Ronald V. Huggins

The present article first appeared as "The Ox and the Donkey," Midwestern Journal of Theology 9.2 (Fall 2010):179-193. It appears here as it was originally, with two exceptions: (1) I have used color pictures, which was not possible in the original publication, (2) I have made some small changes in detail in the captions, and (3) I have made one spelling correction ("hue" for "hew"), and removed a redundant definite article. I have also retained the original pagination .  Fig. 1: Gherardo di Jacopo Sarna, “Adoration of the Magi,” c. 1405,  Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Photo: R. Huggins) O lux beata Trinitas!  He lay between an ox and ass,  Thou mother and maiden free;  Gloria tibi, Domine . 1 The woman kitty-corner me across the table asked: “But where are the ox and the ass?” We were reading Matthew’s infancy narrative in Schuyler Brown’s doctoral seminar at Saint Michael’s College, Toronto. The questioner was doing her doctorate in Karl B...

"Adoration of the Child," Master of the Divisio Apostolorum (c. 1470/80). Schloss Eggenberg, Alte Galerie, Graz, Austria. Detail from "Adoration of the Child" Ever wonder why Joseph is almost always portrayed as an old man in Nativity scenes? The reason goes back to an early apocryphal book--maybe as early as the 2nd Century AD--known as the Proto-Gospel of James . In the story Joseph is an elderly widower who marries the youthful Mary in order to take her under his care, as a father figure not as an actual husband. In the story, James the brother of Jesus is the son of Joseph by his previous marriage. The story marks an early departure from the New Testament view of Mary and Joseph as simply husband and wife and Jesus’s brothers and sisters as Mary and Joseph’s natural children. In contrast, The Proto-Gospel was interested in preserving the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary, going as far as claiming that Mary was found to still be physical...

In 2016, I ran across a reference to Ravi Zacharias's book New Birth or Rebirth: Jesus Talks With Krishna  (2008) on a Hindu discussion page. I was vaguely familiar with the title as one of a number of books in a series Ravi did representing imagined dialogues between historic figures. Others in the series include, for example, dialogues between Jesus and the Buddha and Jesus and Oscar Wilde. So I decided to download a sample onto my Kindle.  However, reading the sample I very quickly came across what seemed a rather serious case of cultural illiteracy on Ravi's part concerning the two major Indian Epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana : "The principal one [Epic] is the Mahabharata , which contains the famed Ramayana , and the Gita." (p. 16) While it is certainly true that the Bhagavad   Gita  at least shares the setting of the Mahabharata,  namely the battlefield of the Kurukshetra war, the Ramayana is not a part of the Mahabharata at all. Rather...