Note to the reader: During the “Covid Summer of 2019” I spent about a month digging through old files from my University of Chicago days–back when I was writing my dissertation at the University of Chicago under Jonathan Z. Smith. I found so many treasures, including these handwritten notes I…
My newly published book Paul’s Ascent to Paradise (revised from my 1986 dissertation) is beginning to draw some good comments and reactions. Here is a comment by Roy Kay that captures a key element of that book–how Paul claims authority based on his extraordinary mystical experiences–in his battles with his apostolic…
A first century CE mikveh or ritual bath was was uncovered in 2015 just south of the Old City and east of Hebron road in the Arnona neighborhood of Talpiot as a result of construction of a kindergarten. At the time of its discovery Shimon Gibson and I were been…
Given my chosen field of study, namely “Christian Origins,” I am often asked by students and attendees at my lectures whether there are any reference to Jesus and the early “Christian” movement outsidethe New Testament. The following references, from a diverse collection of Roman writers around the time of the…
Quintessential JZ Smith…if you never had the pleasure of hearing him…his Plenary Address to the American Academy of Religion in 2010. https://vimeo.com/20286150 You can read an informal fascinating interview with Mr. Smith (as Chicago professors are called–no titles please!) published in The Chicago Maroon in 2008 here. Don’t miss this one!…
I have existed from the morning of the world and I shall exist until the last star falls from the night. Although I have taken the form of Gaius Caligula, I am all men as I am no man and therefore I am God. Millions of my generation will remember,…
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…
As some of you know, and as I mention in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, the most commonly accepted explanation for the tradition that Jesus is “son of Pantera” is that the word pantera is a pun for the Greek word parthenos or “virgin” in Greek and not a “real…
The New Testament has been the most influential collection of documents in history. Taken by both commoners and those in power as the inspired and infallible “Word of God,” and interpreted ofttimes outside its historical context, its fateful influence has often emerged from single passages with far-ranging consequences: We look…
The New Testament has been the most influential collection of documents in history. Taken by both commoners and those in power as the inspired and infallible “Word of God,” and interpreted ofttimes outside its historical context, its fateful influence has often emerged from single passages with far-ranging consequences: It is…