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…
Some years ago, after reading my book, The Jesus Dynasty, my dear friend and colleague, the late great Jerome Murphy O’Conner asked me the following: You say that the body of Jesus was removed from its temporary resting place to a permanent tomb. This is not at all impossible. Extreme improbability sets…
I have been amazed over the years at what one assumes is in the New Testament Gospels and what is actually there. I have been teaching these texts for over 30 years and hardly a year goes by when I don’t see something I had missed, or have something pointed…
A precious fragmented copy of a portion of the lost Gospel of Peter was discovered in 1886 by the French archaeologist Urbain Bouriant, buried in the tomb of a monk at Akhmim in Upper Egypt. On the basis of the cursive script this copy dates to the 8th or 9th…
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…
We know nothing about the circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy other than the two accounts in Matthew 1 and Luke 2–in which Jesus has no human father–and the traditions that Jesus was called “Yeshu ben Pantera,” son of a Roman soldier named Pantera–see my post here. If Jesus had a human father,…
With all the recent attention to the ossuary inscribed “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” I thought it might be helpful to give some consideration to the confusion about the name “James” in most English bibles. When news of this ossuary inscription first broke in 2002 any number of…
I invite you to join our special 10th Anniversary Israel tour “Experiencing the Jesus Dynasty” in 2016. The dates are March 4-13. If you are interested in the historical Jesus understood in the light of the latest archaeological discoveries in Israel this is the tour for you. As many will…
That Jesus had four brothers and at least two sisters is a “given” in Mark, our earliest gospel record. He names the brothers rather matter-of-factly: James, Joses, Judas, and Simon. Mark mentions but does name the sisters, but early Christian tradition says there were two—a Mary and a Salome (Mark…
For years I have considered Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) one of the most moving, informative, and influential novelists of my own reading experience. I remember first reading Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure over 30 years ago and the images and power of those tragically realistic portrayals of human…