Get ready for the countdown: Ten Major Variants between the Dead Sea Scroll texts of the Hebrew Bible and that of our traditional Masoretic text–upon which our major English Bibles are based. A very few of these variants are slowly making it into the English texts, but by far the…
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to resume regular monthly posting as a blogger for the Times of Israel, which has become for me the “paper of record” in the Middle East. I have read both the Jerusalem Post and HaAretz for the past forty years, but lately I…
Dateline: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, Jerusalem Israel I flew to Israel the day before to be present for one of the most significant discoveries I have made in my entire forty year academic career! Enjoy the experience , and see the links at the end to learn much more! https://youtu.be/N1oKvLC8oN4…
Take a trip with me today on the “Biblical Time Machine,” piloted by producer David Roos and the brilliant Prof. Helen Bond. One of my favorite podcasts! Be sure and visit, browse the episodes, you will be hooked! https://www.biblicaltimemachine.com From Helen and Dave: Every good churchgoer knows that after we…
Just a quick announcement that my new course titled: “The Quest for the Historical Paul: Apostle or Apostate,” is out at last. I will be launching a wider wave of publicity later this week but wanted you all to have the link first, if you are ready to dive in.…
I gave this short overview lecture recently to a group of my students and patrons members and wanted to share it with all of you. It explores the possible break between Paul and his “Gospel” and that of the Jerusalem followers of Jesus led by James the Just. You may…
I posted this some months ago but we have many new people joining this Blog Community, and for those who remember it I wanted to call you attention to it again. This is a long, very informal study of what traditions we can trace in the Torah about the “Box,”…
As some of you know, even though my academic field is ancient Mediterranean religions, including Christian Origins and late 2nd Temple Judaism, I have ended up wearing a few extra “Hats” so to speak. I would include here the archaeological side of my research along with the textual studies typical…
I learned this single CORE idea from Jonathan Z. Smith, the greatest historian of religion of our time, during the first week of the first class I had from him at the University of Chicago called simply “Hellenistic Religion.” It remains the case that very few in my academic field…
Yesterday I did an interview with Prof. Robyn Faith Walsh, one of the ten participants in this upcoming special conference on the Apostle Paul: New Investigations on the New Testament(NINT). I found her insights and approach to the texts insightful and fascinating. You won’t want to miss this one! This…