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To: annalex; InterestedQuestioner
No, not the same. I make reference to the Tradition, which never contemplated the idea that Mary was not a perpetual virgin. That Tradition was formed when copies not lost were available and oral memory was also available. Besides, the Tradition was formed by men who spoke Koine as a living language. In contrast, a typical Protestant mariophobe works from late translations into English, often done tendentiously by people with a destructive agenda. Note that I invited everyone to analyse Matthew 1:25 in Koine with tools readily available (1633); and likewise InterestedQuestioner provided a complete analysis of the usage of "brother" and "sister" in the Gospel, incompatible with the notion that Mary had other children beside Jesus, in 1600. In response we got stubborn unencumbered by any analytical thinking one-liners, which still do not prove the mariophobic point. It is exercises like this, -- which give me a certain guilty pleasure, I confess, -- that convince me that late Protestantism, at least in its popular variety, completely lost the ability to understand the scripture, and does not seem to care.

Well, since I'm not a Protestant, you may well be wasting your time on me. I would be interested though in learning the earliest dated original documents you use to prove this so-called Tradition.

Remember, not third or fourth generation copies, but original documents.

1,864 posted on 02/26/2006 1:16:32 PM PST by OLD REGGIE (I am most likely a Biblical Unitarian? Let me be perfectly clear. I know nothing.)
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To: OLD REGGIE
I would be interested though in learning the earliest dated original documents you use to prove this so-called Tradition.

So would I. I am not a historian (I am a computer engineer). But the difference between Scripture and Tradition is precisely that Tradition is self-correcting, while Scripture is not. If I need to understand the passage I suspect is not self-evident, I can read the Catechism or talk to a priest, till that process brings a better understanding. Usually, a reference to the early Church writings closes the deal, if the Catechism is silent. That way, the meaning of a particular verse, say, Matthew 1:25 or Luke 1:28, is understood not through some archaeological analysis of surviving copies, but by evidence of understanding common to the Fathers.

2,019 posted on 02/27/2006 1:30:09 PM PST by annalex
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