In this video I offer an informal account of my thirty-year history of research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, beginning in 1992 when our team spent a month surveying the site, doing radar ground scan, and surveying caves from Qumran to Ein Gedi. My new course, “Jesus and the Dead…
I know many of my blog readers have been anticipating the release of my new online course titled “Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls.” I have worked on this for several months and I am excited about its content and quality. It comes with a hefty course pack of study…
In this 2nd in my new Youtube series on “Bible Prophecy Through the Ages.” I take a look at the First Messiah in Jewish history–the Messiah BEFORE Jesus, who flourished in the late 2nd Temple period–100 years before Jesus and his movement. We don’t even know the name of this…
This most useful collection of essays in the Yale Anchor Bible Reference Library, edited by James H. Charlesworth, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Controversy Resolved (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 370 pp [paper and hardcover] has endured the test of time over the past three decades. It contains twelve…
The short answer is “It’s Complicated.” So much depends on what one means by “Essene” and what sources have gone into this or that use of the term–whether ancient or modern. In this interview with YouTube host Neal Sendlack (@GnosticInformant), we explore the core issues and many others related thereto,…
Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English 7th Edition (Penguin, 2012). I bought my first copy of this fine little paperback volume in 1973 in graduate school at the university of Chicago–it was the 1st edition and I still have it–and I have bought every edition since then.…
Some Oral Remarks by Prof. James Tabor reflection on Qumran down to WacoPlenary Session: When Prophecy Fails Delivered at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, 1997 English translations of the Dead Sea Scroll quotation here are from Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Note: As an Amazon…
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…
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…
Few Bible students realize that some of the key texts in the Hebrew Bible about the “wilderness” or “desert” are specific references to what is called in Hebrew, the “Arava,” the rift valley that runs down to the Dead Sea–the lowest spot on earth–all the way into Africa. For example,…