Do you believe that any of these are true relics of Christ?
912578
None of them.  They are as much true relics as the hundreds of thousands of pieces of the cross that were sold across Europe during the Middle Ages.\nIn any case I am not interested in relics. I prefer to have to do with the living Christ Himself.
273940
I have read and would strongly recommend reading, many of the Apocryphal books. There are too many to list, but the below links take you to websites full of them.\n\nhttp://earlyjewishwritings.com/\n\nhttp://earlychristianwritings.com/\n\nCheck out the links; let me know what you think.
1040576
yes they all are based of the heroic mythology... jesus could be bhudda could be king arthur... could be neo... it's all the same thing...
486130
The Church's teachings says they are. Do you believe in these teachings? In order to fully understand the 'concept' of Original Sin, one must take the time to fully investigate the history of religion and the church and how these 'canons' came to be.\nThe Church did indeed have an agenda which prevailed since it was formalized under the emperor, Constantine. Just ask yourself if that same agenda can be 'justified' in the world of today?
458142
I don't know where you get your information from.  You have been misinformed.  There are some so called "Catholics" that are misguided, as well as many others.  I was raised and taught in Catholic schools.  Not once, did anyone ever suggest praising statues or worshiping anyone or anything other than (Jesus, Holy Spirit & the Father) Holy trinity = one God.  We believe in offering prayers for loved ones, and we believe that the Staints offer they're prayers for the living.  But if someone was to assume that Catholics are taught to worship anyone or anything other than God, they are sadly mistaken.  Statues, pictures, etc... are reminders of who are good examples of how to live as Christ did.  Just like having pictures of your children.  The pictures are NOT your children, but an image of your children.  you would feed, clothe or talk to the picture.  Being Cathoilic does not mean that you are out of touch with reality.
375207
"There is actually quite a bit of written history from that time period that proves he did exist. But thanks for playing anyways."\n\nHAHAHAHAHAHA.... prove it. Show me one single piece of paper and I will believe you. The fact of the matter is, there was NO record of a historical jesus. In fact, St. Paul (who recorded the very first story of "Jesus") didnt mention anything about a virgin birth, miracles, or even this plane of exsistance. It was set in the same relm as Zeus, Hera, and other fictional characters. There are no writings from ANYONE who supposedly followed "jesus". If you know of any first hand evidence, I will gladly look at it and convert my faith if its true. So heres your big chance, all you good christians out there... In fact, Im gonna make it a new topic.
102727
I certainly believe they exist, and have read several books on them, and did some extensive research on the Gospel of Thomas.  Do I believe they should be in the Bible?  No.  Many of the people who talk about them here have not read them, and there are several that we don't even have a complete copy of; the Gospel of Mary is an example of this.  There is some theology, especially concering creation, that are contrary to the rest of scripture.  Gnostics also have what is known as a docetic view of Jesus.  That is, that Jesus wasn't human, he only appeared to be human.  Gnostics believe that the physical world is evil, and so God would never have taken on human form.\n\nAlso, there are plenty of other writings that were not included in the Bible.  Letters from other church fathers such as Clement, and other books such as The Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache were considered for the canon, but not included.  So, it wasn't just the Gnostic gospels that were not included.\n\nThe Gnostic gospels are valuable however, because they show us some of how Christianity developed early in its history.\n\nFinally, it is important to know that for many of the Gnostic Gospels, we had no copies or only fragments of many of them before a discovery at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the 1950's.  So, there hasn't been a long running conspiracy to keep these books from the public.
470247
:}\nIf it is the same document that existed in the first and second century, it was treated as heresy then and should be now\n\nif it isn't, it's a fake
1177672
He....   darn it.  I thought I had the recipe sitting here but I seem to have lost it.\n\nGeez, what kind of question is that any way?\n\nLet's assume for a minute that you are asking about a just a mundane operation like walking from one town to another.  The inclusion of the word "exactly" in a question about a 2000 year old event makes one wonder what your epistemelogical standard is.   \n\nThe quick and the dirty of the situation is, I don't know.  I think it probably did happen though. I'm not a fundementalist, so therefore it's not necessary for the New Testament accounts, in this case the Gospel of John, to be completly inerrant for me to sign on.  They just have to be generally historically accurate, like any other set of historical documents from the time.\n\nSome people's a priori commitment to pure materialism aside, the story seems to be authentic to me.  It has specific details that a good old propaganda story probably wouldn't contain.  Such as Jesus's disagreement with his mother and his consequent quip at her.  And then he actuallly does what she suggested.  Propaganda created from whole cloth would probably contain less contraversy in it.  \n\nThe Gospel of John is actually the New Testament book that we have the earliest documentary evidence of.  Part of it was found in the Nag Hammadi (sp?) library in Egypt and has been dated to about 130 a.d.   That's pretty darn close to the events described compared to most ancient historical documents that are considered authoritative.
31856
Today there's nothing strange about them: they are public, everybody can read them and judge for themselves. Even on the internet. Apocryphas, gnostic, pseudopigraphics, you name them. They were only interesting as long as they where "hidden" or "banned" by narrowminded christians during centuries. I read 'em, almost all, and there's absolutely nothing sensational about them. Most of them are as boring as the Bible itself.
143779
Yes, and that sprirt/image I see is real have been told by three people that my house is haunted.Aman had died there 2 months after his death I moved into the house,and before he had lived here,a Nun who had "fallen from grace" had died here also. So the "images" that I see I believe are them.Other than that,if it's nothing there then are nuts!!!
1122093
My faith isn't based on history, so it's not possible for archeolgical finds to disprove my faith.\n\nI don't take the Bible literally, so something that disproves the Bible's literal stories isn't going to mess me up.  There is no way to archeologically prove whether or not Jesus was the Son of God.  Hypothetically, I suppose you could find a body that might be Jesus', but that would only disprove resussitation of a corpse, and I believe resurrection is more spiritual than physical. (although I do believe in a physical ressurection, it's just that if it was "disproved" it wouldn't shatter my faith).\n\nI don't know what kind of archelogical evidence could disprove the validty of my belief system, or most other religions.  The closest it could come (hypothetically) is to show that some events recorded in some holy scriptures didn't actually happen that way.  The only people this could possible mess up are fundamentalist inerrantists, whether they be Christian, Jewish or Muslim.  It wouldn't really affect any of the eastern religions because there aren't any inerrantists (that I know of) within Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, etc.\n\nSo... I wouldn't have to stick blindly to my faith because it's not blind.  Not all faith is.  In fact, most of it isn't.
818087
I believe that there is a lot of compelling evidence for the theory behind the Da Vinci (everyone should notice that that's what you asked about, not the novel itself)\n\nThe Priory of Sion part is highly questionable, but the evidence for the bloodline of Christ is very plausible and at least as "provable" is the orthodox Christian account.
567374
These claims are just that, claims.  There is no foundation of truth to these claims.  The word canon is closely related "reed."  Our word "cane" comes from the same word.  The idea is a measuring stick.  The idea is that canonical scriptures are those scriptures by which we measure our lives.  Who decides what is canonical?  Whoever is reading it, honestly.  We see that principal in Acts 17:11, when the Bereans were considered most noble because they examined the scriptures (Old Testament here) to see if what Paul said was true.  I do not agree with the Catholic's church of making the books officialy recognized (making acceptance of other books or rejection of any of the 27 a heracy) in the 16th century as a reaction to Martin Luther questioning the authority of the book of James.  \n\nHowever, history tells us that NO OTHER BOOKS have ever been widely accepted as scripture.  It also tells us that EVERY book in the New Testament WAS widely accepted as scripture.  The early church fathers, who wrote between the last part of the first century, and the first part of the second century, collectively quoted almost every single verse in the New Testament in their writtings.  No other books were quoted as scripture by them at all.  \n\nThe Muratorian Fragment is one of the earliests know lists of New Testament books.  Although it is incomplete, it refers to Luke as the "third" Gospel.  This would have been around the same time or before Irenaeus (I don't know the exact date of that fragment, only that it was the second half of the second century).  \n\nAs to your claim that we only have the 4 gospels to have the "slavation shallows...that we merely have to accept Jesus on faith and we are saved..." this is a ridiculous claim.  First of all, the Gospels say very little (although they are not completely silent) about how to be saved.  Mostly we find that in Acts and Paul's letters (Paul's letters are also written before most of the Gospels).  The simplicity of the Good News is found in Paul's writings.  \n\nAlthough I don't know the date of the three gospels you have mentioned, I know that most of the gnostic gospels are usually dated around 200 A.D.  This is reason enough to reject them.  Also, despite recent claims made by The DaVinci Code, the other gospels made Jesus out to be some mystic demi-god that didn't come in the flesh at all.  In fact, the gnostic gospels (the recent gospel of Judas among them), don't have a Jewish veiw of God at all, don't quote the Old Testament, and reject many of the events that fulfilled Old Testament prophesy about Jesus.  Their beliefs come from some Greek and Roman beliefs, and as such should be rejected.\n\nThe decision of what should be canon and what should not still goes on today.  Most of that decision goes on today in the form of Textual Criticism.  However, I believe Christians should still look at the 27 books we have and ask themselves, "Do these belong here?"  I believe we should still read some of the other early Christian writings and ask "Should these be considered scripture?"  I have done much study, and I am convinced that the 27 books in the New Testament are the ones by which I need to live my life.  Questioning what has been passed down, however, is never a bad idea.  Just make sure you don't obsess over it that you WANT to believe something else so badly that you don't remain objective (or that you want TO believe it, for that matter).  \n\nGod bless.\n\nP.S.  The importance of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is found througout the scripture, especially the letters of Paul and the writings of John.
688295
Sparky First let me say I appreciate the 10 pts. I don't know what I did to piss you off though. I told you to look up the work "Qumran" because it is one of the best documented archaeological finds in the world and I knew that there would be plenty of info online (which would be convenient for you). Would you rather me refer you to the dozens of books that I know of offhand or to an infinite # of archaeological reports that are incredibly boring to read? I studied Qumran under Jodi Magness at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she is the foremost American Archaeologist in the world concerning the "holyland." In particular, she is definitely the foremost authority on Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  In case you don't know, archaeology is SCIENCE, not religion, and archaeological reports and finds are scientific and are not at all connected to the Church or any religion.  \n\nNothing in my answer to you dealt with religious dogma, I simply tried to answer your question as to why SOME Christians see a threat in the DaVinci code. Now, as for your claim that the bible was written 200 years after Christ, well that's true for some of the later NT books, but not of the Gospels. Some of the gnostic texts were much later than the gospels, which is part of the reason they were rejected by the church. \n\nAnd lastly, you claim that the bible has changed so many times that it's all crap. What do you have to support this? Go see the Dead Sea Scrolls some time, which were written between 2500-2000 yrs ago (as I visited a DSS exhibit about a month ago in Charlotte, NC). And then compare that to the KJV or the American Standard Bible.  The Old Testament found in the 1950s in the Caves near Qumran is nearly word for word with what we have today.  It is amazing that in 2000 or more years the Jewish text has changed so little!  This means that we should all reexamine the amount of credit we have granted the Jewish oral tradition that was so important to the early Christian Church.  IT IS ACCURATE, whether you want to admit it or not. SCIENCE and HISTORY support that.\n\nAgain, I answered your question rather well... Let me try one more time in FIVE SIMPLE SENTENCES that will be very easy for you to comprehend this time:\n\n1.  It wouldn't be so bad if Jesus was married.\n\n2.  Christians are NOT offended or threatened by the possibility that Jesus could have been married.\n\n3.  It's simply not historically true or believable, from the bible and from the writings of two Roman historians Tacitus and Josephus.\n\n4.  However, Some Christians ARE offended by the notion that Christ was not Divine; and the "The DaVinci Code" claims his having a child is proof that Jesus was NOT divine.\n\n5.  Such a claim can be damaging to the mission field because people like you believe anything and everything you read in a novel or see on TV and are therefore hostile toward Christianity.\n\nSo, that's why some Christians are offended by the DaVinci Code and by the notion that Christ might have been married to and had a child with Mary Magdalene.  Because of the hostility towards Christianity that such false belief creates.  People like you work directly against anyone trying to bring people to Christ.  \n\nPS.. the whole "MM was a whore" lost in translation thing.. do your history research man, you don't know what you are talking about at all.  You speak fiction and pass it off as truth. \n\nAnd you wonder why people would be offended?  maybe some people just like the truth?\n\nLet me ask you a question.  Why are you so offended by Christianity?  What are YOU afraid of?  The Truth?
657978
Yes, there is a Holy Grail.  It is the chalice that Jesus used for his wine at the Last Supper with his Apostles.
986268
I would like to comment on the fact about Mary or the other saints being worship. They where servants of God and shouldn't be worshiped like some people do. \n\n\nYou can get on your knees and kiss the statue of St.Peter and still not get to heaven because Jesus is the only one to forgive you of your sins. \n\n\nAs for the images I too once thought nothing of it. However it is commanded  that we not make any image or likeness of God in earth or the sea beneath. So after searching my own heart I found it to be wrong.\n\n@martha I just got done reading and your right we shouldn't judge. But the bible does tell us to save our brothers from death(Translated from the hebrew word sheol which means hell).