Why Catholicism is worthy of a closer look

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Pattylt said:
. They weren’t personal witnesses of Jesus’s death, they were reporting the oral stories they heard.
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Umm… John’s Gospel specifically says it was eyewittnessed.
 
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Pattylt said:
These good news stories were written by unknown authors to sell a religion.
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I find it hard to believe that you would want to sell a religion that there was a death penalty for believing in.
 
False

Could you imagine selling a religion where you had to castrate yourself? It was all the rage in Rome.

Many religions had periods of intense persecution and threats of death. It’s not uncommon. There was persecution of Christians in the early days but it was not government mandated and often sporadic with periods of tolerance. Later persecutions were after the faith had been established and also were not empire wide. Please read up on early Christianity and it’s history from reputable scholars without an agenda. Or, if you think they do have an agenda, they are fair to all sides of the story. Martyrdom was actually rare but extensively used by the faith.
 
Why, for personal profit, would you start a persecuted religion? Emperor Nero liked to use Christians for torches. I would not consider it a good idea to start something like that unless it we’re true - it makes sense to target the founders. Also, fabricating a false story about a relatively well known person 40 years later is terrible timing; you would think that Jews would be everywhere denying that Christ existed.
 
Let me be clear. I do not think the apostles were liars or profit driven at all. They sincerely believed in their message as you do.

The problem with counter arguments in the early church is that almost all the literature about the faith was preserved by Christians. If they didn’t copy it, it died. Why do we not have any writings between 100 ad and 150 ad? It’s a complete blank. No one wrote anything worth saving? Do you know how many different Christianities existed then? We know there were several yet we have none of the non Catholic views.
 
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We don’t have any writings from 100 - 200 for anything written in that time. There are books from that time of which our earliest copy is around 800, and it is fairly well trusted.
 
Was there a specific thing you wanted to discuss about the Bible realizing that I don’t take it as authoritative? If you know a specific argument that critical scholars take that you disagree with? Otherwise, I’m not sure of the point. I don’t expect you to agree with me and I’m quite sure you nor I will change our minds.

The title of thread could have been Christianity as much as Catholic. I have taken a closer look for over 40 years off and on and…no change.

I appreciate the conversation, though. Let me know!
 
I wanted to discuss its historical accuracy. If that is established, we can move on from there.
 
I don’t think anyone can establish historical accuracy. The gospels are not eyewitness accounts. None of the Gospels names it’s authors. There is evidence of editing and they are completely biased. Anything an historian would hope for in a document is basically missing. That doesn’t mean that nothing is historical in them but it has to be analyzed with regards to all those criteria.

Anyone that states they are completely historical are doing so from a perspective of faith alone. So, from my point of view, all we can do is look at a specific pericope and try to determine if that one is historical.
 
If all we had was eyewittness accounts, then we would have to throw out a ton of history. The writers of the Gospels would have had access to eyewittnesses. There is a possibility that John was the actual author of his Gospel. External sources give evidence for the existence of Christ. If the Gospels fabricated huge falsehoods about him, you would expect people to contradict their picture of Christ. There is no evidence of this that I am aware of until the Koran, which is a much less reliable source as it was written some centuries later. There are so many citations and copies of the Gospels that their faithfulness to the original text is far better established than any other document of its time.
 
You need to check some other sources to get better information. Bart Ehrman is neither the only source nor is he the best source. I recommend you read Dr. Brant Pitre’s book The Case for Jesus. Dr. Pitre, who is currently a professor at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, received his doctorate from Notre Dame University, where he specialized in the New Testament and Judaism. In The Case for Jesus Dr. Pitre discusses the points you raise about the validity and reliability of the gospels.
 
I don’t think I’ve read him so I will check it out. Thanks.

Ps. I’m not just relying on Bart Ehrman. He is just one of the most accessible scholars and writes for a lay audience.
 
Yes, Ehrman is a readable writer. However he is biased in certain ways when it comes to dealing with the divinity of Jesus. There are other Catholic writers who are also readable writers who do not share Ehrman’s bias, for example Scott Hahn and Brant Pitre.
Your profile says that you are a Jewish Agnostic, so I assume you are seeking information about God. Brant Pitre would be an excellent guide to a Catholic understanding about God. Pitre teaches at the Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans and he records many of his talks and classes and makes them available on CDs. These are available through Pitre’s website at https://www.brantpitre.com/ or the Catholic Productions website/store at Brant Pitre. His books are available through Amazon.
 
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