Posted on 12/03/2013 6:11:20 AM PST by marshmallow
What sort of religion keeps dead people’s bones, puts them on display, and expects people to kiss them? Catholicism - and it's awesome.
What sort of religion keeps dead people’s bones, puts them on display, and expects people to kiss them? This weekend’s news reminds the world that the veneration of relics is still very much part of the Catholic faith. As a fitting climax to the Year of Faith, Pope Francis put on display for the first time the bones of St. Peter, the first Pope.
The news headlines focused on the sensational, and many journalists asked the obvious questions, often missing the point and skimming over the facts to report superficially. There are some excellent questions that arise from the reports of St. Peter’s bones being produced: What are relics and why are they important to Catholics? Why do Catholics kiss the bones of dead people? Are Catholics really so gullible as to believe in the authenticity of relics (we know they’re fake, right)? Could those bone fragments really be the remains of Peter the Apostle?
A relic is anything associated with a person who has been canonized as a saint or beatified as blessed. There are three categories of relics: a first class relic is some part of the person’s mortal remains. The relic could be a fragment of bone, hair, skin, or blood. The relic is taken when the body of the saint is exhumed as part of the canonization process.
A second class relic is some object or part of an object which was regularly used or worn by the saint during their earthly life. There are many second class relics. These might include the saint’s belongings, clothing, furniture or a part of these things. Second class relics of Pope John Paul II, for example, include.......
(Excerpt) Read more at aleteia.org ...
Iscool, sorry, I have learned not to take your fantasies seriously. Believe what you want; I got primary sources right here, and I quoted the relevant parts.
Primary sources??? A Wiki article and someone's synopsis of what is claimed Ignatius allegedly wrote???
Yes, the letter to Smyrneans as included in the New Advent Library is commonly considered primary source. The Wikipedia article indeed lists some letters incorrectly ascribed to St. Ignatius; that one is not among them. You say there was an anti-Catholic letter to Smyrneans, — show me.
You'll have to show me where I said that...
Didn’t God ‘hide’ Moses bones?
there are two sets of the same letters...One is pro Catholic and one is not...The forger not only forged the letters much later than Ignatius lived and died, he added things Ignatius never wrote...
Show me through sources.
I guess burying Moses hid his bones. Not surprisingly, Satan wanted Moses’ body, now why would he want that?
Sola Scriptura anyone?
I’m glad you are here then! Would you please, please show the Biblical teaching of the assumption of Mary?
If it ain’t Scripture, I don’t have to follow it.
And a *historical* piece can still be an opinion piece, because anyone that writes even a historical account is still writing it from subjective experience. Their world view, their situation, all collaborate to affect how they perceive the situation and how they interpret it.
But if the early church as witnessed by the writings of the Fathers was not reliable in its doctrines and practices then it was not reliable in its declaration of what is and is not Sacred Scripture. You cannot not rely on the the judgment of the early church on the one without the other.
I don't accept Scripture as Scripture because the Catholic church says so.
The entire OT as it appears in the Protestant Bible was accepted as Scripture at the time of Christ. Jesus Himself verifies that when HE quotes it and says things like *Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing*, and *It is written....* and He quotes passages out of the Hebrew Scripture.
Additionally, Peter recognized Paul's writings as Scripture before there was any formal declaration of canon.
No one organization determined Scripture in those early days, certainly not the Catholic church which made formal declarations, only confirming what had already been accepted.
Actually it was the entire OT as it appears in the Septuagint, i.e. as in the Catholic Bible. The exclusion of the Deuterocanonical books by the rabbi's took place after the destruction of the Temple. One of the reasons was their use by Christians in polemics against the Jews.
Additionally, Peter recognized Paul's writings as Scripture before there was any formal declaration of canon.
Yes, but which writings? The Pauline authorship of Hebrews has been disputed. The authorship of James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 John and 3 John were also disputed. And why not the Acts of Paul, the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of John?
If you are a Roman Pagan why would any of that matter to you anyway?
No one can really say that for sure. What we do know, however, is:
The name Septuagint (from the Latin septuaginta, “70”) was derived later from the legend that there were 72 translators, 6 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, who worked in separate cells, translating the whole, and in the end all their versions were identical. In fact there are large differences in style and usage between the Septuagint’s translation of the Torah and its translations of the later books in the Old Testament. A tradition that translators were sent to Alexandria by Eleazar, the chief priest at Jerusalem, at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 bc), a patron of literature, first appeared in the Letter of Aristeas, an unreliable source.
The language of much of the early Christian church was Greek, and it was in the Septuagint text that many early Christians located the prophecies they claimed were fulfilled by Christ. Jews considered this a misuse of Holy Scripture, and they stopped using the Septuagint. Its subsequent history lies within the Christian church.
In the 3rd century ad Origen attempted to clear up copyists’ errors that had crept into the text of the Septuagint, which by then varied widely from copy to copy. Other scholars also consulted the Hebrew text in order to make the Septuagint text more accurate. But it was the Septuagint, not the original Hebrew, that was the main basis for the Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and part of the Arabic translations of the Old Testament. It has never ceased to be the standard version of the Old Testament in the Greek church, and from it Jerome began his translation of the Vulgate Old Testament.
In addition to all the books of the Hebrew canon, the Septuagint under Christian auspices separated the minor prophets and some other books and added the extra books known to Protestants and Jews as apocryphal and to Roman Catholics as deuterocanonical. The Hebrew canon has three divisions: the Torah (Law), the Neviʾim (Prophets), and the Ketuvim (Writings). The Septuagint has four: law, history, poetry, and prophets, with the books of the Apocrypha inserted where appropriate. This division has continued in the Western church in most modern Bible translations, except that in Protestant versions the Apocrypha are either omitted or grouped separately.
The text of the Septuagint is contained in a few early, but not necessarily reliable, manuscripts. The best known of these are the Codex Vaticanus (B) and the Codex Sinaiticus (S), both dating from the 4th century ad, and the Codex Alexandrinus (A) from the 5th century. There are also numerous earlier papyrus fragments and many later manuscripts. The first printed copy of the Septuagint was in the Complutensian Polyglot (1514–22). http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/535154/Septuagint
As to the books that comprise the New Testament, Metmom is correct that the early believers received the Divinely-inspired (God-breathed) Scriptures from the Apostles as they were written, copied and distributed. Any questions regarding the smaller books had more to do with whether or not a local church had a complete compilation and/or whether the copies that they had survived the passage of time as the material on which they written by hand deteriorated. But, as time went by, what we ALL accept as the New Testament was what the first century church also had.
I question the motive Catholics have for calling into doubt the reliability of the Bible we have today. Cultists such as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses also try to discredit the sacred Scriptures Christians rely upon to know their "rule of faith" and they use that tactic to somehow create a wedge that they can use to insert "their" scriptures as every bit as authoritative as the Bible. Of course, we know there IS no comparison - or SHOULD know that - because we have the EXACT Scriptures God intended us to have and He omitted nothing. The Apostles made sure that we would have the "whole counsel of God" so that we could be complete, thoroughly furnished for all good works and know truth from error. Let's not give the doubters any leeway, shall we?
I disagree. The writings of early church "fathers" were their own views, thoughts, interpretations and understandings but they are not Divinely-inspired writings like the Holy Scriptures are. Some of these "fathers" - and Catholics will have to admit this fact - later got pegged as "heretics" for one reason or another (i.e., Origin, Tertullian), so their writings should be read keeping that in mind. The early church was growing and new problems, issues, heresies and challenges cropped up over time. The writings of the Nicene and anti-Nicene fathers demonstrate that evolution, so to speak. What doesn't change, however, is the Scriptures. What we hold in our hands today - two thousand years later - is completely reliable and trustworthy. Manuscripts in the original languages are STILL accessible today and ancient manuscript fragments dating back nearly to the same time frame as the Apostles illustrate the accuracy of the translations we have today. Tell me God hasn't been involved in this process all along!
bb: I disagree. The writings of early church "fathers" were their own views, thoughts, interpretations and understandings but they are not Divinely-inspired writings like the Holy Scriptures are. Some of these "fathers" - and Catholics will have to admit this fact - later got pegged as "heretics" for one reason or another (i.e., Origin, Tertullian), so their writings should be read keeping that in mind. The early church was growing and new problems, issues, heresies and challenges cropped up over time. The writings of the Nicene and anti-Nicene fathers demonstrate that evolution, so to speak. What doesn't change, however, is the Scriptures. What we hold in our hands today - two thousand years later - is completely reliable and trustworthy. Manuscripts in the original languages are STILL accessible today and ancient manuscript fragments dating back nearly to the same time frame as the Apostles illustrate the accuracy of the translations we have today. Tell me God hasn't been involved in this process all along!
I agree. The fallacy is that the closer in time people were to the actual events, the more reliable they were in recording it and therefore, the more certain we can be of them being correct.
The problem with that argument, the reason that fails, is that error was creeping in to the church from the get go. Paul constantly warned his listeners of wolves in sheep's clothing, those who preached a different gospel. It showed up in the early church in Acts.
So being close in time is no guarantee of anything.
The problem those who question the *Protestant* Bible is that the EXACT same thing can be used to question the Catholic Bible.
The Catholic church determining what is Scripture and what is not is no guarantee that they are correct. They giving their stamp of approval to what was already considered Scripture means something only to Catholics, those who put their trust in the Roman Catholic church already.
Those who trust GOD to preserve His word realize that HE did it.
Thanks, bb, again, for the scholarly response to the usual criticisms of canon.
It is not Catholics but Protestants who question the reliability of the Bible as we have had it for 2000 years by their denying the reliability of the Septuagint canon. As you yourself have shown from your quote from Britannica, it was from the Septuagint that the early Christians received the OT. Nor am I doubting the reliability of the Bible by pointing out the historical questions that some early Christians had about some of the books. The Catholic Church has definitively accepted the canon that was listed by the North African councils and Pope Damasus I in the 4th cent. Rather I was illustrating the need for the church, and not individuals, to make this determination.
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