Posted on 07/23/2019 9:37:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A 1700-year-old letter that was recently discovered is said to reveal the way Christians actually lived centuries ago.
The Papyrus P.Bas. 2.43 was written by a man named Arrianus to his brother Paulus, who was believed to be named after the apostle Paul. The letter has been dated to 230s AD and is thus older than all previously known Christian documentary evidence from Roman Egypt.
It describes day-to-day family matters and provides insight into the world of the first Christians in the Roman Empire.
“The earliest Christians in the Roman Empire are usually portrayed as eccentrics who withdrew from the world and were threatened by persecution. This is countered by the contents of the Basel papyrus letter,” said Sabine Huebner, professor of ancient history at the University of Basel in Switzerland.
The letter was concluded by the phrase: “I pray that you farewell ‘in the Lord.” This statement is their proof that the writer was actually a Christian.
“The use of this abbreviation – known as a nomen sacrum in this context – leaves no doubt about the Christian beliefs of the letter writer,” Sabine added. “It is an exclusively Christian formula that we are familiar with from New Testament manuscripts.”
The University of Basel has been holding onto the 1700-year-old letter for the past 100 years. It originated in the village of Theadelphia in central Egypt and belongs to the Heronius archive. The Heronius archive is the largest papyrus archive from the Roman Times.
Arrianus and Paulus were the sons of the local elite, landowners and public official. The letter discusses politics, food, and faith during those times.
“Greetings, my lord, my incomparable brother Paulus. I, Arrianus, salute you, praying that all is as well as possible in your life.
“[Since] Menibios was going to you, I thought it necessary to salute you as well as our lord father. Now, I remind you about the gymnasiarch, so that we are not troubled here. Heracleides would be unable to take care of it: he has been named to the city council. Find thus an opportunity that you buy the two [–] arouras.
“But send me the fish liver sauce too, whichever you think is good. Our lady mother is well and salutes you as well as your wives and sweetest children and our brothers and all our people. Salute our brothers [-]genes and Xydes. All our people salute you.
“I pray that you fare well in the Lord.”
What a miracle that we are still digging up more and more artifacts dating back to the time of Christ!
I respect you enough to think that, like any good Christian, you DO want to "stand fast" and "hold firmly to the Traditions." Even those which came down to us or were passed on to us by "word" and "example."
Please give me a list of the Traditions *you* firmly hold.
The ones in the New Testament.
Now that I've answered your question....awaiting your answer to my question.
The Catholic definition of *sola* is severley wanting.
Catholics tend to argue from their own distorted opinion of what WE mean when we say *Sola Scriptura*, which Catholics refuse to accept.
Now Catholics tend to get all bent of of shape and huffy when they think we are defining their terms for them, and yet have no problem defining OUR terms for us. Rules for thee but not for me.
That’s known to the rest of the world as *hypocrisy*.
And after that sentence, it said this......
” The letter has been dated to 230s AD and is thus older than all previously known Christian documentary evidence from Roman Egypt.”
That's not how Scripture says it was done.
Reread the Timothy passage again.
I'm interested in what you have to say.
"Sola," from the Latin adjective "solus, -a, -um;" meaning "alone, only, single, sole." Thus "sola Scriptura" means "by Scripture alone." This would imply that there is no other authority but Scripture. What do you mean by the term?
I'm surprised they even accepted the original council rulings as they didn't contain the imprimatur and nihil obstat stamps.
Still awaiting your answer on which canons/rulings, etc you accept....or reject.
Mary was blessed but not venerated or to be prayed to as an “intercessor”
See Revelations and other scripture if it helps
The phrase sola scriptura is from the Latin: sola having the idea of “alone,” “ground,” “base,” and the word scriptura meaning “writings”—referring to the Scriptures. Sola scriptura means that Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian. The Bible is complete, authoritative, and true.
https://www.gotquestions.org/sola-scriptura.html
More at the link above.
In the Scriptures we have what is needed to have a saving faith in Christ and how to develop that relationship with Him.
I resist here, because I have already answered this, TO YOU, several times, and it raises the question of whether you are actually interested in answers.
I resist here, because I have already answered this, TO YOU, several times, and it raises the question of whether you are actually interested in answers as anything other than targets for contempt.
Not so fast. Although the manuscript tradition is uncertain, the generally accepted reading is that he listed the 14 letters of Paul, thus including Hebrews. In any case, there is still the 1000 year history before Trent of the general acceptance of the canon listed by Pope Damasus and the North African councils, including Hebrews. At best you can say that there was no solemn proclamation of this until the Council of Trent. But even here you would be wrong because there was one at the Council of Florence. And if we are to be limited to formal definitions, do we then say that Christians did not definitively hold that Jesus is the uncreated Son of God before the Council of Nicea?
Furthermore, if you are to say that the Catholic Church did not define the canon until the Council of Trent, then you must also hold that there was no firm canon of the Bible for any Christians before the 16th century. Thus my original point stands, that for the early Christians "sola Scriptura" could not work because there was no way to be certain what was Scripture in the first place.
It was frowned on but you have to remember there were still some Jewish Christians around and they were ordered to marry their dead brother's wife.
You also had converts who came in with more than one wife. Telling them to abandon all but one would be unrealistic. Where would they go? And in a culture where having children was your only old age security saying that they should support all but only have sex with one would be unfair to the abandon wives. What would happen to them after he died?
That is why the rules for a bishop were laid down the way they were. A bishop was expected to be held to a higher standard. The husband of one wife and in control of his household.
Except nowhere does the Bible say that it is the sole authority. Indeed, Acts 15 shows that the Church can teach with the authority of the Holy Spirit. Thus the Bible itself refutes sola Scriptura.
Nor can reliance on sola Scriptura resolves the disputes about what the Bible means. We need go no further than "This is my Body." A whole litany could be made out of Bible verses where Catholics and Protestants disagree, not on the authority of the Bible, but on the meaning of the passage. If Protestants truly believed in sola Scriptura, then they would recognize that they have no grounds for insisting that Catholics take a Protestant reading of these passages rather than adhering to there own Catholic understanding of them.
ROTFL!
The Catholic church has always been just another Christian sect.
“Mary was blessed but not venerated or to be prayed to as an “intercessor””
So, when did the pope change that to the bastard version of today?
5. F.F. Bruce prefers "thirteen" here, which implies the omission of Hebrews. He states that "the three best" copies of the letter "reckon Paul's epistles as thirteen (written xiii), but the rest reckon them as fourteen (written xiiii)." (Canon of Scripture, p. 234.) But it is not at all probable that Hebrews would have been deliberately omitted from the list by a Roman bishop in the year 405, and the variation between xiiii and xiii is easily explained by scribal error.
---------------------------
Now, the exact quote from the book.
The omission of Hebrews from the New Testament is surprising. The manuscripts, in fact are divergent in their testimony: the three best ones reckon Paul's epistles are thirteen (written XIII), but the rest reckon them as fourteen (written XIIII).
Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle."
2 Thessalonians 2:15
Protestant selective quoting of scripture. Y'all don't even read/know your own bibles.
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