Ronald V. Huggins

“Dawkins and Hitchens miss two important points. First, their critics are not only talking about their scholarly limitations but about their errors, errors that a more informed or careful critic wouldn’t make…”. Curtis White, The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers  (with new afterward; Brooklyn, London: Melville House, 2014), 35. As you surmise, Dawkins has conflated the two episodes."—Sonu Shamdasani So, there it was. An email from one of the most distinguished Jungian scholars in the world confirming what I felt sure I already knew, namely, that in an attempt to make an appeal to an incident in the life of Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, Richard Dawkins had somehow conflated two real incidents that did happen into a single one that did not happened. This is not of course the only place Dawkins makes such flubs in   The God Delusion   (see, e.g., Richard Dawkins   Bemoans/Models Biblical/Biblical Illiterac...

Today in Ken Sanders Rare Books I was browsing the religion section and came across Richard Dawkins'   The God Delusion   (2006). Almost the first thing my eye fell upon when I opened it at random was a section in which Dawkins was decrying contemporary culture's biblical-illiteracy. In making his point he lists a number of words and phrases (pp. 383-85), after which he asserts that:  "Every one of these idioms, phrases, or cliches comes directly from he King James Authorized Version of the Bible" (p. 385).  But in some cases that wasn't strictly true and in others it wasn't true at all. As to the first cases Dawkins included several idioms that don't appear in the King James Bible in the form he gives them, but derive generally from incidents described in the Bible. These include for, example, phrases like "A Daniel in the lions' den," "As old as Methuselah," "The mark of Cain." These don't "come...

In the first line of what follows I speak of Rob Bell's "new book,"   Love Wins . By now, of course, the book is no longer new. This is because what appears here was originally published in the   Midwestern Journal of Theology   10.1 (2011):124-29. I have included bracketed page numbers in the text for ease of quotation and reference. In his book, Rob Bell appeals to a mistaken definition from older Greek lexicons in order to argue that when Jesus separates the sheep from the goats, the latter were not being damned but only remanded for a period of correction, of spiritual and moral improvement, or "pruning." The argument was used by Universalists before Bell's book (including, for example, the Universalist William Barclay, in his popular   Daily Bible Study Series ) and it had continued to be used since. Part of the reason for the mistake, no doubt, is that most of the Greek helps available free online are older and out of date. Had Rob Bell or his ...

A story from J. H. Merle D’Aubigné: A Saxon gentleman had heard Tetzel at Leipsic, and was much shocked by his impostures. He went to the monk, and inquired if he was authorized to pardon sins in intention, or such as the applicant intended to commit? "Assuredly," answered Tetzel; "I have full power from the Pope to do so." "Well," returned the gentleman, "I want to take some slight revenge on one of my enemies, without attempting his life. I will pay you ten crowns if you will give me a letter of indulgence that shall bear me harmless." Tetzel made some scruples; they struck their bargain for thirty crowns. Shortly after, the monk set out for Leipsic. The gentleman, attended by his servants, laid wait for him in a wood between Jüterboch and Treblin,—fell upon him, gave him a beating, and carried off the rich chest of indulgence-money the inquisitor had with him. Tetzel clamoured against this act of violence, and brought an action be...

Robert Pearsall Smith and Hannah Whitall Smith  One of the most helpful things that happened to me as part of my scholarly formation was discovering a mistake in the etymology for the word PETTING in  The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition Unabridged.   The details have become become somewhat indistinct in my memory, but it happened while I was working on my doctoral dissertation and was trying to interpret a letter, written around 1870, in which the famous Christian Higher-Life writer Hannah Whitall Smith, wrote a letter to her husband, Robert Pearsall Smith, who was in a sanitarium. The letter made reference to the word PETTING in connection with Robert and his nurses. One interpreter of the letter presumed the reference alluded to hanky panky, a thing Robert indisputably engaged in later in his career. The ones doing the PETTING in the letter were the nurses not Robert.  However, reading the letter I could not discern ...

                                     On October 30, 2014, Jack Crone published an article in the Daily Mail entitled " Spooky mystery solved at last: Linguists reveal the word 'boo' comes from Scotland where it was first used to scare children in the 18th century ." Crone claims concerning the word "Boo!" that "Its first recorded use comes in the Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Display'd , written by Gilbert Crokatt and John Monroe under the pseudonym of Jacob Curate in 1738." Crone gives the impression that he got his information from "David Robinson, a linguist from Glasgow University." The Oxford English Dictionary's "Draft Additions of 2008" cites the same work for their first reference to Boo, but in an edition published 20 years earlier (1718). Both the 1718 and the 1738 editions of Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence are later ones, and therefore both dates are incorrect in term...

BEFORE EASTERN RELIGIOUS texts became available, Western interpreters had to rely on guesswork. Very often this involved little more than looking at the iconography of Buddhism and Hinduism and trying to interpret them on the basis of alleged parallels to the stories of the Bible. My purpose here is to provide a list of when texts first became available in translated in Western languages. I hope to add to this list as I run across further information. If anyone is better informed than I am at any point I would very much appreciate receiving your corrections. In addition I want to include a number of key moments contributing to the more general Western understanding of Eastern Religions and Texts KEY MOMENTS 1784: Sir William Jones founds the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, which published its work in a journal called Asiatick Researches . Asiatick Researches , Vol 1 here , 1788 edition here . Vol 2 here , Vol 3 here , Vol 4 here and here , Vol 5 here , Vol 6 here , Vol 7 here...