In this second of the series “Death and Afterlife in the Ancient Western World” I turn to the Sumerian traditions, and particularly the Gilgamesh Epic, going back 4500 years–and comparing it to what we see in the Hebrew Bible traditions we have previously covered. https://youtu.be/wm0ys2wvh1c
I am beginning a new teaching series on Youtube this week on the topic of “What the Bible Really Says About Death, Afterlife, and the Future.” You can download my article by this title free at the link in the description. Here is the short Intro video I recorded yesterday.…
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. By using these particular links there is no increase in cost to you as the purchaser. Marie: De son enfance juive à la fondation du christianisme (Flammarion, 2020). (Kindle link). This is a translation of the forthcoming English version, The Lost Mary:…
Millions of believing Christians, as well as theologians and historians, are convinced that the earliest faith in Jesus’ resurrection had to do with the assertion that his dead body was revived in a tomb–and that he walked out of that tomb on the third day after his death, as a…
Over the decades I have heard dozens of interviews with John Crossan, listened to his lectures, read his books, and spent time together in Jerusalem in 2007 with him and his wife Sarah, in endless conversation, visiting some of the “off the beaten tourist paths” places with Shimon Gibson. He…
Parallels Between A New Dead Sea Scroll Fragment (4Q521) and the Early New Testament Gospel Tradition One of the more intriguing of the Dead Sea Scrolls released in the 1990s, after being held by the DSS committee for decades, is a fragment that most now title “Messianic Apocalypse” (4Q521).…
In my previous post, “Have I Not Seen the Lord? What Did Paul Claim to Have Seen?” I suggest that we need to go to Paul, and what he says in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, as our earliest witness to faith in Jesus’ resurrection–rather than to our latest witnesses–the gospels of…
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…
Paul never met Jesus. With those four words I began my book, Paul and Jesus (Simon & Schuster, 2013). Jesus was crucified in 30 CE, Paul had his visionary encounter with Jesus some years after that–seven years according to one early source (The Ascents of James). Accordingly, he is often called…
Jews, Christians, and Muslims all affirm the doctrine of “resurrection of the dead” as a central tenet of eschatology–that is, the understanding of the “last things” or how human history is to end. One common misunderstanding, especially among Christians, is that resurrection of the dead is equivalent to the idea…