One of my main areas of focus and expertise over the decades has been the broad understanding of what might be called “Biblical Prophecy Belief,” from ancient to modern times–let’s just say from the Dead Sea Scrolls through contemporary Christian and Jewish interpretations in the 21st century. I gave this…
Tonight at sundown begins the festival of Dedication, more popularly known as Hanukkah–the festival of Lights. This special Jewish festival that non-Jews often mistakenly think of as the “Jewish Christmas,” has its origins in the revolt of the Maccabees against the infamous Greco-Syrian ruler Antiochus IV (aka Epiphanes) in 167…
Daniel chapter 11 might well be the longest “continual” prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, it appears to be referred to in Daniel 10:21–the chapter leading up to the Daniel’s most disturbing vision–as the “book of truth.” It is surely one of the most influential in terms of firing up…
Press Release via Eureka Alert: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-08/uonc-eot080819.php Researchers digging at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s ongoing archaeological excavation on Mount Zion in Jerusalem have announced a second significant discovery from the 2019 season – clear evidence of the Babylonian conquest of the city from 587/586 BCE. [See Evidence for 1099…
In this photo is represented the past 30 years of my life, including 67 trips to Israel since 1990, tracking Jesus, with most of my work related to this panorama of the City…
This incredible 13 x 17 foot zinc model of 19th century Jerusalem created was created by Hungarian Catholic Stephan Illes in the 1870s. It was first exhibited in 1873 at the Vienna International Exhibit, then lost and forgotten until the 1980s until tracked down by an enterprising Hebrew University instructor…
The “Tomb of the Shroud,” that was discovered and investigated in 2000 by Shimon Gibson, Boaz Zissu, and me, with a team of our UNC Charlotte students in the summer of 2000, continues to yield up many scientific secrets about life and death in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus.…
Jacob Neusner, renewed scholar of the ancient Judaism, who so profoundly shaped the academic study of religions in terms of both method and content, died last October 8, 2016, on the Sabbath, at age 84. On the Jewish calendar that would be next Sabbath–called Shabbat Shuvah, which falls between Rosh…
[This post refers back to August 1st when I had been traveling out of the country for six weeks and could not post so easily. It is interesting that in our English tradition we refer to the “Dog Days of August” which corresponds to this time year on our calendars…