This groundbreaking article by the late Bargil Pixner, a Benedictine priest and my dear friend, mentor, and colleague, was published in Biblical Archaeology Review in May/June, 1997 as a cover story. One of my great honors was to edit this article from the German and put it into BAR magazine style…
This groundbreaking article by the late Bargil Pixner, a Benedictine priest and my dear friend, mentor, and colleague, was published in Biblical Archaeology Review in May/June, 1990. For me it was a most important article–groundbreaking! Other than Jim Strange and Shimon Gibson, there is no one from whom I have learned…
The three hundred year period of Jewish history from 150 BCE to 150 CE was characterized by the utter failure of all apocalyptic expectations of the End of the Age arriving. These failed hopes and dreams shape collectively what might be called “The Great Disappointment.” This included a variety of…
In this 2006 lecture, part of a series on “Lost Christianities,” I talk about the alternative ways in which Jesus was viewed in his own time, in contrast to the Orthodox Trinitarian versions of “Christianity” that triumphed and spread to over two billion people in our own time. Arians, Ebionites,…
In this 2006 lecture I explore some of the rather remarkable textual readings of the 14th century polemical treatise Even Bochan [Isaiah 28:16] written by Shem-Tob ben-Isaac ben-Shaprut Ibn Shaprut, a Castilian Jewish physician, living later in Aragon. The 12th/ 13th book contains a Hebrew version of the complete text…
I thought some of you might enjoy this lecture I did in 2019 at the Georgia Southern University College of Science and Mathematics to a diverse group of scientists interested in the technical and scientific aspects of some of the archaeological discoveries in which I have been involved. This was…
Back in 1996 I began to develop a web site called “The Jewish Roman World of Jesus” to which I uploaded all sorts of original sources and handouts related to my my undergraduate and graduate classes. It was initially hosted and developed by my friend Mike McKinney, at CenturyOne.com.…
The “Last Days of Jesus,” that final week of his life, marked by billions of Christians from Palm Sunday to Easter, with contemplation, mourning, and celebration–is often called “Holy Week” in the “great” churches. It is narrated by Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John in the New Testament, along with fragments…
I dedicate this video to my University of Chicago teacher, the late Jonathan Z. Smith, from whom I learned more about ancient religions than anyone in my academic career. In this lecture I explore what I have called the greatest transformation in human thought in Western history–namely the shift from…
This lecture lays out what I believe is the earliest archaeological evidence related to the followers of Jesus. The standard view of many historians–though not all–is that we have nothing from the early Christians until the late 2nd or early 3rd centuries. Here I deal only with materials that are…