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Originally Posted by photon
I'm interested as well, though as I pointed out the whole idea of original sin and consequently the virgin birth facilitating Jesus going to heaven wasn't developed until hundreds of years later.. that's a lot of Christians who apparently weren't really Christians (including Paul I guess?).
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More like 80-90 years, not hundreds, and that doesn't seem like that long considering there would have been a strong oral tradition and many non-canonical works circulating before the big-4 became definitive..
Regardless, it would be disingenuous to rely solely on hermeneutics as the basis for dismissing a tenet of faith that has been scrutinized by the faithful since the very earliest emergence of the Christian church as its own system of belief. Many other texts existed during the time frames we are talking about, and ultimately, only the current canon was selected. Clearly the contemporary scholars and church leaders of the time were undertaking their own exegesis, selecting the texts that most closely explained their understanding of the faith.