One of the more intriguing of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a fragment now titled “Messianic Apocalypse” (4Q521). This text contains three rather striking features that are of particular significance for comparing the apocalyptic beliefs and expectations of the Qumran community with the emerging early Christian movement. First, the text…
I am sometimes asked, “what is your greatest discovery or insight in the world of biblical archaeology?” I have been involved in or stumbled upon quite a few things over the past thirty years, including the “Tomb of the Shroud,” with Shimon Gibson, and our ground-breaking DNA and ancient disease…
There is a new article up at the fabulous website The Bible & Interpretation, by Ken Hanson. If you don’t know the web site check it out and bookmark. It is worth checking several times a week. Ken is Director of Judaic Studies at the University of Central Florida. Some…
This semester I am offering an advanced undergraduate/graduate seminar on “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Earliest Christianity.” In preparation for this course I have been re-reading all of the published Dead Sea Scrolls as well as many of the secondary publications related thereto published over the past three decades. One…
This summer will mark my 68th trip to the Holy Land since my first visit with my family in the summer of 1962 at age 16. All but two of these trips have been since 1990. I find the number astounding looking back. By far most of these trips have…
To understand Jesus and the movement that developed after his death we need to have a handle on a way of thinking that I call messianic apocalyptic eschatology. This is a way of describing a certain expectation and outlook on the world and human history that was characteristic of certain…
Everyone seems to “love” the Dead Sea Scrolls though I fear, much like the Bible, few seem to have actually read them. Some years ago I remember a very enthusiastic woman who came up to me after one of my public lectures on this scrolls, exclaiming, “Dr. Tabor, I just…
One of the ideas I explore and develop in my 2006 book, The Jesus Dynasty, was the notion of two Messiahs. I had no idea it would become sensational–much less controversial. It actually became headline news, with a cover story in USNews & World Report and special segments on ABC’s…
In this new six part series I present responses to essays offered in my course at UNC Charlotte on “John the Baptist.” John is the most underrated figure in Christian tradition, rarely given his due as a messiah and inaugurator of the movement Jesus himself arose from. The responses are by…
Although it is common among both Christians and Jews to refer to the notion of the Resurrection of the Dead, as a formal category of eschatology (i.e., the “Last Things”) there is another Hebrew expression that is more common in our ancient Jewish texts. That phrase, “to make live the…