Somusing

Malta’s long history is very interesting, including what is widely thought to be the shipwreck by the apostle Paul in AD 60 described in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles chapter 28 , the last chapter in Acts. Later there was a period where the inhabitants were killed and it was mostly unpopulated, then was resettled around AD 1049 by a Muslim community and their slaves, who rebuilt a ruined city and called it Mdina after the Arabian Madīnah / Medina. Eventually Christians reconquered the island, yet the Arabic dialect spoken by the population remained, with new Christian faith. Here is one example, a guest house called Dar is-Sliem, “house of peace” in Maltese, similar to Dar es Salaam in Arabic, the largest city in Tanzania: Nowadays Malta is a strongly Catholic country. This is evident in many ways. Visually it is obvious in the large in the many, many churches on the islands. In the small, see the very common house devotional niċċa (niches) and shrines that are al...

In Malta on Palm Sunday I went to a Holy Week pageant called “Ħtija Tiegħu?” which means something like “His guilt?” It was held in Marsa, a few kilometers south of Sliema where we were staying. The pageant has been held since 1970 and is normally done outside on the street, but rain was forecast for the day and by evening it was coming down pretty steadily, so they moved the pageant indoors to the church and started two hours late so they had time to adapt to a fully indoor setting. It's a newish Catholic church, bright and colorful, and a bit in the suburbs and there were lots of families there. While we were waiting during the delay, a man who spoke English, named Albert, introduced himself to me. He has been involved in the pageant for 30 years and is currently the treasurer and one of the participants, no longer Judas as he was for many years and got tired of portraying. 😂 In a building across the street they had a display of some neat handmade Christian artwor...

Biblical scholarship has long been aware that the gospel account of the scribes and Pharisees bringing the woman taken in adultery to Jesus was not included in the earliest manuscripts of the gospel of John. In modern Bible publications the account is now commonly shown in brackets. For example, the English Standard Version (ESV) , says in a footnote: Some manuscripts do not include [John] 7:53–8:11; others add the passage here or after 7:36 or after 21:25 or after Luke 21:38, with variations in the text. Having the account not only be missing in some manuscripts, but appearing in different places and with variations, makes it an interesting case. The David Bentley Hart translation of the New Testament gives more detail and background to this: There is little doubt among scholars that the episode of the woman taken in adultery was not written by the same hand that produced the surrounding text. It is not found in the earliest manuscripts of John, or in any Greek or Lati...