As we begin to reconstruct the birth, life, and teachings of Jesus our best and earliest sources are the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, contained in the New Testament. For the past two hundred years scholars have analyzed and compared these texts and their relationship to one another.…
When I think of Mary the mother of Jesus I think of the forgotten city of Sepphoris. According to tradition she was the firstborn daughter of an older couple named Joachim and Anna who lived there.[i] Few today have heard of Sepphoris. It is not mentioned in the New Testament.…
Our Gospels present us with not only a profoundly “male” story, but it is also a profoundly asexual one. Theology is one thing, history is another, and on these matters of sex, birth, and death there can clearly be a conflict but little contest. I have written a variety of…
“There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary.” Gospel of Philip 36 According to the Coptic Gospel of Philip, found in Egypt…
In my 2006 book, The Jesus Dynasty, (pp. 235-237) I published a photo of an fragment of an 1st century CE limestone ossuary, or burial box, inscribed with the name “Simon bar Jonah,” a rare patronym used by Jesus one time in Matthew 16:17 to refer to Simon Peter: And…
I explore this question from a biblical perspective with Dr. Robert L. Kuhn, host of the acclaimed PBS Series “Closer to Truth,” along with a host of perspectives from historians, scientists, philosophers, and theologians. You may view the whole series here, “Is This the End Time?”
Few readers of the English Bible realize that the name “James” actually comes from the Hebrew name Jacob or Yaaqov, which adds to the confusion over the various “Jameses” mentioned in the New Testament. There is, of course, Jacob the Patriarch, grandson of Abraham; James the Apostle, the fisherman brother…
I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Chicago, on “Paul’s Ascent to Paradise” under the direction of Jonathan Z. Smith, the late and great Robert M. Grant, and Arthur Adkins. Its focus was the celebrated passage where Paul reports his extraordinary experience, as a “man in Christ” who…
The 2017 Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Awards were just announced in the latest November/December issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. These were carefully selected from hundreds of entries so any or all of them are certainly worthy of purchase and reading. I was honored to serve as one of the judges in…
Michael Servetus (aka Miguel Serveto) is surely one of the most remarkable men of history, though he is largely unknown in general circles. He was born in Spain in 1511 and died in 1553, at age 42, burnt at the stake as a heretic by John Calvin’s Geneva Council. He…