May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage.

RAmen

Your question has already been answered above.

Reading through the Acts one cannot but notice an underlying tug-of-war between various factions of the new religion, and the faction that reached Rome first won over the others. As always happens it is the winners that write the history books.

The next big event was the council of Nicea, as ordered by Emperor Constantine (the one who killed his wife Faustina at the request of his mother Helena). It was at this council that the structure of the church was decided. In just the same way as Constantine would have decided an act of war. Most of the decisions taken had nothing to do with religion but more with politics. All those who were against him and his followers were declared as heretics. All their writings condemned and ordered to be destroyed. When all was done and Constantine was sure that his throne was secure he decided that it was in the best interest of his successors that he becomes a member of the new church through baptism. But by then the damage was done and spreading.

That is history that has destroyed a lot of (written) history.

I’ve lost the thread of your argument here. What’s opportunism got to do with a contemporary historical record?

This sort of statement is more than a little offensive – and that’s because of the lack of logic, and the obtuseness of deductive, self-referential ‘reasoning’ that interprets uninformed opinion as fact. All you need to do is substitute ‘Catholics’ for ‘Muslims’ and ‘their own supremacy’ for ‘the Jihad’ to see what I mean.

On a related note, I have had Muslim friends for most of my life. Right now, two Muslims are sitting opposite me in an office and there are several more in the same, rather large, building. I have often visited countries that are predominantly Muslim. No one, at any point, has attempted to convert me or blow me up. That is not to say that such things never happen. It is merely an observation that your comment is fatuous and the equivalent of anyone saying to you that all Catholics believe all non-Catholics should be burned at the stake. I don’t imagine you believe that yourself so you do your religion a disservice by making absurd claims in its defence.

What I was pointing out is the fact that the Catholic religion as is and has been preached along the centuries is full of contradictions and especially violence. As for facts, please do not consider the gospels as fact. Facts are not written down centuries after the event. Those are traditions carried forward by word of mouth.

It has been noted that the Dead Sea Scrolls and The Nad Hammadi texts predate the gospels by a good number of years. Why weren’t these writings included in the gospels? They strike at the foundations of what has been taught through the ages and show that much of what is attributed to the teachings of Jesus predate him by some centuries.

You seem to equate “historical records” with primary source documents such as birth or death certificates, or official court proceedings of a trial. It is true that as far as Jesus is concerned, and unsurprisingly, no such document exists.
But “historical records” has a wider meaning. For example: Anglu Farrugia is a contemporary of mine, though I have never had the pleasure of meeting him. Daphne has, and if she were to relate to me her personal experiences of the man, and I were to record them, and in two thousand years time my scribbles happened to be the only contemporary record of the man to survive, then they would be regarded as an important historical record of proof that such a man existed, and they would also furnish some information about him.
And so it is with Paul and Jesus, who, though they were contemporaries, never met.
It’s as near as you can get to a primary source document at this distance in time.

So Daphne can you tell us wether 300 Catholics have a right to celebrate Sunday Mass on a cruise liner?

[Daphne – It’s not a matter of right, but of whether they want to get together and organise it with the cruise company. A cruise ship, unlike a promenade, is a privately-owned space. If their request is refused, they can go on another sort of holiday. But with falling passengers numbers, I’m sure they’ll be accommodated – as a business decision.]