I have written several posts on this blog over the years about Dr. Robert Kuhn’s extraordinary PBS program “Closer to Truth,” now in its 19th season. I have known Robert as a personal friend and colleague for over 50 years now–since my Pepperdine University days working on my M.A. in…
I have written a lot about the April 1993 tragedy outside Waco Texas where the apocalyptic group we came to know as the Branch Davidians were confronted by the BATF. Most experts now agree, including the conclusions of several Congressional hearings, that the whole thing was unnecessary from start to…
I am posting here this morning a most informative document from my friend and fellow-scholar Greg Doudna, whose Ph.D. deals with the history and archaeology of the Dead Sea Scroll sectarian community (you can see some of his publications at this link). In January 1985, Greg visited and interviewed Dr.…
And no man having drunk old wine desireth new; for he saith, The old is good –Jesus somewhere in Galilee around 28 CE I had a wonderful teacher at Chicago, the Late Great Robert M. Grant, who always said the best New Testament and Early Christian Literature scholarship was done…
There has been a lot of discussion over the past 45 years regarding the late Columbia University historian Morton Smith and his discovery, publication, and interpretation of a so-called “Secret Gospel of Mark” in 1973. According to Smith, fifteen years earlier he had come across, quite by accident, a copy…
I’ve never been able to find a dichotomy between being an historian and a theologian–or a good historian and a Christian, putting it very bluntly. I do not believe that gods and goddesses or anyone ever comes out from heaven and produces divine babies; I don’t believe it actually happens.…