My interviews on the PBS Series “Closer to Truth,” hosted by Dr. Robert L. Kuhn, have now been posted on line–twelve topics in all on topics ranging from the historical to the theological. This amazing show is in its third season and the new series on  “Cosmos, God, & Consciousness” pulls together top experts from the worlds of science, philosophy, and religion…The site as a whole is well worth endless browsing far beyond my meager contributions…

You can access the following topical clips at the link below:

Does God Know the Future? (James Tabor)
How is God the Creator? (James Tabor)
What would a Judgment be Like? (James Tabor)
Is This the End Time? (James Tabor)
Do Angels and Demons Exist? (James Tabor)
Arguing God from Miracles & Revelations? (James Tabor)
Does God Intervene in the World? (James Tabor)
Authentication and Conflict in Religious Belief? (James Tabor)
A New Heaven & A New Earth? (James Tabor)
Imagining Immortality and Eternal Life (James Tabor)
What is Immortality? (James Tabor)
What is an Afterlife? (James Tabor)

http://www.closertotruth.com/participant/James-Tabor/104

God and weather permitting I am giving a lecture tomorrow evening (Thursday, February 11th), at the Center for Jewish Studies, UNC Asheville, titled “What Kind of a Jew Was Jesus: How Texts and Archaeology Tell us a New Story.”

What I want to try to do is place Jesus within the parties and politics of his time (thanks to Morton Smith’s rubric here) in terms of what Michael Stone so aptly called “Scriptures, Sects, and Visions” within Late 2nd Temple Judaisms of his time. I am a historian not an archaeologist, so I want to mostly deal with texts, but texts within a context, such a Qumran (which combines site and texts!) and Mt Zion, that has every bit to do with material evidence as well–based on some of my experiences in the field. My intention is to highlight several of what I consider to be the most telling archaeological discoveries

Here is a press release and a news-story in the local Asheville paper, most of which I would own up to:

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20100207/LIVING/302070018/1311/ADVERTISING

http://www.unca.edu/news-events/news/2010/2/tabor

Maybe I will see some of you there.

Last year I put up a couple of blog posts dealing with the charges leveled by some scholars and journalists that the late Morton Smith of Columbia University, concocted his entire claim to have found fragments of portions of what he called a “Secret Gospel of Mark” embedded in a letter of Clement of Alexandria and in fact forged the document himself: see “The Latest on the Secret Gospel of Mark” and “Vindicating Morton Smith.” Stephen C. Carlson, in particular, in his 2005 book titled The Gospel Hoax: Morton’s Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark, placed a lot of weight on his analysis the handwriting in the letter, claiming that it showed every mark of the careful imitative hand of a forger, not the natural flowing cursive of the 18th century scribe that supposedly copied the manuscript Smith claimed he discovered at Mar Saba in the late 1950s.

I consider these forgery charges to be utterly baseless, and frankly, slanderous, and I am pleased to note that Roger Viklund has just recently published a very persuasive paper, “Tremors, or Just an Optical Illusion? A Further Evaluation of Carlson’s Handwriting Analysis” which you can read on-line here. There is also shorter summary blog post by Viklund provided by Timo S. Paananen here with some comments and responses worth reading as well–particularly Stephan Huller’s humor!

Since my own evaluation of the matter is partly based on regard for Smith as a  personal friend and esteemed scholar I am pleased to have clearer heads than mine carrying on the discussion.

For those new to this discussion I should, however, point out once more that whether Smith’s letter of Clement is forged or authentic says nothing about how one might evaluate Smith’s theories regarding the letter and its quotations attributed to a lost “Gospel of Mark,” or what relationship so-called “Secret Mark” might have with our New Testament Gospel of Mark.