Tertullian on Marriage

Life has been extraordinarily busy this summer, with events scheduled almost every single day. There's so much I could say about my the days and weeks of the past two months, but there are hardly enough time to do so. 13 hours from now I marry my gorgeous fiancee, and begin married life with her by my side. I'm beyond excited, and can't wait for that moment! Luckily, there has been some time for reflection, and as I await the excitement of the day's events, I came across this exceptional quote by Tertullian that I had to share.

Today in History: The Council of Nicea

       Today in history, the Council of Nicea was convened in 325, and over the course of the next month, settled the issue of Christology and the relation of Jesus Christ the Son to God the Father (among its other accomplishments). The council also produced the famous Nicene Creed, one of the most enduring documents in all of Christian history. 
       Contrary to popular belief, the Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the canon of the Bible, nor with 'creating' Christianity (both of which are myths perpetuated by a certain Dan Brown book). It was here that the orthodox belief was officially upheld: that Christ was both 100% man and 100% God, and that the Son, while a separate 'person', was of the same substance as the Father. For an accurate and detailed description of the council in layman's terms, I highly recommend Paul Pavao's book Decoding Nicea (which, incidentally, was one of the books that steered me towards the Early Church).
       I'll make a longer post on the Nicene Creed sometime soon, since it's the one I adhere to. However, I do believe that Christianity, while growing in size post-Nicea, has decreased in quality. The writings of the Early Church - the writings of the men who sat under the Apostles! - have been largely pushed aside by the Protestant and Evangelical circles. Perhaps the Council's anniversary is just the time to bring up an Early Church discussion with your Christian friends.

Happy Birthday Alcuin of York

       Yesterday, May 19th, marked the death date of one of my favourite historical figures, Alcuin of York. The English Medieval scholar was an educator who had a profound effect on the development of education and books during time of Charlemagne's Frankish Empire. From 782 to 790, he focused on transplanting a mixture of Celtic & Romano-British learning to mainland Europe. He founded the Carolingian palace library, for which he developed a small cursive script of characters called Carolingian Minuscule, which allowed more letter than ever before to be written on a single expensive page of parchment. Of great beauty, this script was later employed by the earliest printers. His hunger for learning revived the Augustinian tradition of Christian classical education and helped to lay the foundations of Europe's civilization of Christendom.

Tracing Back the Word "Easter"

This post is not about whether or not we should use the word 'Easter' in place of 'Pascha' or 'Resurrection Sunday'; rather, I wanted to see how far back we could trace the word 'Easter' in translations of the Bible. We see the word "Easter" in Acts 12:4 in the KJV (much to the chagrin of some people), but is that the earliest it appears? Certainly not! For my source text, I elected to use Matthew 26:17-19, since the 'passover words' occur several times there (though not in the KJV).

William Tyndale used 'easter' in a number of places in his 1526 NT translation [his first translation], while at the same time using 'passover' in others. Tyndale apparently used 'passover' and 'easter' interchangeably, with no hinted difference in proposed meaning, and the two can sometimes show up right next to each-other in the text. In the given passage [Mt. 26:17-19] he simply uses easter. His later editions show more polish here than this first edition.

Next we have the same passage in the 1385 Wycliffe Bible, early version. The Middle-English New Testament, based on the Latin Vulgate, uses "paske" [Pascha], which is no surprise because that Greek word remained untranslated in both the Vulgate and the old Vetus Latina. (It's also the word many of us use today in reference to the day of the resurrection.)

The earliest the word 'Easter' actually shows up is in the Anglo-Saxon gospels! Here, we can see 'eastron', 'eastro', and 'easter'. The Old English Gospels used as reference include the Lindisfarne & Wessex Gospels . All three versions I've discussed can be seen side-by-side below.

I have not done any more research into this, but one can conclude that Tyndale used 'Easter' due to its cultural recognizability, and it gave his translation's vocabulary variety. How did it slip into the King James Version though? Likely due to the fact that the passage in Acts occurs after the resurrection, and Christ's fulfillment of the law.

For my reference text, I used The Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Gospels in Parallel Columns with Wycliffe and Tyndale by Henry Bosworth (I shortened the title a tad). You can read the whole passage of Matthew 26, as well as the rest of the gospels in his book here here.

Goodbye Holy Week 2015

       With the close of Holy Week, we say goodbye to the oldest Christian festival for another year. Pascha/Easter/Passover - coupled with Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday - happens to be one of my favourite holidays of the year (the others being Christmas and Thanksgiving), and it's always a bit sad leaving it all behind. I suppose I get refreshed and nostalgic during holiday seasons, and this one is no different. Fellowship & worship alongside the church, revitalized devotions, excellent sermons, tasty food, and relaxing family time always accompany Holy Week, and as I reflect on the past and the upcoming year, I can't wait to see what traditions I begin in my own family in the future. Yeshua is risen, and He shall return in the fullness of time.

Introduction to Scholarly Bible Editions

"Textual Research on the Bible: An Introduction to the Scholarly Editions of the German Bible Society" is an excellent little booklet recently released by the Society of Biblical Literature. Inside is a concise but informative summary of all the major Hebrew and Greek Bible texts published by the German Bible Society in the last hundred years or so, along with related information on the history of textual criticism in general. Since these are the primary source texts of countless Biblical language students, I recommend acquiring a copy of this booklet and keeping it handy for reference. A short read, and great pictures too! The sections include:

1. What is Old Testament Textual Research?
     I. The Biblia Hebraica by Rudolf Kittel (BHK)
     II. The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS)
     III. The Future of the Biblia Hebraica

2. What is New Testament Textual Research?
     I. The Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece and Its History
     II. The Greek New Testament and Its History
     III. The Significance of the Two Editions Today
     IV. The Outlook: New Testament Textual Research Continues

You can download or simply view the PDF version here:
https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/Intro-ScholarlyEditions-GBS_2.pdf

Purvey Describes His Work with Wycliffe - A Poem

Purvey Describes His Work with Wycliff

A poem by Thom Satterlee

Those afternoons in the rectory 

seated at opposite sides of the same table,
sunlight on our manuscripts,
an inkwell shared in the middle, 
I never wrote one word for him. 

Palsied as he was, the Lord
left his right side unharmed.
In fact, I sometimes thought
the strength he lost in one arm
was transferred to the other.

To see him rush words onto the page!
I thought of squirrels gathering nuts
frantic in October. But he was
pouring out every word he had,
knowing his own autumn had come.
One time I looked up and saw
his left arm dangling
off the edge of the table, limp
as a tree limb broken
in a storm. Quietly, I stood,
walked around the table,
and set his arm back
on the surface.
He never stopped writing
or even glanced up at me.

And now as some have begun
to say a sick man could not
have written all we say he did.
I wish to make clear
he did. My only aid was
this simple act of kindness:
I carried a part he no longer
needed. I did not interrupt him
when he worked.

First published in Southern Review, Spring 2006, Vol. 42 Issue 2, pgs 422-423.

Coptic Reaction to Isis

       The crisis in the Middle East with ISIS has been getting me down lately. The amount of wanton murder, torture, and destruction is horrifying, and will not cease any time soon. Continue in urgent and steadfast prayer for the safety of those Christians and other non-Muslim religious & cultural groups living in the region, and for repentance and conversion to Christ opportunities those jihadis leading the slaughter.

       One thing that has been encouraging the past few weeks are the responses from the local Coptics - Christian responses that very much mirror those of the Early Church. You can read about some of them in these articles.

http://www.jpost.com/Christian-News/Murdered-Coptic-Christians-hailed-as-martyrs-391803

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414222/heaven-face-hell-kathryn-jean-lopez

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/20/living/coptic-bishop-isis/index.html


       Would that all Christians worldwide could have such devotion to the ideals of our Saviour as our brothers and sisters in the Middle East do! We, like the men in the picture above, are the people of the Cross.

http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/the-right-response-to-coptic-21s-martyrdom/
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"It's a beautiful thing to God when a Christian does battle with pain. When he faces threats, punishments, and tortures by mocking death and treading underfoot the horror of the executioner; when he raises up his freedom in Christ as a standard before kings and princes; when he yields to God alone and, triumphant and victorious, he tramples upon the very man who has pronounced sentence upon him. God finds all these things beautiful."
- Minucius Felix, The Octavius 37, c. 200

Having a bad day? Scribes did too.

       January is coming to an end, and it has certainly been a full month! School starting back up threw me for a loop, and it was hard to concentrate for the first week or two. At one point, I even wrote several equations on the white board, all of which were meant for another class - and the students were very lost for a few moments! Everyone has an off day (or a longer/shorter period). Not surprisingly, scribes and monks in the ancient and medieval periods had bad days as well, as evidenced by mistakes in their manuscripts! One notable example is Codex Neapolitanus, Minuscule 109, a gospels book from the 14th century. 

       The monk or scribe that worked on this text was having a really bad day. In the source manuscript being copied down, the Gospel of Luke chapter 3 [the genealogy of Jesus] was in a two-column format (like most Bibles today). Unfortunately, the scribe seems to have copied the text as if it were one single column. He may have gotten lazy, or more likely, could not understand or comprehend the language that he was transcribing. The result was a genealogical mishmash, and it gave everyone in the passage the the wrong father. In fact, the scribe goofed in such a way that the text makes Phares the creator of the world, and God was made the son of Aram. In any case, the mistake is one that has far outlived the original author... The moral of the story? On the rougher days, it is especially important to pay attention to what you are doing!