It was about twenty years ago that I first began to combine my textual study of the historical Jesus with an in-depth interest in the archaeology of late 2nd Temple Jerusalem and Galilee as it relates to the life of Jesus. An obvious interest of mine has been to determine,…
“On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame” Evangelical Hymn, George Bennard, 1913 According to all our historical records Jesus was crucified somewhere outside the city wall of Jerusalem. He was sentenced to death by the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate,…
I dedicated my book, The Jesus Dynasty to the memory of Albert Schweitzer, who was born 140 years ago this month: Ad memoriam Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965). Missionary, philosopher, historian extraordinaire. In whose shadow we all stand. Albert Schweitzer’s influential work titled Von Reimarus zu Wrede was published in 1906—just one…
In early Christian tradition outside the New Testament Mary Magdalene’s profile is elaborated considerably, she is prominent among the followers of Jesus, she speaks boldly and is often in open conflict with the male disciples, she is an intimate companion of Jesus and he praises her for her superior spiritual understanding and defends…
The reason it is so difficult for people today to think of Jesus as a normally married Jew of his time and culture has little to do with the fact that his wife and child are not mentioned in our meager sources. It is based on an ideal of Christian…
A Woman Called Magdalene Mary Magdalene is referred to by name only twelve times in our New Testament gospels and never again in any of the other New Testament writings. As we have seen she appears at the death scene of Jesus, his burial, and the empty tomb, and…
Paul indicates that “seeing the Lord” is an essential criterion for one claiming to be an apostle. According to the book of Acts the main criteria in deciding who would replace Judas Iscariot as the Twelfth apostle after he had betrayed Jesus and killed himself was that the one chosen…
Jesus was born of a woman. On that everyone but the most extreme docetic Gnostic would seem to agree–if there are any still left around. But how was it that Mary became pregnant? There are three basic positions that have been offered in response to the two birth stories we…
Something of which I am more and more convinced is the paramount importance of James the brother of Jesus to the very survival of the Messianic movement in the critical months and years following the tragic and brutal murders of both John the Baptist and Jesus. I present my extended…
The issue of the relationship of Jesus to the “Essenes,” as well as to the the Dead Sea Scrolls, whether Essene or otherwise, is central to our attempts to view Jesus in his historical contexts. In other words, we are essentially asking, in our historical Quest–“what kind of a Jew…