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…
Most of us who do academic work on Jesus and early Christianity often refer to what we do as “Christian Origins” or “Christian Beginnings.” It is more specific than just Bible or the history of ancient Mediterranean religions. The operating question seems to be how to account for Jesus himself–i.e.,…
The writings and teachings of the apostle Paul are in many ways the bedrock of Christian faith and tradition. But where did Paul get his authority? What does he claim for himself? A number of times in Paul’s letters he uses a technical term in Greek, “to receive,” which is…
In my previous post, “Have I Not Seen the Lord? What Did Paul Claim to Have Seen?” I suggest that we need to go to Paul, and what he says in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, as our earliest witness to faith in Jesus’ resurrection–rather than to our latest witnesses–the gospels of…