt. It is in Ephesus that Antiochus dies.

The King of the North was King of the North

Lest we fail to state the obvious, Antiochus II was living in the north (Asia Minor) rather than the east (Syria) when Ptolemy, king of the south, approached him with the offer of marriage to Berenice. He was in possession of both the northern crown and the eastern crown at the time, but both his heart and his throne were in Asia Minor. He was not living in Antioch when the offer was made, and his marriage and living arrangements with Ptolemy's daughter in Syria were crafted in such a way as to maximize political gain, but minimize the risk of losing his northern kingdom. As Bevan noted above, “Asia Minor was in fact considered the real home of the earlier Seleucids” (Bevan, The House of Seleucus, vol 1, 151n). Asia Minor, with Thrace, was the northern territory of Daniel's narrative in chapter 11, not Syria.

The Eviction of the Seleucids

This matter of the northern king's territory becomes strikingly apparent when a later Seleucid king, Antiochus III, evokes the ire of the nascent Roman republic to the west. His activities in Thrace were interpreted as a threat, but Antiochus III insists that he is simply maintaining Seleucid territories that had been in his family since Corupedium (Polybius, The Histories, Book 18.49-51). Antiochus III underestimates the resolve of the new western republic and advances undaunted into the Greek Isles. It was a momentous miscalculation.

Rome had had enough, moved in to meet him on the field of battle, and "completely defeated Antiochus in the great battle of Magnesia” in 190 B.C. (Livius, History of Rome, Book 38.58). The Seleucid reign in the north was over. According to the terms dictated to them at the Treaty of Apamea in 188 B.C., the Seleucids “must retire from Europe and from all Asia on this side [of the] Taurus” (Polybius, The Histories, Book 21.17.3). After being evicted from his Northern territory, Antiochus III returned to the East and died in Elam (Babylonian King List 6(r); Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Book 28.3, Book 29.15)). These events fulfilled the prophecy of Daniel 11:18-19:

"After this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many: but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease; without his own reproach he shall cause it to turn upon him. Then he shall turn his face toward the fort of his own land: but he shall stumble and fall, and not be found."

From the East the Seleucids had come. To the East they had returned. But from 281 - 190 B.C., they were truly, and emphatically, kings of Asia Minor and Thrace, the northern kingdom.

Remarkably, from this point forward in Daniel 11, no king of the Seleucid line is ever called "king of the north" again. The Seleucids six times had been styled by the narrator as “king of the north”  (Daniel 11:6, 7, 8, 11, 13 & 15), but when they were evicted from Asia Minor and Thrace, the title was no longer applied to them.

Undoubtedly, with only brief interruptions, the Seleucid kings were truly kings over the Syrian territory throughout the entire period depicted in Daniel 11:5-39. As we noted above, the wars between the king of the north and the king of the south were between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, the kings of Syria and Egypt, respectively. We do not deny it. What is significant to us, however, is that the appellation "king of the north" is a geographic one, not a dynastic one—it follows the territory, not the family. Whoever reigned over Asia Minor and Thrace was "king of the north," and it is for this reason alone that the Seleucids were so designated from Daniel 11:5 to Daniel 11:17. During that period, they wore both crowns, East and North. Once evicted from Asia Minor and Thrace, they lost the northern crown and from that point forward in the prophetic record the Seleucids are no longer identified as "king of the north" (Daniel 11:18-39).

Our conclusion, upon examination of the Scriptural evidence and the historical record, is that "the king of the north" in Daniel 11 should be identified with Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) and Thrace instead of Syria. The prophetic evidence and the historical record support that proposition.

We will examine more evidence in support of this proposition and its eschatological implications in part 2.

Most of us, from a very young age, have been familiar with the great statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream:

"This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay." (Daniel 2:32-33)

What Nebuchadnezzar had seen was a succession of four empires. A Stone arrives toward the end of his vision and breaks the statue to pieces, "and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (Daniel 2:34-35). The meaning of the dream was revealed to the prophet, and the Stone in particular has ever since been of great interest to the Church:

"And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever." (Daniel 2:44)

The Stone strikes the statue, the Kingdom of God is established, and "all these kingdoms" crumbled to dust, and "no place was found for them" (Daniel 2:34). There is an emphatic finality in the phrase, "no place was found for them." They are gone, for they have become "like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away."

Daniel's Subtle Clue

The common interpretation is pretty straightforward: after a succession of four empires (Daniel 2:37-44), the Stone is clearly the Church growing up into a global earthly entity, covering the earth like a mountain, the fifth kingdom in a succession of kingdoms. The rise of the Church after the Roman empire is very clearly depicted in the historical record, and the prophetic record seems to indicate exactly that.

Or does it?

Had Daniel only recorded two chapters, there would not be much more to discuss. But in Daniel 7, the prophet records a very subtle observation that has great bearing on the meaning of Daniel 2.

In Daniel 7, the prophet's dream also depicts a series of four empires, after which the saints take possession of the kingdom, just as in Daniel 2:

"These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever." (Daniel 7:17-18)

So far so good. Just like in Daniel 2, there are four empires in a row, and then the saints appear to get the fifth kingdom. And just as the impact of the Stone in Daniel 2 strikes the Fourth Empire, the "body" of the Fourth Empire of Daniel 7 is burned up and destroyed as well. A judgment against the fourth empire seems to be the harbinger of the rise of the Church to global prominence.

But in Chapter 7, Daniel adds an additional detail that gives us pause. He does not say that the Fourth Empire and all the preceding empires with it are utterly removed after the judgment against the fourth empire. Instead he says quite the opposite. Those preceding empires are not immediately destroyed at all, and in stark contrast with Daniel 2, they live on:

"I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame. As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time." (Daniel 7:11-12)

Contrast the finality of the statement regarding the other kingdoms in Daniel 2 after the fourth empire is struck...

"... no place was found for them" (Daniel 2:34).

... with the extension of life for the other kingdoms described in Daniel 7 after the fourth empire is burned up ...

"... yet their lives were prolonged ..." (Daniel 7:11-12)

We suggest that if their lives were prolonged, then clearly a "place" was indeed found for them, and if "no place was found for them" then their lives were not prolonged. The two depictions seem to be at odds with each other, unless we have been looking at it the wrong way.

And there must be another way of looking at it. The Daniel of chapter 2 and the Daniel of chapter 7 received similar revelations from the same source (Daniel 2:28, 7:16). There would be Four Kingdoms on earth, and then "the God of heaven [shall] set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed" (Daniel 2:37-44). There are Four Kingdoms to come on earth, but "the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom" (Daniel 7:17-18). These are very consistent statements.

Then why the subtle discrepancy? Why, after the impact of the Stone against the fourth empire in Daniel 2, are the preceding empires removed, but after the destruction of the fourth empire of Daniel 7, the preceding empires live on?

The Interim Kingdom

There is, of course, no real discrepancy at all. After the fourth kingdom of Daniel 7, an antagonist arises, "a little horn" that comes up from among the remnants of the fourth empire (Daniel 7:8). That "little horn" has an earthly dominion (Daniel 7:21-26), speaks arrogantly against God (Daniel 7:8,11,25), and makes war against the saints and prevails (Daniel 7:21,25). That "little horn" shares the same attributes with the Sea Beast of Revelation 13, which also has an earthly dominion (Revelation 13:7), speaks arrogantly against God (Revelation 13:5), and makes war against the saints and prevails (Revelation 13:7). And most importantly, the Sea Beast of Revelation 13 is comprised of all the preceding empires of Daniel's vision of chapter 7 (Revelation 13:2).

Our point here is that the Little Horn of Daniel 7 is a conglomeration of "all these kingdoms" of Daniel 2:44, the manifestation of "the rest of the beasts" in Daniel 7. It is through the "little horn"—the Sea Beast of Revelation 13—that the lives of "the rest of the beasts" were prolonged. And thus, we have a very subtle but meaningful clue from the hand of the prophet. If the lives of "the rest of the beasts" were prolonged after the judgment against the fourth empire (Daniel 7:12), then Daniel 7:12 must necessarily occur after the impact of the Stone against the fourth empire in Daniel 2:34. And if Daniel 2:35 says the preceding empires are completely and utterly destroyed, then Daniel 2:35 must necessarily occur after Daniel 7:12 which says they were allowed to live on. That places Daniel 7:12 squarely between Daniel 2:34 and Daniel 2:35.

To put it another way, the "little horn" of Daniel 7—which is none other than Sea Beast of Revelation 13—must arise between Daniel 2:34 and 2:35 as the fifth earthly empire in the succession of Daniel's visions, and thus, Daniel 2:34 and 2:35 must depict two separate strikes of the Stone. In fact, the verses are written that way. Daniel 2:34 says the Stone struck and broke only the iron and clay feet to pieces, and Daniel 2:35 and 2:45 say that the Stone broke all of them to pieces at once, grinding them to chaff. Those are two different impacts of the Stone against the statue.

The Earthly Kingdom of the Saints

Part of the reason the Stone has historically been interpreted as the fifth earthly empire in succession is because Daniel 2:34-35 is interpreted as a single strike during the Roman Empire, and the Stone is depicted as filling "the whole earth" immediately following that strike. But what is notable is that the Kingdom the saints inherit after four preceding kingdoms is not earthly, but heavenly. Notice the language used in both chapters to describe the kingdom received by the saints "in the days of these kings" of the feet of the statue:

"And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom..." (Daniel 2:44)

"These ... are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom ..." (Daniel 7:18)

There is no mention of an earthly kingdom for the saints, and we know that the kingdom Jesus came announcing during the fourth empire was "not of this world" (John 18:36). The kingdom the saints receive during the fourth empire is heavenly.

But at the end of the visions, there is a sudden and perceptible shift in the language used to describe the kingdom given to the saints. It is finally earthly, "under heaven," filling "the whole earth":

"... and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth." (Daniel 2:35)

"...and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High..." (Daniel 7:27)

Notably, the kingdom of the saints does not fill "the whole earth" immediately after the Stone strikes the feet, but only after "all these kingdoms" are broken to pieces and consumed and "no place was found for them" (Daniel 2:35,44-45). The saints are not given a kingdom "under the whole heaven" immediately after the fourth beast is destroyed, but only after the dominion of the little horn is consumed and destroyed to the uttermost (Daniel 7:26). Then, and only then, does the Kingdom of Heaven come to earth. Only after the fifth empire's dominion is taken away. The Church will be the sixth earthly empire of Daniel's visions, not the fifth. The fifth earthly empire is the earthly dominion of the Little Horn, not the kingdom of the saints.

Two Strikes of the Stone

By evaluating Daniel 2 and 7 together, we find that chapter 2 depicts an initial strike of the Stone against the fourth empire, and the saints of God receiving a heavenly kingdom, and chapter 7 depicts an initial judgment against the fourth empire, and the Little Horn receiving an earthly kingdom. Revelation 13 depicts that Little Horn as the manifestation of all the preceding empires, which are given a prolongation of life after the judgment against the fourth empire (Daniel 7:12). Only much later, after all the empires are ground to dust by the second strike of the Stone (Daniel 2:35) at the destruction of the Little Horn (Daniel 7:26) do the saints actually receive an earthly kingdom.

In short, the saints of God do not receive the fifth earthly kingdom of Daniel's visions, but rather the sixth. It is not the Church but rather the Little Horn of Daniel 7, the Beast of Revelation 13:2, that receives the fifth earthly kingdom immediately following the Roman empire.

The significance of this to the Christian is that a cursory reading of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 without first harmonizing them may mislead one into expecting an earthly Christianized kingdom immediately following the Roman empire. Many a student of Scripture and history has stumbled at that very point, thinking that Daniel 2:34-35 depicted a single strike, and thus that the politically influential Roman Church State arising from the fragments of the Roman Empire was the manifestation of the Stone filling the whole earth.

However, when Daniel 2:34-35 are seen to depict two separate strikes of the Stone, it becomes clear that we should not expect or seek an earthy kingdom immediately after the Roman Empire. In fact, to the contrary, Daniel and Revelation warn sternly against that expectation, and admonish us not to seek an earthly kingdom until after the Little Horn is utterly and finally removed from the earth. Only then do the saints receive an earthly kingdom.

And thus, we offer this modest eschatological proposal: Daniel 2 depicts not one, but two, separate strikes of the Stone. The fifth empire of Daniel's visions, therefore, was not the Church but rather the very thing the Church was warned to avoid.

At the time of the Council of Nicæa, Alexandria and Antioch were located together in one diocese, just like Rome and Milan.

The decade from 373 to 383 A.D. is one of the most critical periods in the post-apostolic era, not because of what was happening in the Church, but because of what happened in the Roman Empire. Sometime during those ten years, the civil Diocese of Egypt was created by splitting the Diocese of Oriens in two. As we shall demonstrate, that late 4th century creation of the Diocese of Egypt is one of the most important developments in the history of ecclesiology, and it went almost completely unnoticed until the 16th century. By then, the damage was done, and even today church history, as an academic discipline, struggles to recover from the oversight.

The Formation of the Diocese of Egypt

In 293 A.D., Emperor Diocletian established the tetrarchy, dividing the empire into twelve dioceses, and assigning to each tetrarch capital the administration of three of the twelve dioceses as shown in Table 1, below:

Table 1: The Original Diocesan Division of the Empire

Each diocese was itself subdivided into numerous smaller units called provinces. Evidence for this specific twelve-way division dates to 314 A.D., and is attested by the Laterculus Veronensis.[1] Notably, there was no “Diocese of Egypt” at the time, which left Antioch and Alexandria together in the Diocese of Oriens, as shown in the map at the head of this article. Of similar relevance to our discussion, Milan became the chief metropolis of Italy, being located together with Rome in the Diocese of Italy, also depicted above.

The tetrarchy collapsed over the course of the next century, but the diocesan system endured. Several notable changes occurred in the arrangement and number of dioceses, yielding a final count of thirteen by the end of the 4th century. The Diocese of Moesia had been broken up into the two Dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia. The Dioceses of Gaul and Vienne had been combined into the single Diocese of Gaul. And finally, the Diocese of Oriens had been divided into the two Dioceses of Oriens and Egypt.[2] When the 4th century came to a close, the Roman Empire had been effectively divided into the following thirteen dioceses as shown in Table 2, below:

Table 2: Final Diocesan Division of the Empire

Evidence for this specific thirteen-way division late in the 4th century dates to 400 A.D. and is attested by the Notitia Dignitatum.

Of particular interest to us is the timing of the formation of the Diocese of Egypt. It was not part of Diocletian’s original diocesan division, and the evidence shows that it was a very late element of the reorganization. As late as 373 A.D., we have evidence that Alexandria was still located within the civil Diocese of Oriens, showing that even then the Diocese of Egypt still had not been formed.[3] It is not until 383 A.D. that we have an explicit reference in the civil records to Dioecesis Ægyptiaca, the Diocese of Egypt.[4] Sometime between 373 A.D. and 383 A.D., the Diocese of Egypt had been created.

The Significance of the Diocese of Egypt

The reason the late creation of the Diocese of Egypt is so important to the history of Christianity is because knowledge of the arrangement of the dioceses—and specifically knowledge of the timing of the creation of the Diocese of Egypt—is absolutely necessary to a proper understanding of Canon 6 of the Council of Nicæa (325 A.D.). In Diocletian’s original reorganization of the empire, Milan and Rome were located together in the Diocese of Italy. Milan was the chief of the diocese, but neither Milan nor Rome administered the whole. Likewise, the two cities of Antioch and Alexandria were located together in the Diocese of Oriens. By the time of the Council of Nicæa that status quo remained unchanged, and Canon 6 was written in that specific geographic context. Canon 6 cannot be understood without this information, yet much of it lay hidden in obscurity for over twelve hundred years. It was only in the 16th century that the history of the late formation of the Diocese of Egypt came to light, but by then more than a millennium of canonical interpretation had already transpired. The ostensible meaning of Canon 6 had long since been established in ignorance.

The matter being addressed in Canon 6 was that Meletius of Thebaid in Oriens had presumed to ordain bishops who were within the Diocese of Oriens, but were under Alexandrian jurisdiction. Peter of Alexandria accused Meletius of “entering our parish”[5] to perform the ordinations. Thus, the dispute involved the recognition and enforcement of episcopal boundaries within the Diocese of Oriens. The particular challenge facing the Council of Nicæa was how to define Alexandrian jurisdiction within a diocese that, in the civil realm, was administered from Antioch. Had the Diocese of Egypt already existed at the time, the solution would have been as simple as telling each bishop to stay in his own diocese. But that option was not available at the time. Alexandria and Antioch coexisted together in the same diocese, and a jurisdictional solution would have to be crafted with that in mind.

When we examine the canon in question, it becomes immediately apparent that the Council was compelled to define Alexandrian metropolitan jurisdiction in terms of several provinces of the Diocese of Oriens. Of equal significance, Antioch’s metropolitan jurisdiction was described in terms of the other provinces of the diocese:

“Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges. And this is to be universally understood, that if any one be made bishop without the consent of the Metropolitan, the great Synod has declared that such a man ought not to be a bishop.” (Nicæa, Canon 6).

It would have been simple enough had the council merely stated that Alexandria should administer a few specific provinces in Oriens and that Antioch should administer the rest, but the council went on and provided its rationale for the decision: “…since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also.” What could this mean? Why was a custom of a bishop in a completely different diocese invoked in order to settle an internal boundary dispute between bishops in the Diocese of Oriens?

The answer to the question is remarkably simple when the contemporary topography is taken into account. Diocletian’s reorganization had placed both Milan and Rome within the civil Diocese of Italy, and had also placed both Antioch and Alexandria within the civil Diocese of Oriens. In Italy, Diocletian had avoided administrative conflicts by making Milan the chief metropolis while relegating to Rome a few suburbicarian provinces adjacent to the city. By the time of Nicæa the church had adapted to the new civil boundaries, so the structural congruency between Alexandria and Rome was obvious to anyone familiar with current events. When boundary disputes arose within Oriens between Antioch and Alexandria, a solution presented itself immediately: just as the Bishop of Rome administered a few provinces within the Diocese of Italy (the rest being administered from Milan), Alexandria could administer a few provinces within the Diocese of Oriens (the rest being administered from Antioch). The solution was as elegant as it was simple.

Evidence for this geographic arrangement in Italy is abundant in the historical record. In the mid-4th century Milan was still being called the “Metropolis of Italy,”[6] and its bishop the “Metropolitan of Italy.”[7] Also at that time writers were still distinguishing between “Italy” and “these parts [of Rome]”[8] or “the city of Rome and the parts of Italy,”[9] as if they were two different administrative regions, “the parts of Italy,” which were administered by Milan, and “these parts” administered by Rome, mirroring the civil order in that diocese. The church had clearly adapted to the civil boundaries established within Italy, and in Canon 6 that same arrangement was applied to Oriens. The earliest Latin translation of Canon 6 recites the limited jurisdiction of the Bishop of the City of Rome—the suburban provinces (in suburbicaria loca sollicitudinem gerat)[10]—showing that in the west, the church had understood exactly why the example of the Bishop of Rome was invoked: not because his jurisdiction was so great, but rather because his jurisdiction was defined in terms of a few provinces of another metropolitan’s diocese. That was exactly the situation Alexandria faced in the Diocese of Oriens, so the council simply recognized Alexandria’s position over several provinces within the diocese on the basis of a similar custom for the Bishop of Rome within the Diocese of Italy.

That solution, of course, left the Bishop of Jerusalem still within the boundaries of Antioch’s portion of the diocese. To prevent any further disputes, the Council simply extended titular honors to Jerusalem in the next canon, leaving the bishop of Antioch as the ranking metropolitan (Nicæa, Canon 7).

As the century wore on, this understanding of what Nicæa had done for Alexandria was retained in the corporate memory of the church. In 347 A.D., Athanasius’ defenders were still describing his jurisdiction in provincial terms (Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis) rather than diocesan terms.[11] In 351 A.D., Athanasius was still identifying his jurisdiction in those same provincial terms even when identifying other bishops by their respective civil dioceses.[12] Clearly, there was still no “Diocese of Egypt” even in the mid-4th century.

But by 381 A.D., something had changed. The Diocese of Egypt must have been formed during that critical decade from 373 to 383 A.D., and knowledge of the newly created diocese had reached the assembled bishops in the capital of the empire. The 2nd canon of Constantinople reflected the new status quo, and Alexandrian jurisdiction was no longer being described in provincial terms, but rather in explicitly diocesan terms. Likewise, Antioch’s jurisdiction was no longer being described in terms of “the rest of the provinces,” but rather in terms of the Diocese of Oriens:

“The bishops are not to go beyond their dioceses to churches lying outside of their bounds, nor bring confusion on the churches; but let the Bishop of Alexandria, according to the canons, alone administer the affairs of Egypt [Ægypto tantum]; and let the bishops of the East manage the East alone [Orientem solum], the privileges of the Church in Antioch, which are mentioned in the canons of Nice, being preserved.” (Council of Constantinople, canon 2)[13]

The bishops at Constantinople had essentially restated the substance of Canons 6 and 7 of Nicæa in contemporary terms, reflecting the creation of a new diocese. A new geographic reality was present to them that had not been available to the preceding council: the existence of the Diocese of Egypt created out of provinces formerly attached to the now smaller Diocese of Oriens.

When viewed through the lens of the contemporary boundary disputes taking place within the diocese of Oriens, the provincial language used by Nicæa to define Alexandrian and Antiochian jurisdiction makes perfect sense. So does the provincial language used by Athanasius and his defenders even past the middle of the 4th century, because the Diocese of Egypt still did not exist yet at the time. Then, when the Diocese of Egypt was created sometime between 373 and 383 A.D., it made perfect sense to start describing the jurisdiction of Alexandria in terms of the new Diocese of Egypt, as well as to describe the jurisdiction of Antioch in terms of the now smaller Diocese of Oriens, which is exactly what Canon 2 of Constantinople did.

The Origin of the Myth

But what did not make sense was to attribute this to the Council of Nicæa. Nicæa could not have assigned Alexandrian and Antiochian jurisdiction in diocesan terms that were five decades ahead of their time. The Council of Nicæa had not assigned Egypt to Alexandria or Oriens to Antioch. It just was not possible. The Diocese of Egypt had not yet been formed, and the Diocese of Oriens still included Alexandria and the several provinces over which its bishop presided.

Nevertheless, after Constantinople, the language of Nicæa was gradually modified in contemporary literature, and the elegant simplicity of Nicæa’s provincial solution was soon lost in the fog of history. It was as if the church had simply forgotten when the Diocese of Egypt had been created. A collective amnesia set in, and they forgot that Nicæa had only solved an episcopal boundary dispute by assigning to Alexandria several provinces of a diocese that, in the civil realm, was entirely under the jurisdiction of Antioch.

The rewriting of Nicæa first manifested in the last years of the 4th century in Jerome’s letter to Pammachius (398 A.D.). “Unless I am deceived,” he insisted, the Council of Nicæa had assigned to Antioch “the whole of the East (totius Orientis).”[14] But Jerome was deceived, for he had assumed that the Diocese of Egypt must have already been in existence at Nicæa and that the council had therefore assigned all of Oriens to Antioch, a historical impossibility.

In 403 A.D., Rufinus of Aquileia perpetuated the error by saying that the 6th of Nicæa had granted to Alexandria “the charge of Egypt (Ægypti),”[15] which was not true. The council had granted to Alexandria several provinces of Oriens—Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis—precisely because there was no Diocese of Egypt to assign.

By 411 A.D., the confusion was advanced by Pope Innocent I in his epistle to Alexander of Antioch. In that letter he explained that Nicæa had established Antioch “over a diocese” (super diœcesim),[16] which was not true. Nicæa did not, and could not, establish Antioch over a diocese for the very simple reason that Alexandria was still located within Oriens at the time, and was in fact presiding over several of its provinces.

By 451 A.D. at the council of Chalcedon, both the eastern and the western bishops were reciting Canon 6 as if Nicæa had done the impossible: assign the Diocese of Egypt to Alexandria. Notably, the West was already appropriating the inaccurate language to advance a case for Roman episcopal primacy:

Western Bishops’ version: “The church of Rome has always had primacy. Egypt is therefore also to enjoy the right that the bishop of Alexandria has authority over everything, since this is the custom for the Roman bishop also. Likewise both the one appointed in Antioch, and in the other provinces the churches of the larger cities, are to enjoy primacy.”[17]

Eastern bishops’ version: “Let the ancient customs in Egypt prevail, namely that the bishop of Alexandria has authority over everything, since this is customary for the bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch also and in the other provinces let the privileges be preserved in the churches.”[18]

We emphasize the phrase, “authority over everything,” to showcase the remarkable historical gloss that occurred since the creation of Egypt as a diocese after 373 A.D.. The last thing the bishops at Nicæa would have ever said of either Alexandria or Rome is that either bishop “has authority over everything.” The council had been in no position to place either Alexandria “over everything” in Oriens, or Rome "over everything" in Italy, since each was located in a civil diocese with another metropolitan bishop—Alexandria with Antioch, and Rome with Milan. All Nicæa could do was say that Alexandria was to “have jurisdiction in all these” provinces of Oriens, just as Rome is over a several provinces in Italy, and assign to Antioch “the rest of the provinces" in Oriens, which obviously carries a much different meaning than “authority over everything.”

Thus, between Nicæa and Chalcedon the prevailing cultural knowledge that Nicæa had set Alexandria over only a few provinces of Oriens gradually became more and more obscure. Absent from the new wording of the Nicæan canons was the limited, provincial language that made sense in the early 4th century topography. Gone was any notion that at the time of the council Alexandria and Antioch had been located together in the same civil diocese, just like Rome and Milan were in Italy. Looking back from Chalcedon, it appeared that the Diocese of Egypt had existed all along, and that Oriens had never included Egypt and Libya, and that the Dioceses of Italy and Oriens had never been so similarly situated, each compelled by geography to share an entire diocese between two metropolitan bishops.

All these men—Jerome, Rufinus, Innocent and the assembled bishops at Chalcedon—assumed that Nicæa in 325 A.D. had granted to Alexandria a diocese that could not have even existed until at least 373 A.D.. Thus, in the dusk of the 4th century and the dawn of the 5th, the die was cast, and the myth was born that of the Diocese of Egypt had been in existence at the time of Nicæa. Nicæa’s simple and elegant solution to an administrative problem in Oriens was lost.

The Expansion of the Myth

The historical error grew larger and more expansive with time. Historians who by then should have known better continued to assume that the Diocese of Egypt had existed at the time of Nicæa and that it had been assigned to Alexandria by Canon 6. The myth manifested in two ways—either by an outright claim that the Council had assigned the Diocese of Egypt to Alexandria, or indirectly by claiming that the Council had assigned the whole Diocese of Oriens to Antioch.

In 1576 A.D., Roberti Bellarmini wrote that Nicæa had assigned all of Oriens (totum Orientem) to Antioch,[19] a historical impossibility.

In 1671, Henrici Justellus claimed that Nicæa had granted “the whole diocese of Egypt” to Alexandria,[20] a colossal anachronism.

In 1855, Carl Joseph von Hefele stated that Nicæa had granted “the whole (civil) Diocese of Egypt” to Alexandria,[21] and further that Antioch’s jurisdiction must have been “the civil diocese of Oriens” at the time,[22] two geographic impossibilities.

In 1880, Fr. James Loughlin was still claiming that the Bishop of Antioch presided “throughout the great diocese of Oriens”[23] at the time of Nicæa, which of course, was impossible.

Not one of their claims was true.

Since the Diocese of Egypt did not yet exist at the time of Nicæa, and Alexandria was at the time located within the Diocese of Oriens, the Council simply did not have at its disposal the option of assigning to Alexandria “the whole diocese of Egypt” or to Antioch “all of Oriens.” It certainly did not place either of them “over everything.” It was geographically and historically impossible. That is precisely why the council had to define Alexandrian and Antiochian jurisdiction in provincial rather than diocesan terms in the first place. Jerome, Rufinus, Innocent, Chalcedon, Bellarmini, Justellus, Hefele and Loughlin were all wrong. The existence of the Diocese of Egypt at the time of Nicæa was nothing but a myth forged in ignorance in the waning years of the 4th century. The true origins of the Diocese of Egypt had lain hidden in obscurity for centuries, while the myth lived on.

The Roman Catholic Implications of the Myth

And it was a myth with legs. It does not take much imagination to realize why the myth is so beloved of Roman Catholic apologists. Upon that myth was built an even larger, and much more insidious, claim. Grant for a moment that the core elements of the myth are true: at the time of Nicæa the Bishop of Alexandria was presiding over the Diocese of Egypt, and the Bishop of Antioch was presiding over the whole Diocese of Oriens. If those are true, Canon 6 of Nicæa says these two bishops were to continue presiding over their own dioceses based on a custom of the Bishop of Rome.

What else could this mean, but Roman episcopal primacy?

What was the canon if not an acknowledgment of the ancient practice of even eastern metropolitans being assigned to their dioceses by the Bishop of Rome?

Even to this day, that is precisely how the myth has been employed by Roman Catholics in their interpretation of Canon 6. We list here a few examples spanning the time from Chalcedon to the present:

Western Bishops at Chalcedon (431 A.D.): “The church of Rome has always had primacy. Egypt is therefore also to enjoy the right that the bishop of Alexandria has authority over everything, since this is the custom for the Roman bishop also.”

Bellarmini (1576): “…because the Roman Bishop, before any definition of the Councils [i.e., from antiquity] used to allow the bishop of Alexandria to govern Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis.”[24]

Loughlin (1880): “[T]he clause in question can bear no other interpretation than this: ‘Alexandria and the other great Sees must retain their ancient sway because the Roman Pontiff wishes it.’”[25]

Unam Sanctam Catholicam (2016): “Let the Bishop of Alexandria continue to govern Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis, since assigning this jurisdiction is an ancient custom established by the Bishop of Rome and reiterated now by this Nicene Council.”[26]

These Roman Catholic interpretations of Canon 6 only make sense if the Diocese of Egypt already existed at Nicæa, and the boundaries of Oriens were already pared back to their late 4th century limits at the time of the Council. But it is just a myth. The diocese of Egypt was not even created until some time between 373 and 383 A.D., and the Diocese of Oriens at the time of Nicæa still included Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis.

Place the Diocese of Egypt back in its native context in the late 4th century, and the original meaning of the 6th of Nicæa is restored as well:

Milan was the chief metropolis of the Diocese of Italy, but Rome had been allowed by custom to preside over a few of its provinces. Antioch was the chief metropolis of Oriens, but Alexandria would be allowed to preside over a few of its provinces, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also.

What was similar between Alexandria and Rome was not that either had “authority over everything,” but rather that each had limited authority over a subset of provinces within another metropolitan’s diocese. That was the only reason the example of Rome had been invoked at all.

The Relentless Persistence of the Myth

As an example of just how persistent the myth and its implications have been even within academia, we offer the example of Dr. Sara Parvis from her 2007 book, Marcellus of Ancyra and the Lost Years of the Arian Controversy. Dr. Parvis is Senior Lecturer in Patristics at the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, and in her book, she commented on the geographic diversity of the bishops who attended the 335 A.D. synod of Tyre. Notice in her assessment of the council that she places Egypt and Libya outside of the civil diocese of Oriens, an anachronism at least four decades removed from reality:

“[I]t is clear from the list of provinces that it was basically a synod of the civil diocese of Oriens (Cilicia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Arabia, and Palestine) … supplemented by a handful of bishops from the Egyptian provinces (mainly Melitians) and Libya, and few others from further afield.”[27] (emphasis added)

As we have noted, as late as 373 A.D., and certainly at the time of the synod of Tyre, Egypt and Libya were located within the civil Diocese of Oriens. Parvis’ geographic anachronism was largely inconsequential in her analysis of Tyre, but in any analysis of the canons of Nicæa, an understanding of the contemporary topography of the empire is absolutely critical. The persistence of the myth even within academia has greatly hampered and distorted the historical attempts to understand the canons of Nicæa, and has only given license to Rome to claim Nicæan antiquity for Roman episcopal primacy.

Unraveling the Myth

Roman Catholicism’s claims of papal primacy based on Canon 6 of Nicæa are founded entirely upon the myth of the early existence of the Diocese of Egypt. By understanding the events that took place in that critical decade toward the end of the 4th century we can unravel that myth, and with it, the entirety of Roman Catholicism’s Nicæan argument for Roman episcopal primacy. In view of the geographic arrangement of the empire at the time, Nicæa’s reference to a similar custom regarding the Bishop of Rome was not an appeal to his ancient, limitless patriarchal sway after all, but rather to his very limited, provincial jurisdiction within the Diocese of Italy—an arrangement that perfectly mirrored Alexandria’s limited, provincial jurisdiction within the Diocese of Oriens, just as the Latins acknowledged in the earliest translation of the Nicæan canons. The Roman Bishop’s diminutive jurisdiction in a diocese that was otherwise administered from Milan provided just the precedent Nicæa needed to define Alexandria’s limited jurisdiction in a diocese that was otherwise administered by Antioch.

Without knowledge of the creation of the Diocese of Egypt, Roman Catholicism and her apologists run roughshod over the historical record and impose a late 4th century topography on an early 4th century council, and from that anachronism, extrapolate a revision of history that places the Bishop of Rome over all the churches of the world as early as 325 A.D.. However, equipped with the correct dating of the creation of the Diocese of Egypt in the late 4th century, we can completely deconstruct the Roman Catholic revisionism. That makes 373 to 383 A.D. one of the most important periods in the history of ecclesiology—not because of what was happening in the Church but because of what happened in the final arrangement of Diocletian’s diocesan reorganization of the empire.

(For more information on the origins of the myth, see the author's additional articles: False Teeth, "Unless I am Deceived...", Nicæa and the Roman Precedent.)

________________________

[1] Timothy David Barnes, The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 201–208

[2] Gibbon, Edward, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol 2, Appendix 11 “Dioceses and Provinces”, (London: Methuen & Co., ©1901) 548

[3] Pharr, Clyde, The Theodosian Code and Novels, and the Sirmondian Constitutions, (CTh hereafter) 12.1.63, (Princeton University Press, 1952), 351.

[4] Pharr, CTh 12.1.97, 356.

[5] So the Latin fragment indicates: “…sed insuper ingressam nostram parœciam…” (Peter of Alexandria, Fragments, Epistola ad Ecclesiam Alexandrinam, 1. Migne, PG, volume 18, 509).

[6] Athanasius, Historia Arianorum, Part IV, 28 & 33. NPNF-02, volume 4.

[7] Athanasius of Alexandria, Apologia de Fuga, 4. NPNF-02, volume 4.

[8] Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos, Part I, 2, 26. NPNF-02, volume 4. See Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca (PG hereafter), volume 25 (Imprimerie Catholique, Paris, 1857), 292. “Attamen necessum est vobis significare, etiamsi solus scripserim, non ideo mei solius esse illam sententiam, sed et omnium qui in Italia sunt, et qui in his partibus degunt episcoporum.”

[9] Athanasius, Historia Acephala, 1, 2. See Migne, PG, volume 26, 1443, “Athanasius reversus est ex Urbe, et partibus Italiæ, et ingressos est Alexandriam….”

[10] Cuthbertus Hamilton Turner, Ecclesiae Occidentalis, vol 1, (1899) 120.

[11] Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos, Part II, 6, 71. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series NPNF-02 volume 4. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, editors, M. Atkinson and Archibald Robertson, translators (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892); Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos, Part I, 1, 19, “Encyclical Letter of the Council of Egypt.” NPNF-02, volume 4.

[12] Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos, Part II, 6, 89. NPNF-02, volume 4.

[13] Henry R. Percival, editor, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, volume XIV, The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church, (Oxford: James Parker & Company, 1900), 176.

[14] Jerome, To Pammachius Against John of Jerusalem, 37. NPNF-02, vol 6. See Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina (P.L.), vol 23 (Imprimerie Catholique, Paris, 1854) 389

[15] Rufinus of Aquileia, Church History, Book 10.6, trans. Philip R. Amidon, S.J. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 14, 44n, “Et ut apud Alexandriam vel in urbe Roma vetusta consuetudo servetur, quia vel ille Ægypti vel hic suburbicariarum ecclesiarum sollicitudinem gerat.”

[16] Innocent I, Epistle XXIV, 1. Migne, P.L. vol 20, 547

[17] Richard Price & Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, vol 3, in Gillian Clark, Mark Humphries & Mary Whitby, Translated Texts for Historians, vol 45 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005) 85

[18] Price & Gaddis,  86

[19] Roberti Bellarmini, Disputationes, Tomus I (1576 ad) (Coloniæ Agrippinæ: Sumptibus Antonij & Arnoldi Hieratorum Fratrum, 1613), Book II, Chapter XIII, 165. “Nam Antiochenus habuit totum Orientem….”

[20] Gulielmi Voelli & Henrici Justellus, Bibliotheca Iuris Canonici Veteris, Tome 1 (Lutetiæ Parisorum, 1671), 71, columns. 1-2. “Haec ἐξουσία est potestas Metropolitani, quam Nicaeni Patres decernunt deberi in tribus provinciis hoc Canone denominatis, Aegypto, Libya, & Pentapoli, quae totam Aegyptiacam diœcesim constituebant tam in civilibus quam Ecclesiasticus.”

[21] Carl Joseph von Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, 2nd edition, (Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, 1855), 390. “Die ersten Worte unseres Canons besagen sonach: ‘dem Bischof von Alexandrien soll sein altes Borrecht, wonach die ganze (bürgerliche) Diöcese Aegypten unter seiner (geistlichen) Oberleitung steht, bestätigt werden.’”

[22] Charles Joseph Hefele, A History of the Christian Councils, William R. Clark, translator, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1871), 393, emphasis added.

[23] Loughlin, James F., “The Sixth Nicene Canon and the Papacy,” American Catholic Quarterly Review, volume 5, January to October 1880, (Philadelphia, PA: Hardy & Mahony, 1880), 237.

[24] Bellarmini,165, “…id est, quia Romanus Episc., ante omnem Conciliorum diffinitionem consueuit permittere Episcopo Alexandrino regimen Ægypti, Lybiæ & Pentapolis.”

[25] Loughlin, 230.

[26]Unam Sanctam Catholicam, “Papal Primacy in the First Councils”, January 31, 2016 http://www.unamsanctamcatholicam.com/history/historical-apologetics/79-history/98-papal-primacy-in-the-first-councils.html.

[27] Parvis, Sarah, Marcellus of Ancyra and the Lost Years of the Arian Controversy 325-345 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) 125.