Papyrus in the Rylands Library, Manchester UK
Posted on 11/06/2015 11:30:07 AM PST by NYer
Papyrus in the Rylands Library, Manchester UK
One of the things that maddens and amuses me about Protestants is something called “primitivismâ€. I’ve written about it here. “Primitivism†is the ambition to return the church to the simplest form as it was in the “early churchâ€.
The little fundamentalist church in which I grew up worked on this assumption. They were going back to basics and getting rid of all those “man made traditionsâ€. They were cutting out the denominations and prayers read out of books and all that fancy stuff and it would be just the Bible.
Their idea of the “early church†was, of course, what their church was like. They were actually ignorant of the facts about the early church, which is understandable as they were Bible only Christians. Consequently they assumed that the early church was just a group of Christians meeting in someone’s home or a simple building to sing songs and have a Bible study.
One of the things they definitely did NOT have was any devotion to the Mother of God. That was a late, Catholic, man made abomination! That was a much later pagan interpolation into the simple Bible based religion!
Except it wasn’t. This blog post outlines the fascinating discovery of the manuscript of the oldest hymn to the Blessed Virgin.Their idea of the “early church†was, of course, what their church was like. They were actually ignorant of the facts about the early church, which is understandable as they were Bible only Christians. Consequently they assumed that the early church was just a group of Christians meeting in someone’s home or a simple building to sing songs and have a Bible study.
One of the things they definitely did NOT have was any devotion to the Mother of God. That was a late, Catholic, man made abomination! That was a much later pagan interpolation into the simple Bible based religion!
Except it wasn’t.
Thisoutlines the fascinating discovery of the manuscript of the oldest hymn to the Blessed Virgin.
The earliest text of this hymn was found in a Christmas liturgy of the third century. It is written in Greek and dates to approximately 250 A.D.In 1917, the John Rylands Library in Manchester acquired a large panel of Egyptian papyrus including the 18 cm by 9.4 cm fragment shown at left, containing the text of this prayer in Greek.
C.H. Roberts published this document in 1938. His colleague E. Lobel, with whom he collaborated in editing the Oxyrhynchus papyri, basing his arguments on paleographic analysis, argued that the text could not possibly be older than the third century, and most probably was written between 250 and 300. This hymn thus precedes the “Hail Mary†in Christian prayer by several centuries.
Here's the text:
On the papyrus:
.ΠΟ
ΕΥCΠΑ
ΚΑΤΑΦΕ
ΘΕΟΤΟΚΕΤ
ΙΚΕCΙΑCΜΗΠΑ
ΕΙΔΗCΕΜΠΕΡΙCTAC
AΛΛΕΚΚΙÎΔΥÎΟΥ
…ΡΥCΑΙΗΜΑC
MONH
…HEΥΛΟΓ
Here it is set to music:
Turns out the hymn to the Theotokos (the God Bearer) dates from 250 AD.
What is very interesting about these comparatively recent documentary and archeological discoveries is not only what we can gather from the scraps of text themselves, but how they become part of a much larger puzzle. We can piece things together to build up a better picture of the true facts.
The hymn is clearly a prayer to the Blessed Virgin asking for her intercession and assistance in time of trouble. This shows continuity with the belief of the church down through the ages. I’m thinking “Mary Help of Christians.â€
Therefore, if this hymn to the Virgin dates from 250 AD we can deduce that it must be a written record of an earlier practice. Think about it, by the time something is written down for use in the liturgy it must already have been in use for some time. Furthermore, if this prayer is part of a document that is a copy of another document, then this also indicates that the actual practice is earlier than the manuscript itself.
In addition to this, if the hymn-prayer is included in the liturgy, then it must be something which is approved by the church and in practice on a fairly widespread basis. If it is included in the liturgy, then the term “theotokos†was not simply a theological term or a theological concept, but something which was integrated into the worshipping and devotional life of the church from the earliest days.
That argument also goes the other way: if the term “theotokos†was used in a hymn-prayer venerating the Blessed Virgin, then a high view of her significance in the plan of redemption must also have been prevalent in the theology of the early church.
You want primitive Christianity? You want to worship like the “early church†then Marian devotion had better be part of it!
The additional reading on rome’s historical development is eye opening. Anyone serious on understanding the papacy and if it’s legitimate should read this.
I think the Mormons have done just that. We know rcc has done so. Without the Word to confirm or deny any false teaching could come into play.
Fail! What you reason is pure conjecture. Besides, Paul discredits this idea.
Galatians 1:11 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
How could Paul know what Jesus said? Gee, I wonder...
You are dealing with certain posters who do not even represent modern RC teaching, thus they are hardly worthy responding to, and who have been refuted time and time again, by the grace of God.
Contrast them with one of the converts they like to invoke as if such supports them: http://www.thecatholicthing.org/2015/11/05/the-joys-and-burdens-of-being-both-evangelical-and-catholic.
And whatever authority the Bible does have they gave to it!
Can you just picture a group of men sitting around with a big old pile of manuscripts deciding which ones were from God and which ones they could toss??? God had some serious words of condemnation for those who rejected His prophets and the divinely inspired words they delivered. What hubris to assert one is ABOVE the authority of God!
I get tired of it, too. This is a hot topic on the RF and is most often posted by Catholics to criticize Protestants because they don’t believe exactly the same thing about Mary as Catholics do. Like you said well, we DO believe in the deity of Jesus Christ and that should be the primary focus as a common tenet of Christianity and not a distracting and counter productive boxing match to prove ones faith is more authentic than anothers.
If Catholics want to devote their lives to Mary, pray to her, worship her, it’s no skin off my nose. Just don’t condemn me if I don’t believe we should. Don’t scream I’m going to hell if I reject their dogma.
Indeed .
Tao’s post is sophomoric. Of course, its God’s word but he sent forth his disciples to “Go forth and teach..” This is to teach ONE truth, for ALL times, not the nonsense that is Protestantism. Hillaire Belloc, the renowned British essayist put it best in his book “The Great Heresies,’ namely that unlike other heresies, Protestantism “spawned a cluster of heresies.”
Catholic Church Fathers (those early theologians) spent the better part of some 300 years sorting out hundreds of written texts and fragments before they assembled the canonical texts. This was a full ELEVEN CENTURIES before the heresy of Protestantism washed ashore and itself fell on fallow ground that it sprouted thousands of sects of hybrid varieties from the likes of Billy Graham’s vapid interpretation of scripture to the deadly Jim Jones and comical Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Many of them like wild mushrooms have withered away. Bible Christianity today is for low-information Christians like the Joel Osteens and Grahams and Schullers and corner street pastors of First United, First Baptist, First Emmanuel, First Methodist and every other type of First nonsense.
During those centuries several heresies were settled by the Catholic Church.
Does the Bible state it is the sole or final authority of Christianity? NO. In fact, Christ said that the Church is to resolve disputes among Christians, not Scripture as recorded by Matthew 18:17: “And if he will not hear them: tell the Church. And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.â€
This explains the conversion of Dr. A. David Anders, who was born, raised and educated, as an Evangelical Protestant and studied Wheaton College. He set out deliberately to show why Catholicism was wrong. He ended up a Catholic convert. He brilliantly essays the belief in the Eucharist in these compelling terms. “By the time I finished my Ph.D., I had completely revised my understanding of the Catholic Church. I saw that her sacramental doctrine, her view of salvation, her veneration of Mary and the saints, and her claims to authority were all grounded in Scripture, in the oldest traditions, and in the plain teaching of Christ and the apostles.”
When America’s pre-eminent Lutheran theologian Rev. Neuhaus converted to Catholicism he said, “I have long believed that the Roman Catholic Church is the fullest expression of the church of Christ through time.â€
Outside of Catholicism from the Moonies to Jehovah’s Witnesses, all brands of Christianity is more than heretical, it is a veritable freak show of so-called Christianity on display.
The fact that the statement is the singular genitive proves that Mary had no other sons. But my assertion is that the reader is supposed to identify with “THE disciple whom Jesus loved.” I am not claiming that Jesus was speaking to more than one person, only that we are to identify with the ONE to whom Jesus is speaking. Therefore, one would expect that the singular is used.
Oh, and since John the Evangelist survived to around 90 AD, the notion that he was young enough to have a mother still alive around 30 AD is not mere speculation on my part. Sticking to strictly biblical sources, John survived at least until the persecution of Nero (late 60s AD).
Again you avoided the issue.
Are the doctrines of salvation clearly stated in the Gospels and epistles penned by the apostles? Yes or no?
If the answer is yes, show us the teaching from the apostles which outlines the intercession of blessed Mary is necessary for salvation.
So far all I have seen in response are insults and innuendos.
And that makes the rcc no more legitimate than the worst of them...If you make up your own rule book instead of following God's there's no where to go but down...
No. It proves Jesus was addressing the disciple whom he loved and was placing Mary in his care.
If your assertion is correct then Paul is a liar in Galatians 1:19 where he identifies James as the brother of the Lord.
That would make Matthew, Mark and Luke liars also as they identify Jesus having brothers and sisters.
Context is the key to understanding the verses regarding His siblings.
But my assertion is that the reader is supposed to identify with “THE disciple whom Jesus loved.†I am not claiming that Jesus was speaking to more than one person, only that we are to identify with the ONE to whom Jesus is speaking. Therefore, one would expect that the singular is used.
I agree He was speaking to one disciple.
Oh, and since John the Evangelist survived to around 90 AD, the notion that he was young enough to have a mother still alive around 30 AD is not mere speculation on my part. Sticking to strictly biblical sources, John survived at least until the persecution of Nero (late 60s AD).
It still remains speculation on either position regarding John's mom as we don't know.
The marian dogmas of the rcc tell me they’re off track.
There's no spiritual awareness...The bible is just an old book written by some old Catholics a long time ago...And over the centuries that religion has hired myriads of brilliant, intellectual people who look, and look into that book but can't see anything...That stuff is from God...He don't reveal it to just anybody...
Rom_16:18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.
“By the time I finished my Ph.D., I had completely revised my understanding of the Catholic Church. I saw that her sacramental doctrine, her view of salvation, her veneration of Mary and the saints, and her claims to authority were all grounded in Scripture, in the oldest traditions, and in the plain teaching of Christ and the apostles.â€
I don't want to say he's a liar, but he's a liar...How much you want to bet he went on to get a paying job with the Catholic religion??? And I know Christian PH.Ds who will tell him so to his face...
But a more weighter judgment is from then-Cardinal Ratzinger who responded in an interview in 2000 as to whether the Church would go along with the desire to solemnly define Mary as Co-redemptrix,
“the response of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is, broadly, that what is signified by this is already better expressed in other titles of Mary, while the formula “Co-redemptrix†departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the Fathers and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings†(53).
He went on to say that, “Everything comes from Him [Christ], as the Letter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Colossians, in particular, tell us; Mary, too, is everything she is through Him. The word “Co-redemptrix†would obscure this origin. A correct intention being expressed in the wrong way. “For matters of faith, continuity of terminology with the language of Scripture and that of the Fathers is itself an essential element; it is improper simply to manipulate language†(God and the world: believing and living in our time, by Pope Benedict XVI, Peter Seewald, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2000, p. 306
The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of graceâ€. In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace.
But Scripture nowhere says she was "full of grace," contrary to what is says of the Lord Jesus, but that she was graced. See here and links therein on that. Or need i repeat it?
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.
Except that Scripture nowhere says that, nor necessitates it, despite the Spirit's practice of mentioning even much less exceptions to the norm, from longevity to the number of toes to prolonged fasting to the sinlessness of Christ. What we have is another traditions of men for which Caths abuse Scripture in trying to support it thereby.
Mary - “ever-virginâ€
Except that Scripture nowhere says that nor necessitates it, despite the Spirit's practice of mentioning exceptions to the norm, including the virginal status of women. And Mary's perpetual virginity is contrary to the Biblical description of marriage, which the Lord affirmed, (Gn. 2:24; Mt. 19:4,5) and to the almost consistent meaning of "till" regarding "And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS." (Matthew 1:25)
Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus.
And the prophetic statement, "I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children." (Psalms 69:8; cf. Jn. 7:5) Mary’s Assumption The Church teaches that Mary was assumed body and soul into Heaven. ... This teaching of the Church was elevated to a dogma in 1950, but has been a belief of the Church going back to the earliest of times.
False, unless you confuse what Rome claims to later "remember" with the facts.
Ratzinger again,
Before Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers' answer was emphatically negative... Altaner, the patrologist from Wurzburg…had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the 5C; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the “apostolic tradition. And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared.
However, Rome can claim to later "remember" what history "forgot," for as as Ratzinger went on to say,
But if you conceive of “tradition†as the living process whereby the Holy Spirit introduces us to the fullness of truth and teaches us how to understand what previously we could still not grasp (cf. Jn 16:12-13), then subsequent “remembering†(cf. Jn 16:4, for instance) [yet "grasp" is not the same as "remembering"] can come to recognize what it has not caught sight of previously and was already handed down [in amorphous, unrecorded, unverifiable "tradition"] in the original Word,†J. Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, n.d.), 58-59.
Now that is what intellect can come with for damage control.
That said, there is Biblical precedent for Mary’s assumption.
Which leaves it as plausible speculation, not binding belief, which apparently was not needed for the edification of saints till the 19th century!
Finally, there are several writings of the Early Church Fathers which support this Tradition.
No, there are not, unless you define "early" means post-6th century, or "several" means 2 or 3 apocryphal sources, and that "support" means by extrapolating it based on the assumption that Mary assisted Jesus, and Assumption and death are mutually exclusive, and that lack of known relics (nothing novel) means support.
From RC Lawrence P. Everett, C.Ss.R., S.T.D. in support of the Assumption are these findings affirmed by others:
In the first three centuries there are absolutely no references in the authentic works of the Fathers or ecclesiastical writers to the death or bodily immortality of Mary. Nor is there any mention of a tomb of Mary in the first centuries of Christianity. The veneration of the tomb of the Blessed Virgin at Jerusalem began about the middle of the fifth century; and even here there is no agreement as to whether its locality was in the Garden of Olives or in the Valley of Josaphat. Nor is any mention made in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus (431) of the fact that the Council, convened to defend the Divine Maternity of the Mother of God, is being held in the very city selected by God for her final resting place. Only after the Council did the tradition begin which placed her tomb in that city.
The earliest known (non-Apocryphal) mention concerning the end of Mary's life appears in the writings of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia,.. in his Panarion or Medicine Chest (of remedies for all heresies), written in c. 377: "Whether she died or was buried we know not."
...And with the exception of a so-called contemporary of Epiphanius, Timothy of Jerusalem, who said: "Wherefore the Virgin is immortal up to now, because He who dwelt in her took her to the regions of the Ascension,"9(After a very thorough and scholarly investigation the author concludes that Timothy is an unknown author who lived between the sixth and seventh centuries (p. 23). no early writer ever doubted the fact of her death....
In the Munificentissimus Deus Pope Pius XII quotes but three Fathers of the Church, all Orientals. St. John Damascene (d. 749)...St. Germanus of Constantinople (d. 733) ...St. Modestus of Jerusalem (d. 634)...
apart from the Apocrypha, there is no authentic witness to the Assumption among the Fathers of either the East or the West prior to the end of the fifth century.
The first remote testimony to which Pope Pius XII turns in order to indicate the fact that our present belief in the Assumption of the Blessed Mother was likewise the belief of the Church from the earliest times is the Sacred Liturgy...
...The feast of the Assumption began in the East as did many of the older Marian feasts... However, due to the fact that neither Sacred Scripture nor early Tradition speaks explicitly of the last days of our Blessed Mother on earth and of her Assumption into heaven, the liturgy of this feast did not mention them either. Later, when the apocryphal Transitus Mariae — in which the death and Assumption of Mary are described in detail — became popular among the faithful, the facts of her death and Assumption were inserted into the feast... - https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=469
And William Webster documents,
...the Roman Catholic writer Eamon Duffy concedes that, ‘there is, clearly, no historical evidence whatever for it ...’ (Eamon Duffy, What Catholics Believe About Mary (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1989), p. 17).
How then did this teaching come to have such prominence in the Church that eventually led it to be declared an issue of dogma in 1950? The first Church father to affirm explicitly the assumption of Mary in the West was Gregory of Tours in 590 A.D. But the basis for his teaching was not the tradition of the Church but his acceptance of an apocryphal Gospel known as the Transitus Beatae Mariae which we first hear of at the end of the fifth century and which was spuriously attributed to Melito of Sardis. There were many versions of this literature which developed over time and which were found throughout the East and West but they all originated from one source.
[The eminent Mariologist, Juniper Carol, O.F.M.] gives the following historical summary of the Transitus literature:
An intriguing corpus of literature on the final lot of Mary is formed by the apocryphal Transitus Mariae. The genesis of these accounts is shrouded in history’s mist. They apparently originated before the close of the fifth century, perhaps in Egypt, perhaps in Syria, in consequence of the stimulus given Marian devotion by the definition of the divine Maternity at Ephesus. The period of proliferation is the sixth century. At least a score of Transitus accounts are extant, in Coptic, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Armenian. Not all are prototypes, for many are simply variations on more ancient models (Juniper Carol, O.F.M. ed., Mariology, Vol. II (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957), p. 144). <
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). <
Also,
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).
Also, Roman Catholic theologian, Ludwig Ott, states:
The idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitus–narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries....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).
Prior to the seventh and eighth centuries there is complete patristic silence on the doctrine of the Assumption. But gradually, through the influence of numerous forgeries which were believed to be genuine, coupled with the misguided enthusiasm of popular devotion, the doctrine gained a foothold in the Church. The Dictionary of Christian Antiquities gives the following history of the doctrine:...
1)The Liber de Transitu, though classed by Gelasius with the known productions of heretics came to be attributed by one...to Melito, an orthodox bishop of Sardis, in the 2nd century, and by another to St. John the Apostle.
2) A letter suggesting the possibility of the Assumption was written and attributed to St. Jerome (ad Paulam et Eustochium de Assumptione B. Virginis, Op. tom. v. p. 82, Paris, 1706).
3) A treatise to prove it not impossible was composed and attributed to St. Augustine (Op. tom. vi. p. 1142, ed. Migne).
4) Two sermons supporting the belief were written and attributed to St. Athanasius (Op. tom. ii. pp. 393, 416, ed., Ben. Paris, 1698).
5) An insertion was made in Eusebius’s Chronicle that ‘in the year 48 Mary the Virgin was taken up into heaven, as some wrote that they had had it revealed to them.’ - http://www.christiantruth.com/articles/assumption.html
The church fathers of the earliest centuries repeatedly cite Enoch and Elijah as examples of people who didn’t die, were translated to Heaven, etc. (Clement of Rome, First Clement, 9; Tertullian, A Treatise On The Soul, 50; Tertullian, On The Resurrection Of The Flesh, 58; Tertullian, Against Marcion, 5:12; Methodius, From The Discourse On The Resurrection, 14), yet they never say any such thing about Mary or include her as an example. Irenaeus, for instance, writes about the power of God to deliver people from death, and he cites Enoch, Elijah, and Paul (2 Corinthians 12:2) as illustrations of people who were "assumed" and "translated", but he says nothing of Mary (Against Heresies, 5:5).
A group of some of the leading Roman Catholic and Lutheran scholars in the world concluded: A group of some of the leading Roman Catholic and Lutheran scholars in the world concluded:
"Furthermore, the notion of Mary's assumption into heaven has left no trace in the literature of the third, much less of the second century. M. Jugie, the foremost authority on this question, concluded in his monumental study: 'The patristic tradition prior to the Council of Nicaea does not furnish us with any witness about the Assumption.'" (Raymond Brown, et al., Mary In The New Testament [Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1978], p. 266)
One would think that when the scholarly works of roman catholicism that many hold dear and cling to refute what the rcc has taught they would begin to question these.
That they don't is telling.
When your security is in an autocratic institution, it tends to bring them to presume it does not really matter what evidence says to the contrary. It can only mean what Rome says.
I wonder why Jesus did not place Mary in the care of her other sons? My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the half brothers of Jesus, the other sons of Mary, were not born again believers yet. Later some, maybe all, did become BELIEVERS in Jesus, two of whom, James and Jude, wrote books in the New Testament.
:-)
If there had been other sons, Jesus would have done that. But this proves that Jesus, truly God, and truly human was her only son.
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