Nietzsche said the Christian decision to make the world ugly and evil has made the world ugly and evil. Of course the Christians were only mimickers and mirrors of the neo-Platonism and Gnostic perspectives that became so influential in late Antiquity. Quite a contrast to the Hebrew Bible. Demons, Satan…
A few weeks ago I posted an article I had published back in the year 2000, on “Salvation” in the Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, edited by Richard Lances. Here is another dealing with Millennialism in the Ancient World–by that I mean the ancient Near East/Mediterranean world. I tried my…
Bart Ehrman has a very interesting post up on his blog (July 3) titled “Do Matthew and Paul Agree on the Matter Most Important to them Both?” I highly recommend both the post and the blog. ((The blog requires a membership fee, which is rare among us Bible Bloggers, but…
First a bit of personal background. I began my study of New Testament (Koiné) Greek at the tender age of 17 as a young college freshman at what was then called Abilene Christian College (today Abilene Christian University), one of the flagship schools of the Churches of Christ. My family,…
Many years ago I when I was studying the history of religions I was taught to ask about the various religions of “salvation” that so thickly filled the Hellenistic-Roman world (400 BCE-300 CE) to pose the following probing questions of any text or system of religious thinking about humanity and…
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…