This week I am giving Ten Lectures at the Biblical Archaeology Society Seminar at St Olaf College in Northfield, MN. I will post my slides each day, which have hyperlinks to more materials and references to books and further reading, for those who want to delve into these subjects a…
Dear Reader:This is one of the most thorough and complex blog posts I have ever done based on years of careful textual work. It is not something to breeze through, though it is written clearly and simply. You will need your Bible out and a pad of paper but your…
Gary Greenberg was kind enough to send me a copy of his fascinating new book, Proving Jesus’ Authority in Mark and John: Overlooked Evidence of a Synoptic Relationship (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018). I am just beginning to read it, so I will not attempt any kind of overview or review at this…
Why Even Some Jews Once Believed Moses Had Horns It is often said that this is a simple matter of mistranslation, but Vulgate author Saint Jerome would not have made such a crude mistake HaAretz, Elon Gilad, March 27, 2018 https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/why-even-some-jews-once-believed-moses-had-horns-1.5949749 Famously, Michelangelo’s Moses has two horns protruding from his head.…
Recent polls indicate that up to 70% of Americans, both Black and White, approve of some form of corporeal punishment of children–with Evangelical Christians coming in at over 85%. 15 States in the USA explicitly permit some form of “paddling” in public schools, with 7 States not prohibiting it, leaving…
Sorting through the New Testament gospels accounts of the “sightings” of Jesus is incredibly complex. I have done my best to lay them out for comparison and interpretation in several posts on this blog, including “How Faith in Jesus’s Resurrection Originated and Developed: A New/Old Hypothesis.” One thing that any…
Joseph, husband of Mary, mother of Jesus, is never mentioned in the gospel of Mark. Since Mark is our earliest gospel that seems all the more striking. Mark has no account of the birth of Jesus whatsoever, much less any story of the virgin birth. When Jesus is identified in…
And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her. –Jesus of Nazareth One of the more intriguing stories that Mark preserves is that of an unnamed woman who anoints Jesus’ head with an…
Everyone repeats endlessly that “Jesus was a carpenter.” Hey even Kris Kristopher has a song that begins that way, and one sees bumper stickers about following a “Jewish carpenter” all the time. Did you know that the reference to Jesus having such a trade only occurs one time in all…
There are three basic positions that have been offered in response to the two birth stories we get in Matthew and Luke: 1) Jesus had no human father; 2) Jesus is in fact the biological son of Joseph; 3) Jesus is the biological son of an unnamed male under unknown…