Did you know that Joseph, husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is never mentioned in the gospel of Mark? Since Mark is our earliest gospel that seems all the more striking. Mark has no account of the birth of Jesus whatsoever, much less any story of the virgin birth. When Jesus…
Many Christians know the traditional “Seven Sayings of Jesus on the Cross,” that are a compilation of all that Jesus said during his last hours hanging between life and death on the cross based on our four New Testament gospels. Few could sort out which gospel says which, or which sayings…
Most of my readers know that the anonymous author of the writing we refer to as the “Gospel of Luke,” in fact, wrote a second volume to his work–known to us today as the “Acts of the Apostles.” The author refers to himself in the first person in the opening…
I think the main problem in discussions between theists and atheists is the assumption that static categories like “the Divine,” the “supernatural,” the “natural,” and the “material” exist other than as our dualistic semantic projections upon the whole of reality as we can perceive it. Our experiences are never reductionistically…
My favorite Blog dealing with biblical matters, other than my own (!), is “Scribes of the Kingdom” run by Alex Finkelstein, whom I have met only on line through email letting him know how much I appreciate his work. He is one of the most thoughtful students of early Christianity…
My book, The Jesus Dynasty was published in April 2006 (Simon & Schuster). It was a New York Times Best Seller for several weeks, featured on ABC’s Nightline and 20/20, and made the covers of USNews & World Report in the US and Profil magazine in Europe. It has been translated into 22…
Come Walk those Ancient Paths with me… My last trip abroad was to Israel in the first week of March 2020 leading a wonderful group of folks on a tour of the Holy Land. In fact, that was my last flight anywhere since. We were able to complete the tour but as we…
Dale Allison, of Princeton University, is the New Testament scholar from whom I have learned the most on the methods, process, and results of the “Quest for the Historical Jesus.” Here is his interview with Paul Williams, who hosts the program “Blogging Theology,” with whom I interviewed a couple weeks…
Many of my readers are aware of the publication of Ross Nichols’s new book, The Moses Scroll that chronicles the whole Moses Shapira Saga and the question of whether or not the 19th century “Dead Sea Scroll” was most likely ancient or a modern forgery. I just received word from Nichols…
I just finished a Biblical Archaeology Seminar in which I gave a lecture titled “Was John the Baptizer Greater than Jesus? The Fading of a Prophet” based on our New Testament gospel materials and the book of Acts. I build my case substantially on the ways in which John is…
