“There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary.” Gospel of Philip 36 According to the Coptic Gospel of Philip, found in Egypt…
In the meantime, it is indeed interesting to note that this very practice of patronymy/paponymy/metronymy, by its repetitive nature, leaves the sample of names quite narrow and refutes in essence the argument of “very common names” put forward by a number scholars that the Talpiot tomb was not that of…
Those engaged in the academic study of religions, and specifically the origins and development of early Christianity, draw a sharp distinction between what they call the historical Jesus and the “Christ” of Christian faith and devotion. How and when this transformation took place–from Jesus the itinerant messianic Jewish teacher and…
There is a very intriguing story, unique to the Gospel of John, about a wedding attended by Jesus and his disciples at the Galilean village of Cana (John 2:1–11). Within the Gospel of John the story functions in a theological and even allegorical manner—it is the “first” of seven signs,…
One of the most intriguing subjects in our New Testament Gospels is the near silence about Joseph, husband of Mary. If one reads the Gospels in the order in which we think they were written, that is Mark first, then Matthew, then Luke, then John, the case for Joseph gone…
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,…
The well-worn admonition to “put Christ back into Christmas” raises some fascinating issues for those of us who study the origins and history of Christianity. Most know that Christmas as celebrated today has evolved over the centuries, drawing from a diverse and rich assortment of customs, none of which go…
One would not normally think of the apostle Paul around Christmas time since all of the focus of the holiday, beyond the shopping, gift-giving, and family gatherings–is on the birth of Jesus. Many biblical scholars would argue that Paul knows nothing of the “virgin birth” of Jesus but I argue…
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…