Some Oral Remarks by Prof. James Tabor reflection on Qumran down to WacoPlenary Session: When Prophecy Fails Delivered at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, 1997 Since the release and subsequent study and translation of the entire Dead Sea Scrolls corpus in 1992, it is now possible to sketch…
The treatise attributed to Jesus’ brother James in the New Testament was not even considered “Christian” by many Protestant theologians such as Martin Luther. And yet this James was the leader of the followers of Jesus after the crucifixion–and held that position until his own brutal death in 63 CE…
The on-line magazine, Popular Archaeology, which I highly recommend, recently circulated its “Top Ten” feature stories of the past decade. I was honored and pleased that one of the ten stories that my research on the historical Jesus, as related to material and textual evidence, was chosen as one of…
I hereby offer my loyal readers a challenge–READ and study all of these blog posts during the next eight days. Whether you agree or disagree I think you will learn a lot–and this includes Jews, Christians, or others. It is on this week that the worlds of Judaism and Christianity…
I have been teaching various courses on Christian Origins as well as ancient Mediterranean religions and the emergence of Christianity in its Greco-Roman cultural and religious context for over four decades. The one question I get most often goes something like this: “Dr. Tabor, can you explain Gnosticism–what is it,…
I recently did a two-part lecture titled “Bible Prophecy: The Perils of Predicting the End of the Age,” in which I offer a cautionary overview based on my study of various apocalyptic “schemes and dreams” over the past 2500 years. From the Hebrew Bible, through various strands of Late Second…
In this three-part multi-series interview with Paul Williams, who hosts the widely popular Youtube Channel @bloggingtheology, we explore in some depth an overview of my decades long work trying to come to terms with the historical Jesus, the apostle Paul, and the emergency of something that could be distinctively called…
If you check the dropdown menu at the top of any page on my TaborBlog you will see an emerging new feature titled “The Jewish-Roman World of Jesus.” During my years at UNC Charlotte these materials were on a university web site used by my students in my courses–but since…
The ancient group of Jesus followers referred to as the “Ebionites” were slandered, damned, and declared heretics by the mainstream Christian Orthodox Church Fathers. In this interview with Derek Lambert, Youtube host of MythvisionPodcast, I argue that they might well be one of our main clues to recovering what the…
In this interview with Youtube host Derek Lambert of MythVision Podcast, I put forth my thesis that Paul created a new religion that became known as Christianity by taking these four texts from the Hebrew Bible and interpreting them in ways totally foreign to their contextual meanings. I fully realize that…