classics digests, reflections and reviews
Five years ago, I published a series of blogposts on the earliest New Testament manuscripts, in one of which I tabulated all Greek manuscripts of all 27 NT books that have been dated to between 2nd and 4th century by both LDAB and NTVMR[1]. This particular post and the series have become the most viewed posts of my otherwise obscure blog. Recently, one reader posed a question, “Where can I […]
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The Question of Infallibility In a previous post, I asked the question, “How do we know that (the magisterium of) the Church is infallible?” Nothing in my Catholic interlocutor’s response addresses my question. In fact, I get the impression time and time again that he is not aiming at dialogue, but using my posts as a launchpad of canned responses of the Catholic Church.[1] However, we agree on one thing: […]
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Background and Disclaimer Catholic blogger Eamonn Clark wrote that I was “intellectually lazy”, because I didn’t address his arguments made in response to my defense of sola sriptura. Although his criticism of my laziness is valid in general, it is invalid, not to mention uncharitable, in this particular case. I would be more than happy to engage further, as long and hard as necessary, if I believed that this type […]
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A Personal Backstory When I was a child, I used to asked my mother, Why do women willingly go through the troubles of pregnancy, the agony of birth pangs, only to give birth to a child at the risk of their own lives? I asked because the only idea I had of childbirth came from the movies, where childbirth was almost always the cause of pain and death for women. […]
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Last week, a Catholic blogger Eamonn Clark responded to my blogpost titled “In Defense of Sola Scriptura”, which I wrote five years ago to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. At the end of his post, Clark wrote, “I remain unconvinced”. I can only smile and say that the feeling is mutual. Clark quoted my arguments at length and responded to them point by point. For that I’m grateful. […]
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For those interested in the devotional practices of earliest Christians, in particular, whether, how and why they worshipped Jesus. this is a valuable read. Prof. Dunn, in dialogue with Profs. Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham, presents the complexity and richness of New Testament Christology. Although answers provided by these scholars are far from satisfactory — partly because they all disagree with one another on certain points, it is very interesting […]
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Having grown up as an atheist, I used to treat all religious practices with contempt. Even after my conversion to theism, rituals and liturgy have remained alien to me, partly by choice, partly due to circumstances. My experience and understanding of Christianity have been mostly on the intellectual level. In this regard, Prof. Hurtado made a significant impact on me, as he piqued my interest in the lives of the […]
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