Clearly in Mark the Twelve male disciples are complete failures and are never presented as heroes, even at the end. However, what we do find in Mark, in stark contrast to this chosen group, are three unnamed women who become Mark’s heroines and carry the core message of the entire…
I know many of my readers either speak or read French. I am most pleased and gratified to let everyone know that the French edition of my new book, The Lost Mary: From Jewish Mother of Jesus to Virgin Mother of God (Knopf, 2021) has just been published in French by…
So once again Holy Week has arrived–the “final days of Jesus” with the Last Supper, Passover, and Easter falling in a back-to-back cluster this weekend, just like they did in the time of Jesus. Just about everything about this week is controversial. Did Jesus eat his last Supper on a…
Most of us who work in what we academics call “Christian Origins” hold to the “Two Source” theory of Synoptic Gospel origins. That is, Mark was the earliest narrative gospels, Matthew and Luke both used Mark as their core source, but they had access to another source that we call…
I wanted to thank Bart Ehrman, my colleague down the road at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for inviting me to guest post on his popular Blog. My post, titled “The Historian and the Supernatural,” will appear in two parts–today and tomorrow. I have also agreed…
If you want to travel with me to Israel in 2020 we have just opened registrations for a specialized tour like no other. I am just back from our Mt Zion excavation which marks my 70th trip to the Holy Land since my first visit with my family in the…
Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus centers around a quotation from Isaiah 7:14. Let’s look at the verse as Matthew presents it: Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found…
There is a new article up at the fabulous website The Bible & Interpretation, by Ken Hanson. If you don’t know the web site check it out and bookmark. It is worth checking several times a week. Ken is Director of Judaic Studies at the University of Central Florida. Some…
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.…
I am sure many of my older readers will remember Hugh J. Schonfield’s , 1965 blockbuster international best seller, The Passover Plot, now re-released in a special 40th anniversary edition. Schonfield was somewhat of a “maverick” independent scholar, well trained but never pursing an academic university career, but publishing dozens of…