@PeterTurner and @curiousdannii I seem to have the weakness of responding to closed question or about to be closed question. I wonder why... Is it because of my wide ranging interest, desire to help, or on the negative side unable to prioritize or something else?

@GratefulDisciple I like both those questions. The Catholicism one got close votes before dannii edited it. Sometimes they accumulate more close votes going through the review queue by trigger happy folks.

I honestly don't know why asking about whether a Roman, like Pontius Pilate might have been influenced by Diogenes is off topic. Seems like a fantastic point, especially if you consider what it says about Pilate's character.

It's a question about history, maybe it needs to be more clear that it's a question about history, not Biblical Interpretation. I love it, because if Ecce Homo is some callback to some Roman meme that the Apostles wouldn't have known and they wrote it down thinking, what a jerk. Then they go and write Jesus' last words and say that all the people were thinking he was calling on Elijah, it's pretty cool actually.

Or maybe I'm just reading in to it too much.

But Noah's question yesterday. THAT now was a bad one, designed specifically to start a discussion in to which is the best Bible. That's the bad question smell that I'd look out for. Even if part of the question seems opinion based, I'd be weary.

@PeterTurner I agree that the question as it was written need to be closed, unless it adds more specific like what you speculated. I just have the weakness to anticipate what the OP was trying to get rather than waiting until the question itself makes it clearer. So in my answer I tried to steer from where the OP is coming from to what makes a good answer inside CSE with an acceptable question implied before editing.

@PeterTurner Yes. Again I had the weakness of anticipating, and inserted my own opinion for the sake of OP's own better understanding of Christianity, but unfortunately he is too stubborn in his thinking, unable to expand his horizon. I know my answer doesn't quite fit for CSE, so later I actually deleted my own answer before you did the others :-)

The literal interpretation question is one that I happened to read a lot about, and I'm very happy that the Church Magisterium is adjusting well to new findings in science, history, and ancient near east idioms and worldview. That's why overall I'm quite open to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox. I'm really like C.S. Lewis in a way. Like him what matters is whether we align our free will to be purified to fit heaven, whether it's through the way of Catholic Church, Orthodox, or Protestants.

@GratefulDisciple It could have a better home at BH.SE if it was clearer about what kind of relationship with Diogenese is being asked about

@curiousdannii I agree. We'll see what the OP comes up with, and whether it can be improved to fit even BH.SE. Regardless, I enjoyed the research that it occasioned to read Carson's commentary and learned yet another example of the current exegesis trend using narrative / rhetorical criticism.

@curiousdannii Just by coincidence when answering your pandemic question that the rise of Christianity is also strongly linked to regarding human being as Imago Dei, like the revolutionary Hebrew idea vis a vis Mesopotamian religions that see human beings as slaves of the God.

See the section "A new moral culture" in the article I cited. I was surprised that even in Roman empire who has been civilized by Plato & Aristotle still didn't rise to basic human rights that we enjoy today thanks to Christian culture for 2000 years. As a result I think I will be reading New Testament in a new light.

The sick who came to Jesus to be healed must have been really desperate because we are talking about the poor corner of the Roman empire here. Even in the 5,000 cities they wouldn't be able to get the health care they needed. No wonder they came to Jesus in thousands.

@GratefulDisciple Interesting indeed considering that in Grecco-Roman religion the lines between humans and the gods were more blurred