I saw this book in the Al-Faisal Museum for Arab-Islamic Art in Riyadh. It is described as a manuscript that sheds light on the “most important teaching methods employed by scholars and educators of Arab-Islamic civilization.” It’s not dated, but it’s going to be pretty old.

The notice with it outlines four of these methods:

1. The most important is “hearing”: “to document the books and collections and faithfully transmit their content.”

2. Riddles are used “to stimulate intellect and strengthen memory.”

3. Poetry fosters “connections between knowledge, grammar, and memory.”

4. By means of lexicons scholars “arrange linguistic content for easy reference.”

Did Paul proclaim a universal gospel? “Of course he did,” you mutter. Or: “Of course he did, you nutter!” What use is a non-universal gospel?

Well, on the train from Jeddah to Medina, I came across this paragraph in Neil Elliott’s Paul the Jew under Roman Rule: Collected Essays (2024):

According to the classic definition, an “evangelical” is a person who believes in and acts upon the “gospel”—in New Testament Greek the euangelion. As understood by evangelicals, the gospel is a statement about the significance of Jesus’ death on the cross: by his “blood” he made atonement for the sins of all people.

In his encomium in praise of the exalted Christ in Philippians 2:6-11, Paul says that “in the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue acknowledge (exomologēsētai) that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:10-11*). Interpreters of the Early High Christology school often point out that in Isaiah 45:23 these words have reference to YHWH. So has Paul hereby included Jesus in the divine identity?

I have dealt with this question a few times, most recently in “How Paul can proclaim one Lord Jesus Christ and not compromise Jewish monotheism,” and in a chapter in In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul. But it has come up again:

There’s something odd about Mary’s Magnificat.

Why does it occur at this point in the narrative, at the moment of her arrival at the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth, rather than after the annunciation?

Why is it based so obviously on the story of Hannah’s barrenness and the marvellous conception of Samuel? The Magnificat echoes both Hannah’s exultation over the personal blessing and her declaration that the Lord makes the powerful weak and the weak mighty, that he makes the well-fed hungry and the hungry full, that he “raises up the needy from the ground and lifts the poor from the dunghill, to make them sit with the mighty of the peoples, even making them inherit a throne of glory” (1 Sam. 2:8 LXX).

This is how we traditionally debunk the Christmas traditions to get at what the story was really all about: there was no star the night Jesus was born; we do not know how many wise men there were; Joseph and Mary were not turned away from an inn; Jesus was not born in a stable (are we thinking that this is a safe-guarding issue?); and he was not born on Christmas Day. But, we say, what really happened that night “still stands as one of the most monumental events in human history.