The Words of the first Citizen Journalists still Reverberate around the World - 2000 years on.

Picture Communigate.co.uk. Commons atribute

The Council of Nicaea
Fresco, Sistine Chapel, The Vatican Photo: St Nicholas Society/Rosenthal

The joining of msnbc and newsvine does not constitute a council of Nicaea, and Calvin Tang is no Athanasius, thankfully!
The writers of the Gospels in the first centuries of the first millennium were the original citizen journalists. They were concerned, dedicated people who wished to make things better for 'their' people. Like any group of people, connected by contemporaneity or guided by the writings of earlier citizen journalists, they had lots of differing viewpoints, and ideas about how the perceived 'utopia' could be attained.

At first the forum in which they communicated their positions and opinions, the audience which listened to their eye witness accounts and proffered hearsay, was wide open and largely uncensored.
Consequently, around that time there were many different versions of the rise of the Messiah, the identity of the Messiah and just what the results of this Messiahs' sacrifice meant to the followers of the different 'truths'.
This really didn't help the theocratic ambitions of the Romans or the Turks, or anyone else who had a hankering for unlimited power over the faithful, so they held a meeting to see what they could do about it all.
It seems that there were some gospel writers who were concerned with the recounting of the big picture, they told of the important events using the broad swaths of history, not concerning themselves to closely with the minutiae of the wants and desires of the main players. We still have writers like that today, nothing new there.
Others were interested in people, they loved the interplay between the characters, they like the fluff. They still do. These 'fluff' journalists sort of got in the way of the deification process which the council were involved in though, as interesting as their writing was... Sorry, no publishing deal there!
Unfortunately, most of the concerned citizen journalists who started it all off were by then 'departed citizen journalists' and even if they weren't, there was no Newsvine around at that time to allow any opposing voices to be considered, even if in secrecy.
The results, after much debate in the council looked like this:

It looks like the old leader board had room for only four main players doesn't it.
The rest of the pack were buried under the table at Nicaea, they just didn't fit the religious and political doctrine of the day.
Happily, some far sighted folk had the balls to spirit away some of the works of the pack and hide them for posterity. They began to emerge in the 20th century, I'm sure the 21st will see more of these documents seeing the light of day.
Our clay jars, as citizen journalists of the 21st century are the servers and discs which hold our words.
Let's hope these storage jars last as long as those of the first citizen journalists have.

Back To Top