A Raw Deal, and other links

The posting of links does not constitute an endorsement of the sites linked, and not necessarily even agreement with the specific posts linked.

• 1 John 5:7–8: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt? -- “I want to approach this issue from the perspective of beyond a reasonable doubt. The ‘prosecutor” (modern textual critic) insists that the ‘defendant’ (our text) is ‘guilty,’ if you will, of being false and not belonging here.”
• A Brief but Determined Texan -- “Samuel Walker arrived in Texas six years after the republic won its independence. In five more years, he would be dead.”
• A Raw Deal -- “Parisa is a traditional dish made of raw round steak that’s ground up and mixed with salt, pepper, onions, jalapeños and soft easy-melt cheese.”
• Church – Timeless or Trendy? -- “With the forceful current of constant change sweeping over every part of our lives, people have the need to connect with something enduring and firm.”
• Eminent Highland Preachers -- “[In] the Highlands of Scotland during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. God raised up a small galaxy of men, in a remote region of the world, who knew the majesty of God and the worth of immortal souls.”
• Erasmus and the Comma Johanneum, by H. J. de Jonge -- “Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses (Louvain Journal of Theology and Canon Law), 1980, t. 56, fasc. 4, pp. 381-389.”
• Glory To God, Peace On Earth, And A Textual Variant? -- “Were the angels continuing to proclaim God’s universal benevolence toward all people (v. 10) or only his particular grace to “those with whom he is pleased” (ESV)?”
• How December 25 Became Christmas -- “The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season.”
• How Do We Know What the New Testament Is? -- “Professing believers today do not know the New Testament by science. They do not know it by probability. God’s people do not know it by rules of textual criticism.”
• Ignatius, Polycarp, and the Pauline Authorship of 1 and 2 Timothy -- “...Polycarp has become the earliest external witness to the belief in the early church that Paul was the author of the Pastoral Epistles.”
• Introduction to Habakkuk -- “In the midst of national doom and personal distress, the prophet discovers the greatness of his God.”
• Manuscripts of the Apocalypse - Recent Investigations -- “Herman C. Hoskier, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. 1922;7(1):118-137.”
• One Baptist’s View of Christmas -- “After several years of searching for Christ in Christmas and not finding him, it was obvious to me that Christ does not celebrate Christmas and neither should I.” (Note, formatting is a bit confusing, with some comments by a Restorationist editor)
• Rule 9, Isolated Variants, and the ‘Test Tube’ Nature of the NA27/UBS4 Text: A Byzantine Priority Perspective -- “Aland rule number nine: Variants must never be treated in isolation, but always considered in the context of the tradition. Otherwise there is too great a danger of reconstructing a “test-tube text” which never existed at any time or place.”
• Smith’s Station: Unearthing a Texas stage stop when East finally met the West -- “It was around for only 30 months, but it’s part of Texas history. Between 1858-61, stagecoaches rumbled along Butterfield Overland Mail Route, from St. Louis, Mo., to San Francisco, Calif.”
• Southern Baptists have not always embraced Christmas -- “The holiday is not recognized as a special day of worship in any of the historic Baptist confessions, allusions to it are rare in Baptist history volumes before the 1880s, and the holiday possessed an association with worldliness and even paganism in the minds of many Baptist ministers.”
• The Doctrine of Divine Impassibility -- “We worship a God who is altogether above and beyond our human imaginations. His love is perfect because it is transcendent and impassible.”
• The Problematic Translation of ‘emptied himself’ as found in Philippians 2.7 -- “When we read that ‘he made himself of no reputation’, a literal rendering would be that ‘he emptied himself’. But there is not one whit of good reason for a literal translation. Usage elsewhere and the context here require the figurative rendering.”
• What About Cremation? -- “‘What About Cremation?’ demonstrates that the biblical evidence is overwhelming that cremation is not the best, that it is, indeed, burial that is the Scriptural precedent for handling the dead.”