Why did the lord appear to Mary Magdalene first?

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Gab123 said:
One doesn’t have to believe private revelation, yet private revelation does have a place in our life of faith, being that its purpose is to light zeal in the heart of the faithful. Plenty of saints were edified through private revelation.
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I, myself, do not believe in private revelation, or visions, unless one is hallucinating, but I know many, if not most, Catholics do believe.

Even if ACE’s visions were genuine, no one knows with certainty what she saw. The poet, Clemens Brentano, who took notes from ACE, was found to have “embroidered” them quite a bit. Where and what he embroidered is unknown. So, even if the visions were genuine, no genuine account of them exists. For Christians, who do believe in visions, however, I think the book describing them does hold some value. It reminds them of the pain and humiliation associated with crucifixion. But as a record of the crucifixion, it has no probative value outside of value to certain individuals.

If Jesus did so many extraordinary things that all the books in all the word would not hold them all, don’t you think someone would have recorded those things outside of Jesus’s own followers? Yet there is nothing.

I do believe Jesus existed and was crucified outside of Jerusalem. I believe Paul, Peter, James,and John existed. I believe Jesus had a mother named Mary. As I said, I am not an atheist or even an agnostic. I am very definitely a theist, who is not trying to change anyone’s belief, just trying to understand some things that in six years of formal theological training were not answered sufficiently. I do not necessarily believe something just because someone tells me it happened. And, I am Jewish anyway.
 
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ConstantLearner said:
As I said, I am not an atheist or even an agnostic. I am very definitely a theist, who is not trying to change anyone’s belief, just trying to understand some things that in six years of formal theological training were not answered sufficiently.
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I didn’t realize you were not Catholic. The good news is that there are good answers to all your questions; there are countless reasons to believe for those who want to believe, but not a single reason will suffice for those who do not want to believe.
 
Paul wrote his Letters first, about 20 - 30 years after the death of Jesus
 
Gab123 said:
I didn’t realize you were not Catholic. The good news is that there are good answers to all your questions; there are countless reasons to believe for those who want to believe, but not a single reason will suffice for those who do not want to believe.
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I actually know the answers. I wondered what a believer thought about the fact the no one but Jesus’s followers wrote of so many extraordinary happenings and deeds, and admittedly, not all of those. That seems very odd to me. Or what a believer thought of ACE’s visions being embroidered.

(I’m not out to convert anyone, just discuss, not even argue. As you probably know, Jews do not evangelize. We would never presume to attempt to change anyone’s faith.)
 
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ConstantLearner said:
fact the no one but Jesus’s followers wrote of so many extraordinary happenings and deeds. That seems very odd to me.
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The Gospels and New Testament were written by believers for believers.

However there are others who wrote about the events that changed the world, Christianity.

Pliny, flavius for starters

Some of Catherine Emmerichs work has not been approved
 
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The evidence is the gospels and many other extra canonical texts.
Noone questions the biography of the Buddah or Alexander the great and their biographies were not written until 300 years following their deaths.
You suffer what I did when I was doing studies of biblical and early Christianity in a purely historical context.
 
Roseeurekacross said:
However there are others who wrote about the events that changed the world, Christianity.
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Christianity didn’t have much of a following until about the 4th century when it gained the power to compel acceptance. Prior to that, it was mostly the marginalized who accepted it. Had it not gained the power to convert the elite, it would have no doubt died out like other groups that centered around a crucified god, such as the Attis cult in Sumeria.
 
Onthisrock84 said:
Noone questions the biography of the Buddah or Alexander the great and their biographies were not written until 300 years following their deaths.
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Oh, I have my doubts that they even existed, especially Buddha, Confucius.

I respect your thoughts, but I think the difference is that I am a firm believer in the Jewish faith. That has not changed. My own feeling about Jesus is that he was a great teacher, a great rabbi (and he, himself, only wanted to speak with Jews), but not the messiah.
 
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Yup Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the younger, all early non Christian writers. Also the letter of Mara bar Sarapion.
 
ConstantLearner said:
I wondered what a believer thought about the fact the no one but Jesus’s followers wrote of so many extraordinary happenings and deeds, and admittedly, not all of those. That seems very odd to me.
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Well, who else would you expect? Even more interesting is that Jesus Himself didn’t write anything nor did He command anyone to write anything; He did however promise to send the Holy Spirit to: "whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

Though the Jewish historian Josephus did write about Jesus as did others such as the Roman historian Tacitus.

As for believing in something, you don’t have to travel to Micronesia to believe it exists; you trust what others have told you about Micronesia. Just about everything you believe about history and science is based on faith. You never met Abraham Lincoln, never saw him, never spoke to him; yet you are certain he existed and based on your faith in witnesses who did know him and lived when he lived.
 
Well yes. The Roman religion and classical religions of the area such as Zoroastrianism and Judaism still were popular( though the latter not so much following the Jewish war and the destruction of the temple in 70. It is true Manicheaism was a rival to Christianity for a while as well.
What about Muhammad do you question him too? They claim the Quran was written by him but most of the stories of his life wasn’t written in the Hadith until a couple centuries after.
 
Onthisrock84 said:
Yup Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the younger, all early non Christian writers. Also the letter of Mara bar Sarapion.
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None of them wrote from personal experience with Jesus. I would think someone would have written about all the extraordinary things he did that all the books in all the world could not hold them, as John said.
 
I feel like he was either the Son of God, a liar, or a lunatic as C.S. Lewis said. I choose the first.

My grandfather was Jewish I get it. I’m not trying to offend you by the way I did a lot of historical and theological studies as well.
 
That was not by Anne Catherine. I think it was a Valerie or something with a V.
 
Onthisrock84 said:
What about Muhammad do you question him too?
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Me? Undecided. I do know there is a group of German Islamic scholars who doubt Muhammad’s existence.

I know Jews who doubt Abraham’s existence even though he is considered the father of our religion.
 
ConstantLearner said:
None of them wrote from personal experience with Jesus. I would think someone would have written about all the extraordinary things he did that all the books in all the world could not hold them, as John said.
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There are four gospels, written to four different audiences; plus the writings of Paul, a Pharisee and fierce Christian persecutor who had a vision of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.
 
Gab123 said:
There are four gospels, written to four different audiences; plus the writings of Paul, a Pharisee and fierce Christian persecutor who had a vision of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.
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Yes, and I was in theology school for six years and studied them all.

If Jesus, and I mean no disrespect to Jesus or his followers, did so many extraordinary things, and most of them were not written down, there is something amiss. Why would learned men of the time ignore such things? They wrote more about Attis. The only real knowledge we have of Jesus comes from those heavily invested in promoting him.

To write for believers only goes against Jesus’s own commandment.
 
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ConstantLearner said:
do know there is a group of German Islamic scholars who doubt Muhammad’s existence.

I know Jews who doubt Abraham’s existence even though he is considered the father of our religion.
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Everything, and I mean everything, always starts out as a tiny seed. Christianity is built upon the Old Testament and the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Messiah.

Islam is founded upon the claims of Muhammad, who said he had a vision in a cave. There are no witnesses to that event in the cave, so it’s based on what Muhammad claimed. Interestingly, at first Muhammad thought it was a demonic vision, but was convinced by his uncle that it must have been a vision of the angel Gabriel.
 
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