Many decades ago I had the privilege of studying at the University of Chicago with the late, great, Norman Perrin. I have many memories of Mr. Perrin, some personal, that I have shared previously on my blog, see “Remembering Norman Perrin.” One of his most distinguished students, Werner H. Kelber,…
I regularly get queries from readers asking whether my university courses are on-line or available to the public. Although during this “year of Covid” I have been teaching on-line–and will next semester–registering requires admission and enrollment through the university, with normal tuition payments–which I think is not what most people…
Note to the reader: During the “Covid Summer of 2020” I spent about a month digging through old files from my University of Chicago days–back when I was writing my dissertation at the University of Chicago under Jonathan Z. Smith. I found so many treasures, including these handwritten notes I…
For the next few weeks I plan to post many of my previously published articles that have fallen off the radar of many of my readers. Some, but not nearly all, are available as PDFs on this Blog site under “Publications and Papers,” in the dropdown menu above labeled “Academic.”…
I am sometimes asked, “what is your greatest discovery or insight in the world of biblical archaeology?” I have been involved in or stumbled upon quite a few things over the past thirty years, including the “Tomb of the Shroud,” with Shimon Gibson, and our ground-breaking DNA and ancient disease…
Many years ago I when I was studying the history of religions I was taught to ask about the various religions of “salvation” that so thickly filled the Hellenistic-Roman world (400 BCE-300 CE) to pose the following probing questions of any text or system of religious thinking about humanity and…
Jews, Christians, and Muslims all affirm the doctrine of “resurrection of the dead” as a central tenet of eschatology–that is, the understanding of the “last things” or how human history is to end. One common misunderstanding, especially among Christians, is that resurrection of the dead is equivalent to the idea…
Daniel chapter 11 might well be the longest “continual” prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, it appears to be referred to in Daniel 10:21–the chapter leading up to the Daniel’s most disturbing vision–as the “book of truth.” It is surely one of the most influential in terms of firing up…
In my 2006 New York Times bestselling book, The Jesus Dynasty, which was subsequently translated into twenty-six languages, I included the following dedication: Ad Memoriam Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) Missionary, philosopher, historian extraordinaire. In whose shadow we all stand. My book appeared on the 100th anniversary of the publication of Schweitzer’s most influential 1906…
Anyone who works on the apostle Paul comes up against this question almost immediately–namely “Who Is a Jew”? After all, in different contexts Paul affirms that “in Christ” there is “neither Jew nor Gentile” while also affirming that “He is a real Jew who is one inwardly, whose circumcision is…