A story is just breaking tonight around the world regarding the text found by Prof. Garfinkel at Elah over a year ago. It has apparently now been deciphered and dated and can be reliably put in the 10th century BCE, the time of the “Monarchy.” This is a major breakthrough in terms of the debate between the “minimalists” who argue the Biblical narratives are post-Exilic and those who maintain that we have texts at least 500 years earlier.

See the Eureka press release with photos here.

Michael Servetus (aka Miguel Serveto) is surely one of the most remarkable men of history, though he is largely unknown in general circles. He was born in Spain in 1511 and died in 1553, at age 42, burnt at the stake as a heretic by John Calvin’s Geneva Council. He was a brilliant scientist and his field was primarily medicine, but it was his theological views that led to his universal condemnation by both Catholics and Protestants. Servetus rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, and although he maintained belief in the virgin birth, he denied that Jesus was God. He was fluent in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and in his primary work, De trinitatis erroribus (“On the Errors of the Trinity”), he ably argued that the Bible itself, in neither Old Testament nor New Testament, supported the subsequent Trinitarian notion of Jesus as God.

There is a bit of buzz on the Internet these days, among Christian evangelical circles, regarding a modern writer who calls himself “Servetus the Evangelical,” who has penned a new book titled The Restitution of Jesus Christ. The author, who has chosen to remain anonymous, is apparently a well-known Evangelical Christian. He plans to divulge his true identity on September 29, 2011, the 500th anniversary of Servetus’ birth. You can visit his website at servetustheevangelist.com, where you can read excerpts of the book, purchase the whole, or try your hand at guessing the author’s identity based on clues posted on the first of each month.

I obtained a copy of the book and I have to say I am much impressed. It runs 600 pages, is thoroughly researched and documented, and fully in touch with the massive amount of scholarly discussion currently available on the “Christology of the New Testament.”

Our modern “Servetus” has stirred a bit of buzz on the Web, mostly negative, by those who either question his motives for remaining anonymous or harshly dismiss him as a heretic and apostate. My guess is his critics have not bothered to examine his arguments. You can hear an interview with the author, complete with disguised voice, at Truth Matters.

Whoever the author is, he has surely done his homework, and given his staunchly conservative stance on the inspiration of the New Testament documents, his attempts might well end up having quite an impact on the growing “biblical unitarian” or “One God” movement that is making significant inroads within a variety of evangelical Christian circles. See the following links for a few examples:

http://focusonthekingdom.org/

http://kingdomready.org/

http://www.christianmonotheism.com/

http://www.biblicalunitarian.com/

This summer, join us as we host this exciting seminar series in the beautiful, idyllic setting of St. Olaf College, JULY 5 – 11, 2009. Just 35 miles south of Minneapolis and St. Paul, St. Olaf is set on a hilltop overlooking historic Northfield, MN, a charming, two-college town with a welcoming community. This BAS vacation seminar takes place within the beautiful and restorative setting of the college’s award-winning architecture nestled in a 300-acre woodland. During the week-long seminar, Biblical scholars Dr. James Tabor and Dr. Tina Wray will illuminate the compelling and mysterious world of the Bible in a series of 18 lectures. This unique program provides you with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from and interact with two of the most eminent scholars in the field in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Both Tabor and Wray will be fresh back from digging in Israel at Mt Zion.

Biblical Controversies, Conundrums and Characters:
Sorting through all the Evidence

LECTURES BY DR. TINA WRAY

Hazardous Duty: Life for Women During Biblical Antiquity
What Makes a Good Girl Good and a Bad Girl Bad? Good Girls in the Hebrew Bible
Don’t Say the F-Word: Watch Out for Those Forbidden Foreign Females!
Don’t Lose Your Head: Biblical Women as Executioners
Complicated Liaisons: An Exploration of Unusual Male/Female Relationships in the Bible
Where the Devil Did the Devil Come From? Satan’s Childhood
Monsters, Bogeymen, and Demons: Chaos Creatures in the Ancient Near East
Ah, They Grow Up So Fast! Satan’s Adolescence and Adulthood
It’s a Little Warm in Here: The Evolution of Hell

LECTURES BY DR. JAMES TABOR

Dead Messiahs Who Don’t Return
Parting of the Ways: When Did a New Religion Called Christianity Begin?
The Making of a Messiah
Tracing the Last Days of Jesus: The Latest Archaeological Evidence
Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls—What can We Say in 2009?
Surprises on Mt Zion: Understanding Ancient Jerusalem
Counting Time: Biblical Chronology & Calendars Made Simple
What Does the Bible Really Say about Death, Afterlife, and Resurrection?
The Paul Dynasty

See the BAS Web site for complete details as to cost and registration and further background on Tabor and Wray:

http://www.bib-arch.org/travel-study/st-olaf-2009.asp (more…)

The subject heading is the title of a most famous book by Jim Bishop, The Day Christ Died, published in 1957 by Harper Collins with an official Imprimatur by the famous Archbishop of New York Francis Cardinal Spellman–guaranteeing it “free of doctrinal or moral error.” The book is still available in reprint editions. I highly recommend it for a kind of retrospective history reading. I remember devouring this book when it came out. I was eleven years old. It captivated me utterly, I could not put it down.

Fifty years later I write this post on a Thursday night, on the eve of “Good Friday,” that happens this year to also be the night of Purim as well as the Vernal Equinox–a kind of triple package of markers and observances. Today is Thursday. I have been convinced for several years now, as I explain in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, that Jesus died on Nisan 14th, which in the year A.D. 30, fell on a Thursday not a Friday. So this is indeed, the “day Christ died.” He was put in the temporary rock hewn tomb just before sunset, and Friday, the following day, was the first day of Passover. This means the Passover meal or Seder was eaten that Thursday night, just as the Gospel of John records (John 13:1; 18:28). The next day, Friday, was indeed a “Sabbath,” but not Saturday, the weekly Sabbath, but rather one of the seven “annual” Sabbaths of the Jewish festival cycle (see Leviticus 23:7). This means there were two Sabbaths, back to back, Friday and Saturday, that year. Sunday morning, when Mary Magdalene went early to the tomb and found it empty, it was indeed “three days and three nights” that Jesus had laid in that tomb (Thurs, Friday, Saturday nights), which comports with the tradition that Matthew has received (Matthew 12:40). Surely a million Sunday school kids over the years have asked, not to mention adults, how can you get three nights, from Friday to Sunday morning. It simply will not work.

Modern astronomical programs completely confirm this chronology of the Spring of A.D. 30. I have had quite a few dozens of readers write me to point out that the Jewish calendar never allows the 14th of Nisan to fall on a Thursday. But this adjustment in the calendar, based on what are called “postponements,” was not instituted until well into the 2nd century. In the time of Jesus the month of Nisan was set by the new moon, and that particular year, A.D. 30, the 14th day of the first month (14 days after the new moon) fell on a Thursday. The “last supper,” that Jesus ate with his disciples the night before, a Wednesday evening, was not the Passover Seder, but a messianic banquet or Eucharist of “bread and wine,” such as mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Didache. One way of putting it is that Jesus did not eat the Passover, he was the Passover, at least as understood by the Gospel of John and by Paul (1 Corinthians 5:7). According to Josephus it was between 3pm and sundown the Passover sacrifices were made, just as the 14th of Nisan ended and the 15th, an annual Sabbath, began. Christians subsequently saw great symbolism in this chronology.

The research of many scholars of early Christianity over the past two centuries has enabled us to recover a lost and alternative perspective on the Jesus movement following the crucifixion. This perspective is in sharp contrast to the standard portrayal of Luke-Acts, in which Peter and Paul, as the two chief apostles, work in harmony to take a unified gospel message beyond the confines of Judaism. This reconstruction centers on James, the brother of Jesus, as undisputed leader of a community that remains devoted to Jewish Law or Torah. Peter is fully allied with James, while Paul seen as an enemy or apostate who has abandoned the Jewish faith. Our sources for this perspective, sometimes called “Jewish Christianity,” or “Ebionite,” are scanty. Some have been completely lost, others survive as fragmented quotations, while a few are detectable as embedded sources within larger works.

Prof. April DeConick of Rice University and I will be doing a Biblical Archaeology Seminar on some of these lost and forgotten sources in San Antonio, Texas on October 19th and 20th. The complete program with full information can be found at the BAS Web site. Perhaps we will see some of you there.

I plan to deal with four major sources, each of which potentially provides insight into the Nazarene community led by James, brother of Jesus:

1. The Syriac “Ascents of James.” There is a corpus of literature called the Pseudo-Clementines (PsCl) that dates to the 4th century CE but apparently incorporates and thus preserves materials that are much earlier. The PsCl corpus is made up of two lengthy novel-like treatises called the Homilies and the Recognitions, as well as three shorter “epistles,” including a letter of Peter to James. Embedded in the Recognitions, is an older text that Robert Van Voorst has identified as the “Ascents of James.” Although the Recognitions as a whole survives only in Latin, this section, R 1.33-71, is contained in two Syriac manuscripts. F. Stanley Jones has argued that this early source functioned as a kind of competitive “counter-history” to that found in Luke-Acts.

2. An Arabic 11th century Muslim Anti-Christian text written by ‘Abd al-Jabbar. This text, published by Shlomo Pines in 1966 (The Jewish Christians of the Early Centuries of Christiantiy According to a New Source), is intended as a Muslim refutation of Christianity and a defense of Mohammed as the Prophet. The author, in the course of his polemic, quotes Christian texts that clearly do not derive from our canonical gospels but are reflective of a Jewish-Christian community that is observant of the Torah. These embedded texts touch on Jesus’ teachings, his execution, and the history of his early followers in Jerusalem.

3. Old Slavonic version of Josephus, Jewish War. Our Greek texts of Josephus, Antiquities mention John the Baptist, Jesus, and James, as I have discussed in a recent post, while the Greek version of his earlier work, Jewish War, contain no such references. However, there is extant, in a number of Old Slavonic/Russian manuscripts of the War, three passages on John the Baptist, four on Jesus, and one on the early Christians–none of which are found in the Greek. These were first published in the West in 1906 in German. Scholars are divided over the date and provenance of these passages, but they are quite fascinating and worth considering for their possible historical value.

4. A Recovered Apocalypse of John the Baptist. Josephine Ford and others have argued that embedded within our present Greek book of Revelation, at the end of the New Testament, is a primitive “apocalypse” developed within circles related to John the Baptizer. It is found primarily in chapters 4-11, and represents the core apocalyptic expectations of the movement arising from the preaching of John and Jesus.

I will begin to discuss some of these materials here over the coming days and weeks.