NEW! The Lost Mary: Rediscovering the Mother of Jesus (New York: Knopf, 2025). Kindle and Audio. Also published by HarperCollins UK available on Amazon.co.uk serving United Kingdom, EU, and worldwide A world-renowned historian of early Christianity and ancient Judaism lifts the veil on the life of Mary—revealing her revolutionary role as…
I am convinced that the historical figure of Jesus began to pore over key prophetic passages in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the Isaiah and the Pslams, where he became convinced that both his identity and his destiny was laid out. After the death of his cousin John the Baptist,…
The on-line magazine, Popular Archaeology, which I highly recommend, recently circulated its “Top Ten” feature stories of the past decade. I was honored and pleased that one of the ten stories that my research on the historical Jesus, as related to material and textual evidence, was chosen as one of…
In this final segment of my series on Final Days of Jesus over “Holy Week” as the Christian call it, I consider the burial and empty tomb accounts in the Gospels, as well as “sightings” of Jesus. Please access the blog posts that lay out these issues in GREAT detail.…
In this video I narrate the last night of Jesus’ life, critically and historically examined. Quite a few surprises. The Crucifixion was on Thursday, not “Good” Friday; Jesus never ate a Passover meal; he never said “eat my body; drink my blood,” and other significant insights. https://youtu.be/ReSBtcaKNh4 For more on…
In this video narrative on the “Last Days of Jesus,” I relate the story of Jesus’s final journey to Jerusalem after spending the winter of the year 29-30 CE across the Jordan in the Wadi Cherith–where Elijah the Prophet once hid from Ahab and Jezebel. Similarly, Jesus withdrew to the…
I hereby offer my loyal readers a challenge–READ and study all of these blog posts during the next eight days. Whether you agree or disagree I think you will learn a lot–and this includes Jews, Christians, or others. It is on this week that the worlds of Judaism and Christianity…
There are all sorts of legends about Jesus between the years of 12 and 30 traveling to Egypt, India, and even the British Isles. However, a knowledge of the history and the geography of his hometown of Nazareth, and recent archaeological excavations at Sepphoris, just 4 miles to the north,…
This one jumped to #1 on my Youtube Channel in one hour…take a listen. The historical Jesus has been robbed and stripped of his religion as a Jew, his core Messianic ideas, and his reality as a human being–all by Hellenistic theological motifs taking over his movement in the 2nd…
In this short video I show that the whole idea of “Harmonizing” our four New Testament Gospels is a mistaken idea in the first place. In fact, Mark, the earliest Gospel written was viewed and strongly deficient by Matthew, who used 90% of it, as well as Luke who used…