[Cronos]

For the doctrines on Christ's earthly mother, I already wrote about this in post #973

You do have the doctrines in the Church from Apostolic times. These are referred in the Transitus Mariae (Passage of Mary)

Many scholars place the Syriac fragments of the Transitus stories as far back as the third century

Secondly, the Early Christians kept relics of saints, yet there is no mention of any relic of Mary -- isn't that strange? An argument from silence? Yes, but what a profound silence! How is it that in the 400 years before the Council of Ephesus not one Christian was so obliging as to venerate one bone and thus imply belief in something other than what is recounted in the Transitus Mariae literature?

[bkaycee]

You do have the doctrines in the Church from Apostolic times. These are referred in the Transitus Mariae (Passage of Mary)

That is CLEARLY NOT true. The Transitus Mariae is apochryphal document found some 400 YEARS after the Apostles!

The truth is that, as with the teaching of the immaculate conception, the Roman Church has embraced and is responsible for promoting teachings which originated, not with the faithful, but with heretical writings which were officially condemned by the early Church.

History proves that when the Transitus teaching originated the Church regarded it as heresy. In 494 to 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius issued a decree entitled Decretum de Libris Canonicis Ecclesiasticis et Apocryphis. This decree officially set forth the writings which were considered to be canonical and those which were apocryphal and were to be rejected. In the list of apocryphal writings which are to be rejected Gelasius signifies the following work: Liber qui apellatur Transitus, id est Assumptio Sanctae Mariae, Apocryphus (Pope Gelasius 1, Epistle 42, Migne Series, M.P.L. vol. 59, Col. 162).

This specifically means the Transitus writing of the assumption of Mary. At the end of the decree he states that this and all the other listed literature is heretical and that their authors and teachings and all who adhere to them are condemned and placed under eternal anathema which is indissoluble.

And he places the Transitus literature in the same category as the heretics and writings of Arius, Simon Magus, Marcion, Apollinaris, Valentinus and Pelagius.

Your claim of apostolic oral tradition for the assumption is historically false and anachronistic.

Thus, the Transitus literature is the real source of the teaching of the assumption of Mary and Roman Catholic authorities admit this fact. Juniper Carol, for example, writes: ‘The first express witness in the West to a genuine assumption comes to us in an apocryphal Gospel, the Transitus Beatae Mariae of Pseudo–Melito’ (Juniper Carol, O.F.M. ed., Mariology, Vol. l (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957), p. 149). Roman Catholic theologian, Ludwig Ott, likewise affirms these facts when he says:

The idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitus–narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries. Even though these are apocryphal they bear witness to the faith of the generation in which they were written despite their legendary clothing. The first Church author to speak of the bodily ascension of Mary, in association with an apocryphal transitus B.M.V., is St. Gregory of Tours’ (Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford: Tan, 1974), pp. 209–210).

Juniper Carol explicitly states that the Transitus literature is a complete fabrication which should be rejected by any serious historian:

The account of Pseudo-Melito, like the rest of the Transitus literature, is admittedly valueless as history, as an historical report of Mary’s death and corporeal assumption; under that aspect the historian is justified in dismissing it with a critical distaste (Juniper Carol, O.F.M. ed., Mariology, Vol. l (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957), p. 150).