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,…
This one jumped to #1 on my Youtube Channel in one hour…take a listen. The historical Jesus has been robbed and stripped of his religion as a Jew, his core Messianic ideas, and his reality as a human being–all by Hellenistic theological motifs taking over his movement in the 2nd…
My on-line mini-course on the Gospel of Mark, which was released on January 12th, is really doing well with lots of rave reviews and great questions and responses by those taking it. It is open to the public, non-credit, but lots of learning at your own pace. This course is…
I recently did a two-part lecture titled “Bible Prophecy: The Perils of Predicting the End of the Age,” in which I offer a cautionary overview based on my study of various apocalyptic “schemes and dreams” over the past 2500 years. From the Hebrew Bible, through various strands of Late Second…
In my on-line course on Mark I try to carefully cover some of the features that make this earliest and first “story of Jesus” unique. The scene halfway through the book of Mark, in chapter 8, where Peter confesses Jesus as the “Christ,” is rebuked by Jesus as representing the…
In this short video I show that the whole idea of “Harmonizing” our four New Testament Gospels is a mistaken idea in the first place. In fact, Mark, the earliest Gospel written was viewed and strongly deficient by Matthew, who used 90% of it, as well as Luke who used…
In this three-part multi-series interview with Paul Williams, who hosts the widely popular Youtube Channel @bloggingtheology, we explore in some depth an overview of my decades long work trying to come to terms with the historical Jesus, the apostle Paul, and the emergency of something that could be distinctively called…
If you check the dropdown menu at the top of any page on my TaborBlog you will see an emerging new feature titled “The Jewish-Roman World of Jesus.” During my years at UNC Charlotte these materials were on a university web site used by my students in my courses–but since…
Over the past few months I have created a special on-line course on the Gospel of Mark titled “Creating Jesus: Why Mark’s Gospel was Forgotten,” that is now available. This is a college level mini-course, with seven video lectures filmed in 4K quality, along with a Study Guide containing notes, maps,…
The ancient group of Jesus followers referred to as the “Ebionites” were slandered, damned, and declared heretics by the mainstream Christian Orthodox Church Fathers. In this interview with Derek Lambert, Youtube host of MythvisionPodcast, I argue that they might well be one of our main clues to recovering what the…