Thanks for the conversation.
“It’s a matter of Logic. Much of the New Testament didn’t exist until after Christ’s death“
I didn’t write this like I intended. I meant many of the events in the New Testament occurred after Christ’s death.
As Catholics we believe in the Truth. Just because people were pagans didn’t mean they were cut off from the Truth. Aristotle used reason to get pretty close to the Truth. So one of the tools the Apostles used was to talk to people and learn their culture and discover what aspects of the Truth existed in their culture and build on those. Those that were not compatible needed to be pruned away.
Of course many of the books existed before 100AD. But there were also others not included. But The Apostles didn’t have to teach from the written word they actually knew Christ so taught from memory. We obviously have letters when they had to clear up misunderstandings of the various people. And after hundreds of years it should be obvious many false versions would be created. Which is why to combat this the Church had to formalize the Bible into the current cannon.
The Orthodox and some Jews also use the deuterocanonical books. Luther removed them to conform to his theology. I think there was a warning in the Bible about that.
The fact is if you only believe in the Bible you are free to interpret it anyway you want which ends up making it meaningless.
It’s a matter of Logic. Much of the New Testament didn’t exist until after Christ’s death. He left the Apostles to run his Church. As various groups had wrong interpretations they had to formalize the teachings and put together the best documents to put together the Bible.
And yes before the Catholic Church canonized the Bible there was no official Old Testament. Various Jewish groups had different books they thought were valid. Now the Pentateuch including Genesis was pretty universally accepted but the Catholic Church made the Greek version the Septuagint the official version since it was what was in more common use at the time.
Because the Church existed before the Bible and is the one who put it together. Plenty of Jewish and Roman sources talking about Christ and his followers. His Apostles went all over the place and there are records of where they ended up.
Long focal lengths cause background objects to appear larger and closer together.
Take a look at the apparent size of the back window panes. The top picture they look bigger and closer to the front windows than the bottom photo which indicates a longer focal length was used on the top photo and a more wide angle lens used on the bottom.
If you have a camera with a zoom lens or cellphone with multiple lenses you can try this out yourself.
The Christmas tree was a tradition started when St Boniface cut down the pagan holy tree to show it wasn’t a God. Kind of like the way tree worshipping pagans today complain about Christmas Trees.
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/st-boniface-and-the-christmas-tree
Just remember that the Virgin Mary appearing as Our Lady of Guadalupe converted millions of pagan Mexican in a few years peacefully. https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=456
Don’t forget how they maintained control. They Genocided 1/3 of the next generation in the womb and used contraception to reduce it even more. Then replaced those kids with immigrants they could exploit for cheap labor.
No surprise they would collapse the world economy once they were retired and force vaccinate everyone to prevent them from getting a virus.
They don’t call them the “Me Generation” for nothing.