Ok, I think I understand that. So many times the Witnesses changes what the bible says but the general meaning is still there. But the bible i thought was not written by 6 people because in my NWT bible it says that all the people that were making it would remain Anonymous.
In every Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant translation of the Bible, the names of the translators are published so that if there are any problems or issues, they can be contacted or questioned as to why certain things were translated the way they were, and their credentials can always be determined. What possible reason would a publisher have to leave their translators anonymous, except to protect them from scrutiny and hide errors? The translators of the NWT Bible were uncovered years later after people questioning the translation did a lot of research and attempted to track them down.
So i guess Jesus could be God. I am not entirely sure about that yet. But the other things holidays are traditions of man. Birthdays would not have been celebrated by early Christians. Meaning the ones when Jesus was around. The only time the bible ever mentions birthdays were twice. When King Herod beheaded John the Baptist and a Pharaohs Birthdays. And Jesus was not born in December because they would not have had their flocks out at that time. And even if we knew exactly when Jesus was born we would not celebrate it ether. And Easter is incredibly pagan. The eggs symbolize fertility in pagan traditions. And Jesus wanted us to remember it on the Passover correct? Not every day as the Catholic do with daily Mass. I don’t know if that’s true.
Well, there are several points to touch upon here. The first has to do with a little bit of history. After the fall of Rome, literacy almost disappeared. The number of people who could read in Western Europe plummeted to literally less than 1%. This made it
very difficult to spread Christianity, because almost no one could read the Bible. It was because of this that the Catholic Church adopted a couple of strategies for teaching about Christianity. The first was to decorate their churches with paintings, statues, and decorative stained glass windows. They were usually organized into some type of order (Old Testament on one side of the church, New Testament on the other). This allowed people, even if they couldn’t read, to
visually recall the stories from the Bible, explain them, and pass them on. The other thing the Catholic Church did was to create a cycle of readings from the Bible. Although people couldn’t read the Bible, they COULD listen to it being read. So, every day, the church would read different selections from the Bible so that over time, all of the important passages would be read. Today, if one were to go to church for three years, they would hear virtually the entire Bible read. The major stories involving the life of Jesus were repeated every year. This is why we have Christmas and Easter celebrations. One marks the time of the year when we begin the story of Jesus, and the other marks his Resurrection. The readings continue for forty days, until finally we hear about the Ascension into heaven and Pentacost. The remainder of the year we hear about the Acts of the Apostles. It is possible that the days selected for these readings are indeed fall on the actual dates of the events. However, that’s not the point. The point is to educate the faithful about each part of the Bible, and then celebrate those events in our lives.
Now, over time, some outside traditions have indeed made it into Christianity. Some are harmless, and some have been added as secular counterparts to the religious celebration. One major reason that Christmas is on December 25 is the same reason that Kwanzaa begins on December 26. Kwanzaa was invented in the 1960s as a secular celebration of black culture in the US. When they were looking to select a date for it, they picked December 26 for a very simple reason… so many holidays belonging to other groups fall during this week already, that everyone has the week off and it’s very convenient. In Roman times, there were some pagan holidays celebrating the shortest day of the year around that time. When Christians were looking to assign a date for one of the most important church readings, that of the birth of Jesus, this was the obvious date for several reasons. One, it required the whole Christian community to worship together, and since Christianity was illegal for the first 300 years of its existence, this would provide an excuse for large numbers of people to meet without suspicion being raised. Two, the symbolism actually worked well. The Winter Equinox was the shortest day of the year. After that day, the amount of daylight would continue to increase every day until the first day of summer. Just as more light was beginning to enter the world, so Jesus was beginning to enlighten the world with his presence. It is a wonderful metaphor. Finally, by selecting a popular holiday, when Christianity DID become legal, it allowed people to transition to the new religion more easily, because the calendar wouldn’t be screwed up. They kept the day as a holiday, but threw out the pagan celebrations in favor of the Christian ones. This also symbolized the
triumph of God over paganism.
continued…
