A detailed survey of our earliest sources on James–whose proper name was Jacob of Yaaqov–the brother of Jesus, was written out of the standard master narrative of Christian history. What can we know about James, by trying to reassemble all the disparate strands of evidence, from the Gospels, Acts, Paul,…
Blast from the past…I gave this lecture in 2007 at an academic conference. Don’t miss the Q&A at the end. I refer to many major scholars along the way who were in the room. In these intervening years, although I have further developed these views, by and large I remain…
Reduced Price until Sunday Midnight February 25th Some of you might have seen that Bart Ehrman is promoting a new course with archaeologist Jodi Magness. The two of them are faculty together at UNC Chapel Hill. I have never enrolled in one of Bart’s courses before, though I have often…
Caution: This presentation is 1.5 hours and is for serious students of the historical Jesus–which I believe my Blog readers and subscribers are. In this age of TikTok, Shorts, YT videos that are never supposed to be longer than 12 minutes, it will find its rightful place. It is not…
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:…
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 2006 I published a best-selling book with what seemed a rather odd and clumsy title for a Jesus book, namely The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (Simon & Schuster). Every term in that title was carefully and deliberately chosen–and the phrase “the…
This lecture focuses on Jesus and his “band of brothers,” whether members of his own family or apostles or both. Sorting it all out is quite a challenge. I had uploaded a private camera version of this lecture before but this one has the slides–they are not the best quality…
I thought some of my readers might find this older lecture from 2010 of interest–both for what it says and what we knew at the time. Many have asked why I would call my primary book on the “Historical Jesus” the The Jesus Dynasty–and refer then to Jesus and his “royal…
This is a short introduction in my own words to my best-selling book The Jesus Dynasty which I recorded in 2005 before it was published. The book is most easily available on Amazon in Paper, Hardcover, Kindle, and Audio book formats. I in fact READ THE BOOK MYSELF for the…