I am teaching a course this semester called “The End of the World as We Know It” after the REM song of that name. We are examining ideas associated with Biblical prophecy and the Apocalypse, both Jewish and Christian (and towards the end, a bit of Islam), in the…
So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the…
Jacob Neusner, renewed scholar of the ancient Judaism, who so profoundly shaped the academic study of religions in terms of both method and content, died last October 8, 2016, on the Sabbath, at age 84. On the Jewish calendar that would be next Sabbath–called Shabbat Shuvah, which falls between Rosh…
I was recently pleased to participate in a wide-ranging conversations with my colleagues at UNC Charlotte as a guest on their ongoing series “Conversations about Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed.” You can listen to or download from iTunes. This program is dated 8/17/2017 but please browse some of the previous ones…
[This post refers back to August 1st when I had been traveling out of the country for six weeks and could not post so easily. It is interesting that in our English tradition we refer to the “Dog Days of August” which corresponds to this time year on our calendars…
In the meantime, it is indeed interesting to note that this very practice of patronymy/paponymy/metronymy, by its repetitive nature, leaves the sample of names quite narrow and refutes in essence the argument of “very common names” put forward by a number scholars that the Talpiot tomb was not that of…
Since I began writing about the “Jesus Family tomb” discovered in East Talpiot, Jerusalem around Easter 1981, by far the most common response by colleagues and media reports alike has been the inaccurate generalization that the names found in the tomb were “extremely common.” The obvious intention of this assertion…
I wanted to share with my readers the translation of an ancient text, known in various Greek manuscripts as well as Aramaic fragments found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, with which many might not be familiar. It seems to capture in a few lines the core of ideas of the…
Many of my blog readers often write me asking when and where I might be giving lectures. Although I do regularly lecture here in Charlotte and around the country, by far the most lecturing I do are the in-depth sessions at various Biblical Archaeology Society Seminars and their annual “Bible…