Posted on 01/27/2013 12:31:22 PM PST by marshmallow
But at least Rome is officially against homosexuality, though a substantial problem seems to exist in its priesthood, and i do not think the mandated (w/ rare exceptions) celibacy helps.
However, the spiritual decline is also overall seen across the board in all "Christian" faiths, and thus the stand against essential departures from the salvific gospel must also be against the growing accommodation of the world in our own ranks, and even our own selves .
Is Christ the king of my heart at all times? Is my affection supremely on him as it should; do i always want to do all to His glory; does all that is within me cry glory, which is a longing cry, but not often enough. Do contrary things often rise up instead? Sadly no to the first and yes to the second.
"For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? " (1 Peter 4:17)
"Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. " (Lamentations 3:40) - which once was seen. http://www.jedwinorr.com/video.htm
Evasion and deflection duly noted, and expected.
How do you know the man on the street didn't have access to the written word and didn't go out looking for anything? What's your source?
Provide the link.
Now you're telling us what the average man on the street was thinking?
For real? And you know THAT how? Did you travel back in time and ask them? Were you there?
Or did some ghost from the past visit you and enlighten you?
Could you please provide the source for your information?
So, you know for sure that you’re going to heaven when you die?
You’re the first Catholic I’ve met who thinks that then.
Words such as "false" "wrong" "error" do not attribute motive.
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
Now, who was it that insisted the Catholic Church has existed for 2013 years?
They were illiterate because there was nothing to read. It's as simple as that....there were no books, in possession of the general population to teach reading, VERY few who could read and therefore teach reading, and if under strange circumstances, someone did know how to read.....there was nothing to read. These people, by and large, in this area of the world were poor by anyones standards. They walked or rode a donkey to get where they were going.....Lets say I somehow knew how to read.......I wanted to read a book on anything.....where would I go to have access to a book...Rome, Cairo...???I have a job, I work daily for my income....should I leave my job and take a two month trip to wherever to read a book???? You must think practically on these things this happened two thousand years ago...these people, in this area, were poor....shepherds, farmers, tradesmen, tailors, merchants...dealing with local people largely on the barter system. While the "big city folks" like Romans certainly had access to libraries.....the scriptures were in Isreal and not in libraries until a few hundred years later,. At that time the church could have HAND COPIED enough copies to put them in Rome and elsewhere. Why do you seem to be unable to see the obvious......in the year 150 there were few, if any written bibles anywhere
talk to the other 2 billion or so, they'd agree with me.
that would be me....2013 years, more or less is the year of our Lord....since His Death.... Mary and Joseph were married under Jewish law long before that.
Have you never heard of Homer or Plato? Written Greek literature started being developed at least four to five HUNDRED years B.C.!
The Hellenistic period or Hellenistic civilization is the period of ancient Greek history between the death of Macedonian king Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of ancient Rome. During this time, Greek cultural influence and power was at its zenith in Europe and Asia, experiencing prosperity and progress in the arts, exploration, literature, theatre, architecture, music, mathematics, philosophy and science. It is often considered a period of transition, sometimes even of decadence or degeneration, compared to the brilliance of the Greek Classical era (Classical Greece was a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period
I think you are flying by the seat of your pants here. Haven't you ever heard of LIBRARIES? The Library of Alexandria is a good example:
Plutarch (AD 46–120) wrote that during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC Julius Caesar accidentally burned the library down when he set fire to his own ships to frustrate Achillas' attempt to limit his ability to communicate by sea.[3] After its destruction, scholars used a "daughter library" in a temple known as the Serapeum, located in another part of the city.
The Library at Alexandria was charged with collecting all the world's knowledge, and most of the staff was occupied with the task of translating works onto papyrus paper. It did so through an aggressive and well-funded royal mandate involving trips to the book fairs of Rhodes and Athens According to Galen, books were taken off of every ship that came into port, and were listed as "books of the ships". Official scribes then swiftly copied these writings, some copies proving so precise that the originals were put into the library, and the copies delivered to the unsuspecting owners. This process also helped to create a reservoir of books in the relatively new city. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
As long as there has BEEN a written language, there have been writings of all types. Those writings by ancients such as Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Homer and Aristotle were housed in the Library of Alexandria. There were also many other great libraries of the ancient world which served as archives for empires, sanctuaries for sacred writings, and depositories of literature and chronicles. They included Syria, Iraq, Iran, Indian subcontinent, Africa, Greece and Rome. This so-called "man on the street" certainly had the availability of literature if he resided in these ancient cities. I think you're assuming the people of those times had no need for writing and reading, but you have no real evidence to prove it. Even lowly fishermen needed at least minimal abilities to record things and to be able to add and subtract.
I think you are selling ancient mankind short by insisting they were mostly illiterate. If you need to do this in order to prop up the Catholic Church as the best thing since sliced bread for the educated masses, you will have to ignore quite a bit of objective history.
The area of Jerusalem and Bethlehem is not in Europe nor Asia...The Church started here...it was the Headquarters " of judism it is here that the scriptures are...it is here that they begin to spread throughout the area. I agree that there were advanced people elsewhere in the world, but they were not spreading the bible....they didn't have it.
The temple in Jerusalem certainly had all the books of the Old Testament within its walls as did Jewish synagogues throughout the world where Jews resided. It was not at all uncommon for Jewish families to have copies of certain scrolls of the Law/Torah (books of Moses). That's why we have so many fragments available today of those books as well as those of the New Testament. You seem to be forgetting that the epistles the Apostles wrote to the churches established throughout the continent were hand delivered and copies made so that these local churches had the same teachings available to them. There was no need for elaborate gold-edged pages and fancy scroll work - the writings were copied by hand and passed around. The original "autographs" disappeared (probably by God's design) but the abundance of copies that rarely varied from each other were the norm even for small churches.
What many discount is that people wrote about their lives and what they learned from the disciples and Apostles of Jesus. Their leaders were responsible for continuing the teachings they learned and ensuring those who came after them were seated in Scriptural truth. Just because there wasn't a collection of all the books bound up in a "bible" until centuries after the Apostles all died, doesn't mean there was no recognized canon of Scripture available to those who wanted to read them. Some local churches may have only had partial collections and others more, but they all recognized the authority of the written word because the Apostles imposed them on the early churches. This is a good treatise on the formation of the canon of the New Testament by B. B. Warfield http://www.the-highway.com/ntcanon_Warfield.html. In it he speaks of the example the early Christians had of the Old Testament and the new books being given to them from the Apostles as a continuation of divine revelation.
They most certainly WERE spreading the good news of the gospel and setting up new churches hungry for the word of God. From the above link:
What needs emphasis at present about these facts is that they obviously are not evidences of a gradually-heightening estimate of the New Testament books, originally received on a lower level and just beginning to be tentatively accounted Scripture; they are conclusive evidences rather of the estimation of the New Testament books from the very beginning as Scripture, and of their attachment as Scripture to the other Scriptures already in hand. The early Christians did not, then, first form a rival “canon” of “new books” which came only gradually to be accounted as of equal divinity and authority with the “old books”; they received new book after new book from the apostolical circle, as equally” Scripture “ with the old books, and added them one by one to the collection of old books as additional Scriptures, until at length the new books thus added were numerous enough to be looked upon as another section of the Scriptures.
Now that’s funny right there. David was a Shepard but somehow learned how to read and even write. You might check into the fact that he wrote part of the Old Testament. Also Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hezekiah, Solomon, Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi were all before Christ and obviously could read and write. Then there were the poor fishermen who Jesus called as disciples. Not educated but could still read and write obviously. Even James the brother of Jesus who would not be considered an educated person wrote part of the New Testament.
There is much more evidence that even the poor could read and write.
Yes there was. Scripture. The Jews had the OT writings to read. Just because people may not have owned their own books, does not mean that they either could not read or did not want to read. Nor did it mean there was no use to read. There were other legal documents to read. One doesn't have to have books to read for reading to be useful.
In the OT Law, if a man divorced his wife, he was to write her a certificate of divorce. That command presumed literacy.
These people, by and large, in this area of the world were poor by anyones standards. They walked or rode a donkey to get where they were going.....
Well, duh, that was all they had. There weren't cars around back then. That is not *poor by anyone's standards*. By their standards, if you had a donkey to ride you were probably middle class.
.Lets say I somehow knew how to read.......I wanted to read a book on anything.....where would I go to have access to a book...Rome, Cairo...???
The local synagogue where there were scrolls of the Law kept?
.in the year 150 there were few, if any written bibles anywhere
So what? Are you telling us that's all they had to read? There were copies of Scripture and other legal documents to read.
You have yet to offer anything of substance to back up your claims or opinions. Until then, they will be considered the fluff that they are.
Another argument that doesn't fly.
They had the OT Law, the book of the OT that WE have today and there's no indication that copies of it were ONLY at Jerusalem. The Dead Sea Scrolls had to have come from somewhere.
Dead Sea Scrolls
< a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls
" They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus and bronze.[2] These manuscripts have been dated to various ranges between 408 BCE and 318 CE.[3] Bronze coins found on the site form a series beginning with Hyrcanus 1 (135-104 BCE) and continue without a gap until the first Jewish revolt (66–73 CE).[4] The scrolls are traditionally identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged this association and argue that the scrolls were penned by priests in Jerusalem, Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups.[5][6]"
Also:
History of education in ancient Israel and Judah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_ancient_Israel_and_Judah
House of the teacher
"The institution known as the "be rav" or "bet rabban" (house of the teacher), or as the "be safra" or "bet sefer" (house of the book), is said to have been originated by Ezra' (459 BCE) and his Great Assembly, who provided a public school in Jerusalem to secure the education of fatherless boys of the age of sixteen years and upward. However, the school system did not develop until Joshua ben Gamla (64 CE) the high priest caused public schools to be opened in every town and hamlet for all children above six or seven years of age (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 21a).[1] Education began at the age of six or seven[1] and continued throughout life; full-time basic education was completed before marriage at the age of about 18 years old."
Hey, ampu, how's the popcorn holding out?
John the fisherman was educated enough to write the Book of Revelation and the Gospel of John.
If a fisherman could read and write, then it stands to reason that others who were tradesmen could also.
Yes but so are Muslims and Orthodox Jews. God has built in a moral code in all of us. Some just suppress it more than others.
However, the spiritual decline is also overall seen across the board in all "Christian" faiths
There have been periods throughout history of spiritual declines and then great awakenings. Why God is withdrawing His hand of grace can only be seen as His way of calling His people though I suspect we may be approaching the return of Christ. Beyond that it is a puzzlement.
Here's the link....
Ah!
The markings of a SEEKER!
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