In this introductory clip from my on-line course, “Quest for the Historical Paul” we go deep into a full historical consideration of what we know of the mission, message, and texts of the 13th Apostle. The two mystery texts here are Genesis 15:6 and Habakkuk 2:4. You can take a…
The ancient group of Jesus followers referred to as the “Ebionites” or “Nazarenes” were slandered, damned, and declared heretics by the mainstream Christian Orthodox Church Fathers. In this dialogue with filmmaker Kameron Waters, I argue that they may well be one of our best clues to recovering what the original…
https://youtu.be/baAWiUZHnww In this short video Bart Ehrman and I talk about the earliest layers of our New Testament gospel traditions regarding the teachings of Jesus about “Hell” or Gehenna–the Greek word used. Bart is offering a one day, two lecture FREE course on “What the Hell?” You can sign up…
In this interview with Jacob Berman, host of the YouTube channel “History Valley,” we talk about the confusing mix of names used for various Jewish and Jewish-Christian groups from the Dead Sea Scroll group to those oriented around James the brother of Jesus and his successors in the first and…
I have revised and rewritten my hastily written comments on Sayer Ji’s essay which I linked yesterday to this post. Sorry to have dumped that entire 60+ essay on you—it was a “real trip” for sure, in the 60s sense of the word! It relates in interesting ways to what…
I am sharing here a few very informal remarks I made via Zoom at the 33rd Anniversary April 19th Waco Memorial last month with the survivors gathered as well as many family and friends. It is a six minute personal story that I decided to make it public. For those…
My lates blog post in The Times of Israel. Whatever you might have thought you had figured out about Pentecost, the Festival of Weeks, or in Hebrew Shavuot–this post will likely complicate things a bit. However, the past point might be the most important in the entire post. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-shifting-meanings-of-shavuot-pentecost/
In this video I situate my work on the “Quest for the Historical Mary–Mother of Jesus,” in the broader shift in the Hellenistic world, in which a “Great Reversal” took place. Humans began to look to the heavenly world above as their true Home, whereas the earth was seen as…
In this illustrated reading of the Preface to my book Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (Simon & Schuster 2012) I present a very personal overview of how I view and understand “The Thirteenth Apostle” since I first encountered him at age 17 in my Testament Greek course…
In this video I invite you to join me in an interactive test of when and how AI can go wrong dealing with Historical Research. To allow for comparisons please paste this query right into your chosen AI model/s: “Did Origen ever mention the idea that in the name Yesua…
