Please visit my Youtube Channel and Subscribe, for much more to come. In my new book, Paul’s Ascent to Paradise–dealing with Paul’s mystical experience and his understanding of his “secret” message he calls “My Gospel,” as well as his message to the nations who had become “not my people.” I argue…
Please visit my Youtube Channel and Subscribe, for much more to come. In Galatians Paul refers to “James and Cephas and John” as the “reputed pillars” of the Jesus movement–and assuming Cephas is Peter–which I think highly likely–it is clear that “James,” the brother of Jesus is listed first and…
Please visit my Youtube Channel and Subscribe, for much more to come. I regularly teach a course called “The End of the World as We Know It,” with thanks to REM and Leonard Cohen’s, “The Future.” I did this thirty-minute overview with Derek Lambert, the dynamic host of MythVision Podcasts–which…
Yesterday I did a two hour interview (originally scheduled for September 1st) with Night Light Radio radio host Barbara DeLong on my two books on Paul, namely: Paul and Jesus (2012) and my latest, Paul’s Ascent to Paradise (2020). It was a wide-ranging time covering everything from the possibility that Paul was born…
Yesterday I did a a two-hour interview with David LeBlanc, who hosts a Youtube channel that covers all sorts of Biblically related topics. Yep, you read that right TWO HOURS. We mainly talked about my 2012 book Paul and Jesus which continues to draw a strong readership after nearly a decade. My goal…
One of the most controversial chapters in my book Paul and Jesus is the idea I present in chapter 9, “The Battle of the Apostles,” that despite the early attempts of Paul and the Jerusalem apostles to reconcile their differences in the end they broke with one another over sharp differences. I…
Most of my readers know that the anonymous author of the writing we refer to as the “Gospel of Luke,” in fact, wrote a second volume to his work–known to us today as the “Acts of the Apostles.” The author refers to himself in the first person in the opening…
Last summer I revised my published University of Chicago Ph.D. dissertation that was titled Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise, long out of print and selling for $250-$750 used on Amazon! I had had so many requests for it over the years, so, since used booksellers were ripping people off like…
Note to the reader: During the “Covid Summer of 2020” I spent about a month digging through old files from my University of Chicago days–back when I was writing my dissertation at the University of Chicago under Jonathan Z. Smith. I found so many treasures, including these handwritten notes I…
My newly published book Paul’s Ascent to Paradise (revised from my 1986 dissertation) is beginning to draw some good comments and reactions. Here is a comment by Roy Kay that captures a key element of that book–how Paul claims authority based on his extraordinary mystical experiences–in his battles with his apostolic…