The common people and the Bible - literalists?

The Gospel of Judas was Gnostic. A lot of Gnostic material is still available. The Church’s stance is still the same as it was when Paul wrote his letter, warning against listening to them.

That is with out doubt the greatest spin I’ve ever seen for rationalizing 100’s of years of the church’s justification for slaughtering probably 10,000’s of people.

That’s still not a reply to my idea that: ‘‘had gotten it’s hands on the famous Gospel of Judas first, it never would have seen the light of day’’.

It’s suspected of hiding/destroying similar hiding historical documents.

Are you speaking of the Spanish Inquisition again?

Suspected by whom? Evidence?

The church has refused to release the full transcript of Galileo’s inquisition trial.

There is a 500 year history of church officials burning books/texts they disapproved of.

These were released in 1984.

They still didn’t get everything. The torture records were still missing.

He wasn’t tortured. That was also shown years ago. Look, if you wish to bash the Catholic Church, start a new thread. This one is long past due to go back to addressing whether the common people of a few thousand years ago considered stories in the Bible as literal, or as presenting a lesson.

Well, you see, that’s been the church line, and it’s it hasn’t been proven otherwise. And victims of the Inquisition were obliged to take an oath not to divulge what had happened to them specially if they wanted to stay free.

But if you want to get back on topic, ok by me.

I’ll have to go digging, but I think from the Christian side of things the first mention of how it should be interpreted was by Origen, who stated that portions, such as Genesis, should not be taken literally. I believe this would have been in the 200’s. It was a common practice in medieval times to allegorize troublesome passages in scripture. I don’t think it was until Desiderius Erasmus in the 1500’s that this practice was challenged.