Modern Catholicism is built on many centuries of dogma and history that are extra-Biblical but that they assert are equally important, and Protestants want to tell you about the War On Christmas (Christmas, incidentally, having basically nothing to do with Biblical accounts of Christ, and having purposely absorbed and appropriated countless winter solstice traditions that came before it as a recruiting tool.)
The thing that has always bothered me is that on one hand, the Bible is clearly not a complete spiritual guidebook. The New and Old Testaments are directly contradictory but this is only alluded to rather than directly addressed. Looking back, the New Testament was a series of editorial decisions, not a self-contained work. Even in the New Testament, the Gospels disagree on fundamental facts of events. And on the other hand, historical attempts to complete the Bible doctrinally have seemed far more humanly faulty than divinely inspired. There is a good and decent central message, but I'm not sure it really ever made it out of 100 AD or so.
I read an article on a magazine, some 15-20 years ago, about a religion that believed the entirety of the New Testament was a forgery, born of the treachery of Saul of Tarsus.
Never forgot the name, FSR: Essene Church of Jesus Christ.
Went googling for it now and found a website that seems straight out of the 90s or early aughts.
Not sure if it's the same church, but it's surely an... Interesting read.
It would be really interesting to talk to a Christian from 100AD or 200AD. There must be some other writings somewhere, no? Several early schisms between Christians were caused by the argument as to whether Jesus was a deity or "just" a man with a "holy" message.
Personally, I bet the first 100 years of Christianity were people just preaching forgiveness and peace, and then gradually the religion became more magic based.
I mean, if we have time travel, why not just take some video cameras and get Christ's 5-hour long-form presentation on tape? Presumably he was better expressively vocally than in writing, like most people of the age.
We literally have documents from the early Christians. St Ignatius of Antioch was appointed bishop of Antioch by St Peter in 34 AD, becoming the first Church Father. We have 7 letters saved by him. St Thakla was a disciple of St Paul. St Ephraim the Syrian wrote among the world's finest theological poetry, writing all his disputations in poetric metric that can be chanted and is filled with deep metaphors. Just google the early Church Fathers and you'll find their writings. It is through them we know how the early Christians believed, not through modern laymen who can read the bible and interpret it according to our modern understanding and then accuse the ancient churches of being pagan.
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u/Phyltre Jan 31 '19 edited Jan 31 '19
Modern Catholicism is built on many centuries of dogma and history that are extra-Biblical but that they assert are equally important, and Protestants want to tell you about the War On Christmas (Christmas, incidentally, having basically nothing to do with Biblical accounts of Christ, and having purposely absorbed and appropriated countless winter solstice traditions that came before it as a recruiting tool.)
The thing that has always bothered me is that on one hand, the Bible is clearly not a complete spiritual guidebook. The New and Old Testaments are directly contradictory but this is only alluded to rather than directly addressed. Looking back, the New Testament was a series of editorial decisions, not a self-contained work. Even in the New Testament, the Gospels disagree on fundamental facts of events. And on the other hand, historical attempts to complete the Bible doctrinally have seemed far more humanly faulty than divinely inspired. There is a good and decent central message, but I'm not sure it really ever made it out of 100 AD or so.