Pope Francis

Bob take a deep breath. First of all every Protestant Christian recognizes that Jesus was celibate. In regards to when the discipline of celibacy was required of Latin Rite priests it was later and for practical reasons as well as spiritual. Before this though there were of course some celibate clergy as there are now some married clergy.

Quote: FrGamble

First of all every Protestant Christian recognizes that Jesus was celibate.

"Bart Ehrman concludes that historical evidence tells us nothing at all about Jesus' sexuality."

Ehrman says in all his decades of doing
this for a living, zero evidence. You just
grab a whatever you can to further your
agenda. The truth is, whoever put the NT
together purposely left out any details
of Jesus life before he was 30. That would
bug the crap out of me if I was a Xtion,
something very suspicious there. What
did he do that they have to keep it a
total secret.

It is called the hidden life of Jesus and I find it very inspiring and beautiful. You forget that Jesus was just like us in all things but sin. He was a regular guy growing up in the home of a worker, learning a trade, and all kinds of normal stuff. There was nothing in Him to have you look at Him as if He was some 7 foot alien with green skin. You and I are living a hidden life of sorts. They won't write books about us when we are gone, but that doesn't mean our hidden life is meaningless or not important. We do our best each and every day and that is just as important if we were going around publicly curing lepers.

Quote: FrGamble

It is called the hidden life of Jesus and I find it very inspiring and beautiful. .

Of course, you can make up anything you like
to fill in the blanks. Xtionity is the religion
of inference. That's why there are 2500
versions of the religion. There's so much
you don't know, so you use faulty reasoning
to make inference into facts.

To an outsider you can have no idea what a mess
this looks like. Impossible to take any of it
seriously, obviously nobody in the religion
has a clue.

Actually you are incorrect. The hidden life of Jesus is exactly that, you can't infer or add anything to it. Your conspiracy theories and made up stories cannot be applied because they have nothing to stick to. You have to just be content with the profound yet boring simple life of Jesus before His public ministry.

Quote: FrGamble

Actually you are incorrect. The hidden life of Jesus is exactly that

What did Santa do before he was Santa?
Lets make up things we want to be true
just like we do for Jesus. The early life
of Jesus isn't 'hidden', some of the
people who were close to him knew it.
But because none of those people
wrote any of the NT books, they had
no idea what that life was. So you can
dream up anything you like.

I contend Jesus was married, because
if he wasn't it would have been such
an issue it surely would have been
mentioned by somebody. He was just
another very average married traveling
doomsday prophet rabbi, traveling with
a bunch of early to mid teen boys.


(I know, they think John might have
been written by John, but other
scholars say probably not.)

You seem to be the only one wanting to make up something about Jesus to fill in those hidden years. You are just going to have to accept facts and history. Jesus lived a totally ordinary life. In the 3 years of His public ministry He changed human history like no one ever could or will. More evidence He is God.

You have nothing to propose He was married except that people didn't mention He was not married. I've shown you that Jesus Himself talks about that in the Gospels and so does St. Paul. I've also pointed out that there were celibate groups like the Essenes around that time. Jesus' cousin and friend St. John the Baptist may have been one or reminded people of them. Jewish scholars think some of the great prophets like Jeremiah were celibate. All this plus an unbroken tradition of all Christians holding to Jesus not being married. I don't know how you can seriously hold that Jesus was married, but I have seen you hold even crazier ideas with even less evidence (ex. Atheism).

Quote: FrGamble

You are just going to have to accept facts and history. Jesus lived a totally ordinary life. .

Exactly. An ordinary life for a rabbi
in those days was married with a
family. He would have totally defied
tradition if he didn't do that, he would
have stood out and they would have
harassed him about it. The Jews were
sticklers for tradition, it ran their universe.

The fact that it's never mentioned at all
means he was ordinary in every way, married
with a family. For sure the parents of the
young teenage boys who were his disciples,
would never let these young men travel
around with a 30 year old unmarried rabbi.
For obvious reasons..

Again I don't think your understanding of the ancient world's marriage practices are not as universal or clear as you think. You also continue to ignore Jesus and His early followers talk about His marital status and its significance. You are grasping at straws.

Quote: FrGamble

Again I don't think your understanding of the ancient world's marriage practices are not as universal or clear as you think. .

It was for the Jews at that time. It
was unheard of for a rabbi to be
unmarried at 30. You're the one ignoring the
facts to push your church's agenda.
A married Jesus flies in the face of
everything your Church teaches. It
would mean Jesus had (gasp) SEX!

You can't have that, Jesus doing something
so dirty and filthy. The myth has to be
perfect, he has to have unattainable purity.
Silliness personified.