Joshua Gordon Thank you for the reference; and it matches up
   closely to what I learned during my three year stint as a
   converted Eastern Orthodox in my 20s (it was my religious
   questing time - staying in a monastery for a bit is quite fun
   actually) - I'm agnostic now but anyway,

   Learning an alternate view of history than what I did when I was
   a kid and Methodist was amazing. Growing up, it was all about
   the archeology, but these Greeks had monks in the desert,
   Scribes, an education system with actual continuity (rather than
   having to rediscover the past; they really didn't lose it
   because they had no "middle ages").

   And the archeological finds in the West corresponded nicely to
   the record-keeping from the Greek side; the scribes in
   particular were quite anal about accuracy; one of the biggest
   and hottest debates in the Council of Nicea in 325 was over a
   single iota...
   [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoousian

   It was an attempt at a scientific, rational way of bringing
   consistency to the group. After all, where did the idea of
   reason come from? The Greeks. Where did the very idea of "idea"
   come from? the Greeks (Plato).

   I'm not Greek, but it was nice to get a view of history that
   wasn't limited to what I learned in New Jersey by a history
   teacher who used books that had cavemen with blond hair and
   shaved faces. *sigh* Thoughts, [2]James Chambers ?

References

   Visible links
   1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoousian
   2. https://www.facebook.com/jcnotmyrealone