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To: Vicomte13
Slow down son!

The Bible came from God 2000 - 6000 years ago and well before the Catholic church. It is not of Catholic tradition or from man.

How do you explain the fact the Jesus had half brothers and sisters as taught in the new testament? Mt 12:47, the local people new who he was and who his family were.

Yes, Mary was a virgin when she had Jesus
134 posted on 08/15/2005 2:26:41 PM PDT by BillT
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To: BillT

"Slow down son!
The Bible came from God 2000 - 6000 years ago and well before the Catholic church. It is not of Catholic tradition or from man."

That is not the case, son.

The oldest part of the New Testament, the letter of Paul to the Galatians, was written circa 48 AD, in a Church that already had apostles, bishops, priests, deacons and deaconesses...as Paul's other letters, also written contemporaneously to, or prior to, the Gospels also tell us. The Canon of the Bible was not fixed in its present form until the 400s AD (for Catholics), or post 1530 AD (for Protestants).

When it comes to the Old and the New Testament, different Churches use different canons. The Catholic Church uses at least two, with the Vulgate Canon used in the West, and 3 and 4 Maccabbees added in certain Eastern Catholic rites.

The Bible came from the pen of men. It was inspired by God, and written by men, with most of the Old Testament dating from after 500 BC, and all of the New Testament dating after circa 48 AD.

Obviously there was no Catholic Church around before Christ. Equally obviously, there was the Catholic Church in the time of the apostles, with their bishops, priests, deacons and deaconesses, then as now.

A nice bridging work that shows the all-too-familiar structure of the Church was written by Bishop Eusebius starting in about 290 AD and ending sometime after the Council of Nicaea. The Church he describes, reaching back to the apostles, is dreadfully Catholic. And the sacred books he describes, or rejects, include some that are in the canon, and some that are left out of it.

It was the Church that settled on (a couple of) canon(s).
Luther revisited this, and eventually the rest of the Protestant world came around to Luther's canon.


139 posted on 08/15/2005 2:44:03 PM PDT by Vicomte13 (Et alors?)
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To: BillT
had half brothers and sisters

Hebrew or Aramaic used the same word for "brother", "half brother", and "cousin", so it does not prove that Mary had other children.

A more positive reference to perpetual virginity of Mary is in this prophecy:

2 And the Lord said to me: This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it: because the Lord the God of Israel hath entered in by it, and it shall be shut

(Ezechiel 44:2)


141 posted on 08/15/2005 3:10:42 PM PDT by annalex
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