Millions of believing Christians, as well as theologians and historians, are convinced that the earliest faith in Jesus’ resurrection had to do with the assertion that his dead body was revived in a tomb–and that he walked out of that tomb on the third day after his death, as a…
In this ongoing short series on the Top Seven Fateful texts of the N.T. I select another from the apostle Paul–which taken out of context downplays this present world as passing, almost an illusion or shadow, in favor of a future Heavenly World to come. I call this the “Bad…
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the FLESH, and the life everlasting. Amen. Πιστεύω εις το Πνευμα το `Αγιον, αγίαν καθολικην εκκλησίαν, αγίων κοινωνίαν, άφεσιν `αμαρτιων, σαρκος ανάστασιν, ξωήν αιώνιον. Αμήν. In the original Greek…
In this ninth of my series on” Death, Afterlife, and the Future,” I consider the thesis of the late great Oscar Cullmann who argued that Christianity–anciently and down into our own time–has largely lost the view of “resurrection of the dead” as declared by Jesus in our gospel sources and…
I highly recommend to all of my readers, and followers, David Wray’s 756 page book, The Secret Roots of Christianity (2012), dealing with astrology, magic, astral immortality and Greco-Roman art of the period, including astral symbols on coins. A question I get quite often goes something like this: “Dr. Tabor,…
If you want to understand ancient ideas of astral immortality–including Jewish “gnostic” and Kabalistic circles, this exposition on how the earliest Christian astrological iconography developed is essential. Wray argues that the mysterious Migdal synagogue stone is far from just a “Temple” representation, but in fact has astrological meanings…and he has…
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,…
Too long the origins of early Christianity and its development in late Roman antiquity has focused on ancient texts–to the neglect of important material evidence, particularly the considerable numismatic evidence of the period–and its relationship to astrological beliefs. The view arose that one’s fortune or destiny was determined by the…
Over the decades I have heard dozens of interviews with John Crossan, listened to his lectures, read his books, and spent time together in Jerusalem in 2007 with him and his wife Sarah, in endless conversation, visiting some of the “off the beaten tourist paths” places with Shimon Gibson. He…
In this 2015 lecture I talk about the ways in which dualistic forms of thinking about the cosmos, often referred to as “Enochian” in their Jewish forms, and “Gnostic” in the wider Hellenistic world, basically took over the Western world and fundamentally transformed Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into religions of…