This report from Israel introduces viewers to the basics on what we know and hope to soon learn about the skeletal remains of those Jewish men, women, and children who died at Masada under the Roman 10th Legion siege around Passover 73 CE. For the blog post I feature see:…
Thirty-two years ago today, on February 28, 1993, my life was forever changed. It was a Sunday morning and I was upstairs in my office. Lori, my wife called through the house, “James, James, come down here, there is a shootout in Texas with some religious group and the leader…
This is an informal lecture I gave in the monthly Zoom meeting I hold with students in my “Quest for the Historical Paul” course. The course is on-line, you work at your own pace, and as with all of my on-line courses, I meet with the students via Zoom to…
In this edited segment of a private study I recently had with my “Tabor Research Group, via Patreon, that offers a theory, still in development, of discovering embedded in our current Greek gospel called Luke, is a pro-Gospel, upon which Luke primarily relied, as he overwrote Mark and added his…
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 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…
Here is an much expanded version of some of what I presented at the Ehrman NINT conference on Paul over the weekend. it is quite long and goes deeply into many important texts, tailor made for a group such as ours, made up of those who have searched the historical…
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…
A careful look at Zechariah 14 that predicts a final “battle against Jerusalem” between all the nations of the world, manifestation of the LORD on the Mt of Olives. Christians frequently refer to this and apply it to Jesus as the Messiah. But what does the original Hebrew text in…
This is a long and serious study based on a lecture I recently gave to my students in the “Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls” course–which is still open to join. We went through a much neglected text–the WAR SCROLL–found in 1947 and seldom mentioned. As it turns out it…