Catholics Don't Exemplify Christianity...

[Disir]

Better picture of the Way of the Patriarchs, Kings Highway and Via Maris:
Way of the Patriarchs - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[Bonzi]

Catholics do believe you can pray someone to heaven.. wrong!

That isn't right either. Are you lying or just misinformed?

Okay, correction, speed up the process of going to heaven... either way, wrong.

 

[Bonzi]

Worshipping idols, icons and images violates the 2nd commandment.
- Catholics regularly bow down to idols, icons and images of Jesus, Mary and the apostles, kissing the feet of the statues and praying to them. The Bible teaches that WE ONLY PRAY TO DEITY and Christians considers it paganism and polytheism to pray to anyone EXCEPT the Father, Son or Holy Spirit. So while Catholics pray to Mary, they fail to comprehend that only deity is to be prayed to. The Bible clearly teaches that all dead humans, though conscious in the spirit world, are unable to know anything, much less hear prayers addressed to them. Bowing down to icons and kissing them etc. so closely resembles idol worship it is actually shocking that any Roman Catholic would attempt to defend the practice.

Bonzi? Technically all Christians break the second commandment which is: You shall have no other gods before Me.

True, be we don't actively do it in church! Maybe by unwillful sinning,
but doing it in church willfully?

 

[zaangalewa]

Worshipping idols, icons and images violates the 2nd commandment.
- Catholics regularly bow down to idols, icons and images of Jesus, Mary and the apostles, kissing the feet of the statues and praying to them. The Bible teaches that WE ONLY PRAY TO DEITY and Christians considers it paganism and polytheism to pray to anyone EXCEPT the Father, Son or Holy Spirit. So while Catholics pray to Mary, they fail to comprehend that only deity is to be prayed to. The Bible clearly teaches that all dead humans, though conscious in the spirit world, are unable to know anything, much less hear prayers addressed to them. Bowing down to icons and kissing them etc. so closely resembles idol worship it is actually shocking that any Roman Catholic would attempt to defend the practice.

Bonzi? Technically all Christians break the second commandment which is: You shall have no other gods before Me.

The triune god is one god - like three directions are one space. And mother Mary is mother Mary. We love Mother Mary - everyone loves mother Mary. Neverthelels Mohammed - who was himselve one of the greatest admirer of mother Mary - was right when he said something like "Who believes in the triune god - God father, Jesus Christ and mother Mary - is not a Christian", because indeed the holy family is Joseph, Mary and Jesus and the triune god is god father, god son and the holy spirit.

 

[Bonzi]

there is nothing in the Bible about praying someone into heaven.

There is nothing in the Bible about having pancake breakfasts after church, but we often have them. As I said before, its praying with, and having the Body of Christ praying for us. Everyone prays to God.

Can you explain to my then, why your MAIN prayer is to Mary... or why it even exists...

"Hail Mary full of grace..." -

Whether a saint or Mary is being prayed to, or being asked to pray for them -- neither practice has any biblical basis. The Bible nowhere instructs believers in Christ to pray to anyone other than God

 

[Bonzi]

And you are?

A Christian that understands the Bible....

and you are....?

Is that right? How 'bout that history?

Eh... the Bible and correct interpretation trumps history...
Where in the Bible does it say to pray to Mary?

Where in the bible does it say not to.

The Bible says to pray to God.
Why would you WANT to pray to anyone else?

 

[UllysesS.Archer]

Please don't use Catholicism as an example of Christianity..
Their doctrine is flawed.

You pray to GOD and JESUS not Mary.
Your sins are forgiven by GOD, not a Priest.

It's CRAP!

Nobody ever prayed to Mary as a goddess.
Not since she was co-opted by the Church, anyway.

Like it or not, Catholicism is the origin of Christianity. Go with another flavor for your own practice if you like, but you can't deny historical fact.

I didn't know the disciples and Paul were Roman Catholics, I thought they were Jewish.

The actual history of the Bible, is in the Bible. King James just had it translated.

 

[UllysesS.Archer]

Worshipping idols, icons and images violates the 2nd commandment.
- Catholics regularly bow down to idols, icons and images of Jesus, Mary and the apostles, kissing the feet of the statues and praying to them. The Bible teaches that WE ONLY PRAY TO DEITY and Christians considers it paganism and polytheism to pray to anyone EXCEPT the Father, Son or Holy Spirit. So while Catholics pray to Mary, they fail to comprehend that only deity is to be prayed to. The Bible clearly teaches that all dead humans, though conscious in the spirit world, are unable to know anything, much less hear prayers addressed to them. Bowing down to icons and kissing them etc. so closely resembles idol worship it is actually shocking that any Roman Catholic would attempt to defend the practice.

Bonzi? Technically all Christians break the second commandment which is: You shall have no other gods before Me.

Actually, not all of them.

I have met a few, a very few, of which I am NOT one. Who, place God first in all things. My great aunt Glada was one of these. She was the most Godly person I ever knew, or probably ever will. She exemplified everything that Jesus was as much as anyone I have ever seen in today's world. And I think she was rewarded, in a way on this world, with a death that was quick, while the doctors thought she would suffer for awhile, God had other plans.

 

[Meriweather]

Can you explain to my then, why your MAIN prayer is to Mary... or why it even exists...

"Hail Mary full of grace..." -

Whether a saint or Mary is being prayed to, or being asked to pray for them -- neither practice has any biblical basis. The Bible nowhere instructs believers in Christ to pray to anyone other than God

Why do you say that the "Hail Mary" is our MAIN prayer? It is not part of the Mass, nor the sacraments. Those are our main prayers. The first half of the Hail Mary recalls Christ's conception and the Bible verses surrounding that event: What both Gabriel and Elizabeth said to her.

Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women.
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Why do you object to Catholics recalling these events that are straight out of scripture?

The second part of the prayer deals with later (15th century) events where the protest was Jesus was man, not God.

Holy Mary, mother of God
Pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death.

As you see, the first part of the prayer is a reflection on the announcement of Christ's coming. The next part emphasizes Jesus is God. The final part requests that Mary, a member of of the Body of Christ (just like the rest of us) pray for us. We ask this in the manner in which we would ask the person sitting next to us in the pew (also a member of the Body of Christ) to pray for us.

If you don't care to reflect on the announcement of Christ's coming, to acknowledge Jesus is God, or ask anyone for prayers, then don't. As you now see, Catholics take the prayer directly out of the Bible.

Oh...and there are several scripture passages that encourages the Body of Christ to pray for one another and to pray together. So you see, Catholics take these scriptures quite seriously.

 

[zaangalewa]

And you are?

A Christian that understands the Bible....

and you are....?

Is that right? How 'bout that history?

Eh... the Bible and correct interpretation trumps history...
Where in the Bible does it say to pray to Mary?

Where in the bible does it say not to.

The Bible says to pray to God.
Why would you WANT to pray to anyone else?

A good question. So why do you preach against us with your learned hate as if this illusion would be able to be your god? Shorter: Why do you want to be hateful without any reason?

 

[Meriweather]

The Bible says to pray to God.
Why would you WANT to pray to anyone else?

Notice, you have to twist what is truth into lie before you even have a complaint. No one prays to anyone else. And how sweet, you can do it with a tiny two-letter word. Still, it makes your premise wrong, and therefore anything that follows your premise is also wrong.

Let's put the proper words into your sentence, and see how they sound:

Why would you WANT to pray for anyone else?
Why would you WANT to pray with anyone else?

We all pray to God (no one else) for and with others. Do you have questions on why we pray to God for and with each other?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.” ― Fulton J. Sheen
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Ravi]

Catholics do believe you can pray someone to heaven.. wrong!

That isn't right either. Are you lying or just misinformed?

Okay, correction, speed up the process of going to heaven... either way, wrong.

That is also incorrect.

 

[BluePhantom]

Well that's a point of great controversy. As I know you are Catholic, and I respect that belief, I know that is how you would like to see it, but to make that stick you have to say that Peter and the other Apostles were teaching the same thing that the sect that would become the Catholic Church (as a noun) taught. With respect to you, Meriwether (because you know I respect the hell out of you), I don't see how anyone can support such a claim because the Catholic Church (as a noun) after Constantine was so heavily Romanized.

To me, it stretches credulity to the breaking point to suggest that Peter endorsed a Roman view of Jesus. But we are free to disagree, of course.

Been away for a couple of days. Where do you see the Catholic Church as being heavily Romanized? I see a lot of Jewish influence (Purgatory for one), but I'll need a bit of help seeing the Roman influence, other than dietary laws and art work.

Well in a lot of ways from certain traditions, to architecture, to literature, to rhetoric, to how Jesus was portrayed and how certain events were portrayed. We must remember that the first Christians were the disciples themselves and the various others who followed them. These were Jews who believed that Jesus was a Jew, who came on behalf of the Jews, to fulfill Jewish Messianic prophecies. They were highly apocalyptic and they believed that the path to righteousness with God was to follow the Law. By the time of Constantine, the church had and continued to experience anti-semitic viewpoints, the depiction of Jesus had changed to having Him come for all mankind instead of just the Jews, the apocalyptic tradition had been heavily glossed over, and the path to righteousness with God had become Paul's doctrine of Grace.

How did that happen?

Well that's a very long story, and my guess is that you know a great deal of it already. We also have to keep in mind that it was Paul who was the most successful at spreading Christianity in the early church. Paul was a Jew, but he was also a Roman and he was converting Gentiles (Romans) so the message had to accessible and impactful for them and it had to appeal to them in a way that would be accepted from a Roman viewpoint.

An example of this would be the depiction of the trial of jesus before Pilate. This is heavily Romanized in order to appeal to a Gentile population. The portrayals of Pilate going to such lengths to save Jesus and making a show of washing his hands of it, and the Jews screaming "His blood be upon us and our children." after Pilate calls Jesus a righteous man. (Matt. 27:24-25, NIV). Pffft...give me a break. Pilate wouldn't have given two shits about Jesus. He was just the headache of the day. Pilate would probably have crucified Jesus, went to have a nice breakfast, made love to his wife, took a pleasant afternoon nap, and it wouldn't have crossed his mind further. That was thrown in there to appeal to Gentiles and instead cast responsibility upon the Jews as an entire community as evidenced by the addition of "....and our children". The author is making the point that all Jews are to blame. I highly doubt that is something that Peter, John, or even Paul, being Jews themselves, would have agreed with or made a central point of their teaching.

Another example would be the apocalyptic tradition. The disciples and especially Paul were apocalypticists. They believed the Kingdom of God was at hand. Jesus had fulfilled the Messianic prophecies, the first would be last and the last would be first. It was time! It was here! Revelation, even being written so much later, upheld that tradition. It was a great Judeo-Christian apocalypse that said just those things. The time is at hand! Rome will fall. Down with Caesar! Ok what do you do with that book and that tradition when suddenly Rome IS the church and the church IS Roman? You can't have books in your set of scripture that says 'down with Caesar, down with Rome' when the church IS Rome. So what do you do? You change the meaning and insist that author meant something else. You smooth out and gloss over the apocalyptic tradition that was absolutely vital to the beliefs and early teachings of the earliest Christians.

So there's a couple examples. I could go on but this post is long enough as it is and I think that you, being a knowledgeable and reasonable person, are already aware of these things anyhow. So there you go.

 

[aris2chat]

Worshipping idols, icons and images violates the 2nd commandment.
- Catholics regularly bow down to idols, icons and images of Jesus, Mary and the apostles, kissing the feet of the statues and praying to them. The Bible teaches that WE ONLY PRAY TO DEITY and Christians considers it paganism and polytheism to pray to anyone EXCEPT the Father, Son or Holy Spirit. So while Catholics pray to Mary, they fail to comprehend that only deity is to be prayed to. The Bible clearly teaches that all dead humans, though conscious in the spirit world, are unable to know anything, much less hear prayers addressed to them. Bowing down to icons and kissing them etc. so closely resembles idol worship it is actually shocking that any Roman Catholic would attempt to defend the practice.

Bonzi? Technically all Christians break the second commandment which is: You shall have no other gods before Me.

Why do they have Jesus above god? Why does god have three parts instead of just 'god'? Why do they partake of cannibalism in communion, even symbolically, as such a thing was pagan?

Why don't they just pray to god instead if using mary, jesus and saints as intermediaries? God can't hear the prayers without them? Does he not know all, even our thoughts without prayer? Is not every preordained by god? Would the granting of prayers not be throwing a monkey wrench into his plans? Should we really be able to change fate with prayers to statues and symbols?

 

[aris2chat]

Can you explain to my then, why your MAIN prayer is to Mary... or why it even exists...

"Hail Mary full of grace..." -

Whether a saint or Mary is being prayed to, or being asked to pray for them -- neither practice has any biblical basis. The Bible nowhere instructs believers in Christ to pray to anyone other than God

Why do you say that the "Hail Mary" is our MAIN prayer? It is not part of the Mass, nor the sacraments. Those are our main prayers. The first half of the Hail Mary recalls Christ's conception and the Bible verses surrounding that event: What both Gabriel and Elizabeth said to her.

Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women.
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Why do you object to Catholics recalling these events that are straight out of scripture?

The second part of the prayer deals with later (15th century) events where the protest was Jesus was man, not God.

Holy Mary, mother of God
Pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death.

As you see, the first part of the prayer is a reflection on the announcement of Christ's coming. The next part emphasizes Jesus is God. The final part requests that Mary, a member of of the Body of Christ (just like the rest of us) pray for us. We ask this in the manner in which we would ask the person sitting next to us in the pew (also a member of the Body of Christ) to pray for us.

If you don't care to reflect on the announcement of Christ's coming, to acknowledge Jesus is God, or ask anyone for prayers, then don't. As you now see, Catholics take the prayer directly out of the Bible.

Oh...and there are several scripture passages that encourages the Body of Christ to pray for one another and to pray together. So you see, Catholics take these scriptures quite seriously.

Jews remember Moses and the story of passover, but they don't pray to moses to speak to god
The last meal and communion were really Jesus and his followers partaking of the passover.

Why don't christians just pray to god and only god? Why do they need saints and symbols?

If we are all the children of god, why do we need churches to commune with god? Why not just a bathroom?

The idea of blood and bread was used as blood libels against jews, but christians are the ones doing that.

 

[Meriweather]

Well in a lot of ways from certain traditions, to architecture, to literature, to rhetoric, to how Jesus was portrayed and how certain events were portrayed. We must remember that the first Christians were the disciples themselves and the various others who followed them. These were Jews who believed that Jesus was a Jew, who came on behalf of the Jews, to fulfill Jewish Messianic prophecies. They were highly apocalyptic and they believed that the path to righteousness with God was to follow the Law. By the time of Constantine, the church had and continued to experience anti-semitic viewpoints, the depiction of Jesus had changed to having Him come for all mankind instead of just the Jews, the apocalyptic tradition had been heavily glossed over, and the path to righteousness with God had become Paul's doctrine of Grace.

How did that happen?

Well that's a very long story, and my guess is that you know a great deal of it already. We also have to keep in mind that it was Paul who was the most successful at spreading Christianity in the early church. Paul was a Jew, but he was also a Roman and he was converting Gentiles (Romans) so the message had to accessible and impactful for them and it had to appeal to them in a way that would be accepted from a Roman viewpoint.

An example of this would be the depiction of the trial of jesus before Pilate. This is heavily Romanized in order to appeal to a Gentile population. The portrayals of Pilate going to such lengths to save Jesus and making a show of washing his hands of it, and the Jews screaming "His blood be upon us and our children." after Pilate calls Jesus a righteous man. (Matt. 27:24-25, NIV). Pffft...give me a break. Pilate wouldn't have given two shits about Jesus. He was just the headache of the day. Pilate would probably have crucified Jesus, went to have a nice breakfast, made love to his wife, took a pleasant afternoon nap, and it wouldn't have crossed his mind further. That was thrown in there to appeal to Gentiles and instead cast responsibility upon the Jews as an entire community as evidenced by the addition of "....and our children". The author is making the point that all Jews are to blame. I highly doubt that is something that Peter, John, or even Paul, being Jews themselves, would have agreed with or made a central point of their teaching.

Another example would be the apocalyptic tradition. The disciples and especially Paul were apocalypticists. They believed the Kingdom of God was at hand. Jesus had fulfilled the Messianic prophecies, the first would be last and the last would be first. It was time! It was here! Revelation, even being written so much later, upheld that tradition. It was a great Judeo-Christian apocalypse that said just those things. The time is at hand! Rome will fall. Down with Caesar! Ok what do you do with that book and that tradition when suddenly Rome IS the church and the church IS Roman? You can't have books in your set of scripture that says 'down with Caesar, down with Rome' when the church IS Rome. So what do you do? You change the meaning and insist that author meant something else. You smooth out and gloss over the apocalyptic tradition that was absolutely vital to the beliefs and early teachings of the earliest Christians.

So there's a couple examples. I could go on but this post is long enough as it is and I think that you, being a knowledgeable and reasonable person, are already aware of these things anyhow. So there you go.

Permeation works in both directions. It is equally--perhaps even more-- correct to say Rome was Christianized. The Book of Revelation is apocalyptic literature, written during the time Rome was persecuting Christians. As we know, apocalyptic literature dealt with end times. Jewish thought had changed from a king who would change the world so that it was always good, to a more realistic interpretation that the rule of good in the world could only ever be short-term. Therefore godliness would only last for a thousand years after the crowning of a human, Jewish king, at which time the world would end.

In Revelation, John, with his imagery, reminded Jewish followers of all the times Jews were persecuted, and how they were always revived to go on to bigger and better things because God is always victorious.

Christianity wasn't Romanized to appeal to the Roman. Christianity appealed to Romans, and brought some non-Jewish ways into Christianity. Christianity was open to this because of the Noachide Laws that both Jews and Christians agreed ruled both Jews and non-Jews. Jews, however, were committed to following additional customs God set for specifically for Jews.

Gentiles could better grasp the idea of Father-Son-Holy Spirit, the idea of One God encompassing creator-word-spirit. Since The Word had a human, as well as divine nature, this was a breaking point for Jews who held God could in no way be human.

I agree with you that the story of Pilate and crucifixion had some dramatic addition and--I believe--some equally dramatic deletions. However, I also believe the crux of the story survived both. More than anything else, I would love to know the real story of the crucifixion. I think most people would be devastated by the truth, but I think, for the rest of us, it would become even more awesome.

So yes. Christianity was Judaized, Romanized, Greeked, Spanished, Anglicized, Germanticized, Americanized, Chinesed, Africanized, and etc, etc. etc. It will also be futurized because Christianity is not a static religion because the Holy Spirit is not static--and neither are we. However, the heart of all is Christ.

Anyway, great sharing thoughts with you!

 

[Meriweather]

Why do they have Jesus above god? Why does god have three parts instead of just 'god'? Why do they partake of cannibalism in communion, even symbolically, as such a thing was pagan?

Why don't they just pray to god instead if using mary, jesus and saints as intermediaries? God can't hear the prayers without them? Does he not know all, even our thoughts without prayer? Is not every preordained by god? Would the granting of prayers not be throwing a monkey wrench into his plans? Should we really be able to change fate with prayers to statues and symbols?

Ah, the confusion factors! Throw in confusing statements that have no relation to Christianity, which results in people having to clear away the confusing straw men before discussing rock solid truths.

I'm just going to address the truth.

1. Jesus is not above God or below God. Jesus is one with God.

2. God nourishes His people through the sacraments of bread and wine, and this is best compared to a mother's body and blood nourishing her infant through breast milk. Just as we do not regard a nursing child as a cannibal, for the mother still lives, nor do we regard God's children as cannibals as He still lives.

3. We all pray to God with one another not through or to one another. With, such a little word, and easy to remember, and one that makes all the difference to the reality of prayer.

4. Prayers are to God, not to statues and symbols.

Now, with all the straw blown away, the rock truth may be easier to discern.

 

[TrinityPower]

The Bible says to pray to God.
Why would you WANT to pray to anyone else?

Notice, you have to twist what is truth into lie before you even have a complaint. No one prays to anyone else. And how sweet, you can do it with a tiny two-letter word. Still, it makes your premise wrong, and therefore anything that follows your premise is also wrong.

Let's put the proper words into your sentence, and see how they sound:

Why would you WANT to pray for anyone else?
Why would you WANT to pray with anyone else?

We all pray to God (no one else) for and with others. Do you have questions on why we pray to God for and with each other?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.” ― Fulton J. Sheen
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Then help me understand why Mary is asked to pray for you or that you ask any other saints to pray for you especially if they are a patron saint like say blaze who is the one for throat disorders? I don't hear people say I am going to ask my mother who is deceased to pray for me. My former sister in law gave me some certificate (who is very catholic) saying she paid for Marion workers to pray for my mom after she died. I didn't say anything to her as I knew she did it with a sweet heart but I thought she is gone Jack! Why are you praying for her. She is having a picnic with her parents and sister and they are going to see Elvis at the ampetheatre.

Seriously...if I wanted to hear from heaven from someone other than Jesus I would say get my mom and dad on the line. Not Mary.

 

[Meriweather]

Then help me understand why Mary is asked to pray for you or that you ask any other saints to pray for you especially if they are a patron saint like say blaze who is the one for throat disorders? I don't hear people say I am going to ask my mother who is deceased to pray for me. My former sister in law gave me some certificate (who is very catholic) saying she paid for Marion workers to pray for my mom after she died. I didn't say anything to her as I knew she did it with a sweet heart but I thought she is gone Jack! Why are you praying for her. She is having a picnic with her parents and sister and they are going to see Elvis at the ampetheatre.

Seriously...if I wanted to hear from heaven from someone other than Jesus I would say get my mom and dad on the line. Not Mary.

Actually, I have asked family members who have passed on to pray for me, in short my grandmothers. They ratted me out to my mom (in separate dreams). My mom called me one day, hesitantly, because she didn't want me to think she was crazy. She had been having some realistic type dreams of her mother who kept telling her I needed help. She just shrugged them off as dreams, until the night she had a realistic type dream from her mother-in-law (my paternal grandmother) who also insisted I needed help.

I could also tell you a couple of cool stories about praying for the dead, but I sound crazy enough for one day, correct?

The reason Catholics continue to ask for prayers from both the living and the dead; and in praying for the dead, is because not only is it scriptural, and follows early Church practices, prayers are powerful.

 

[BluePhantom]

Constantine changes the calendar, places only Christians in positions of power, confiscates the property from the temples, drops funding from pagan temples and shifts it all to a very small group of Christians, builds a city on taxes collected from pagans but Christians are tax exempt and issues a decree for the extermination of eunuchs.

Constantine did a great deal for Christianity, but he did not put only Christians in power. That's total revisionism. He put a lot of Christians in power, but Constantine did not totally abandon, nor outlaw paganism. Some accounts suggest he only received baptism on his deathbed, long after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. He still had Roman gods on coinage. He did grant tax breaks to Christians and allowed Christians to have legal cases heard by a bishop instead of a state appointed magistrate, so he certainly did a lot to advance Christianity, but he did not make it mandatory, nor was he oblivious to the fact that if he did so there would be massive riots and uprisings within the pagan community which still represented the vast majority of the Empire and the army. Had Constantine completely eradicated pagans from positions of power he would been killed.

You have nothing.

Sepphoris was a 45 minute walk from "Nazareth".
Sepphoris - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

I am a little unsure of the point you are trying to make here. Did traders travel? Of course...that was their job, but they weren't peasants. Merchants travelled a lot. Roman elites travelled. Jewish peasants didn't go anywhere. They stayed where they were and clawed out a living. BTW.....wikipedia? Really? That's your source? You know if my students used wikipedia as a reference in their papers they automatically failed.

No public works by the Romans? No temples, no aqueducts, nothing?
Roman aqueducts Pools in Jerusalem Israel

I said that the Romans didn't invest in Hebrew culture....as in their social culture. I never said they didn't build shit. I should have been more clear. What I meant was that they didn't go out of their way to bring Judeo-Roman beliefs, education, etc to Palestine. Did they build what was necessary to support trade, to support the movements of armies, to support health and welfare? Well absolutely. That would have been one of the governors primary jobs. But they did not go in there and start trying to tell the Jews what to believe, what gods to pray to, and how to live their lives in general. They didn't care. (see how easy that was?)

I have seen some estimates that the literacy rate in rural Galilee during the 1st century CE was about 3% and that would have been in Aramaic, not Greek. Trying to suggest that the disciples knew the first thing about Plato is flat out laughable.

You have nothing.

"...even from the 4th c. BCE onwards the literacy rate will not have surpassed 10-15 percent of the population.....the literacy rate in the Roman era would be 10-15 percent as well..." (Harris, William V [1991] Ancient Literacy, pg 328)

"Primary educational institutions (in Roman Palestine) were neither established, nor regulated or funded by the Roman government and those schools that did exist were not obligatory in any way" (Hezer, Caherine [2001] Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, pg 64-65) This is important in realizing that the few Jews who did manage to get an education were not educated in Greco-Roman concepts. Those who were educated at all received their education from other Jews and focused on Jewish concepts. In other words, no Plato for them.

"Individual rabbis may have met and occasionally talked to Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals who were acquainted with Greek philosophy, but there is absolutely no evidence that a Palestinian rabbi...ever studied properly at a philosophical (or rhetorical) school." (Feldman, L.H. [1993], Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian, pg. 34)

"....roughly three percent of the population of Palestine was literate and this three percent was almost entirely upper-class people living in major urban areas. Only upper-class people could afford the time and expense of an education." (Ehrman, Bart D [2013] The Greatest Controversies of Early Christian History: Course Guidebook, pg. 91)

"The large majority of the Jewish population seems to have continued to live in villages rather than cities ...most of the Jewish inhabitants of Roman Palestine were rural artisans and farmers who had little need for literate skills and little access to elementary teachers and schools..." (Hezer, Caherine [2001] Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, pg 170)

"Comparative data show that under Roman rule the Jewish literacy rate improved in the Land of Israel. However, rabbinic sources support evidence that the literacy rate was less than 3%. This literacy rate, a small fraction of the society, though low by modern standards, was not low at all if one takes into account the needs of a traditional society in the past." (Bar-Ilan, Meir [1992] Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the first centuries c.e., pg 55)

Is that enough or do I need to go on?