What a surprise.
The very earliest scripture was not even written until between 60-70 AD. There may have existed some written parables prior to that, but we no longer have them. A lot of scripture was written well after that. So, if no scripture existed (especially in the early decades), they obviously did NOT use scripture as a source of authority.
What a bunch of nonsense.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The earliest copies of the NT that we have are not the originals. Those were lost, or deliberately destroyed, and the claim that nothing was written down until Roman Catholicism came in to save the day, and voila, tradition now = Scripture is nothing more that a bogus power grab for Catholicism to usurp Scripture.
Also, the entire OT was already written down and widely circulated so Catholicism's claims to authoring that is even more bogus.
And here we have Paul telling the Colossian church this......Colossians 4:15-16 Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house. And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.
IOW, Paul's epistles were circulating at the time he was still alive, which proves that Catholicism's claims to giving us Scripture and relying on tradition until much later, was a complete lie fabricated by those within Catholicism who wanted to be on par with God.
You do realize there were lots of Christian communities sprouting up in far fling areas of the Mediterranean.
Paul’s letters are among the very oldest of Christian writings. They pre-date the Gospel writings of Mathew, Mark, Luke, and especially John.
No one is saying that the Roman Catholic Church wrote the OT. It existed in its entirety centuries before Jesus was even born.
You do realize also that there were tons of writings about Jesus that developed over time. Some deemed authoritative, some deemed false, and some deemed “borderline”. The early Church scrutinized all known writings and between 200 and 350 AD settled on a group of writings largely synonymous with the 27 books that are accepted as canon today.
But to argue that the complete Bible was floating around from the earliest years after Jesus’ death is nonsense. If that were true, then the Christian community that Paul was writing to would have had no need for his letters, right? They would have already had “The Bible” as you say.
Paul’s epistles were circulating at the time he was still alive, which proves that Catholicism’s claims to giving us Scripture and relying on tradition until much later, was a complete lie fabricated by those within Catholicism who wanted to be on par with God.
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Well, of course they were circulating when he was alive. He wrote them. But there were Christians practicing PRIOR to Paul writing his letters (and prior to any Gospel writings existing).