The first week of March, 2019, during our Spring Break, I will make my 69th trip to Israel. Only a few of those trips have been on tours, but the past few years I have been taking small groups of 30 or less on very specialized tours, along with my…
Here is a short summary of our fabulous 2018 dig season at our Mt Zion site in Jerusalem with a pictorial essay at the end. Enjoy! The 2018 Mt Zion season in Jerusalem focused on four major goals this past summer: 1) setting up our new Mt. Zion Archaeological Excavation Headquarters; 2) doing post-excavation work on the finds…
This extended tribute to the memory and work of Jonathan Z. Smith by by Russell T. McCutcheon, University of Alabama in Religious Studies News is particularly noteworthy. http://rsn.aarweb.org/articles/memoriam-jonathan-z-smith-1938–2017
Quintessential JZ Smith…if you never had the pleasure of hearing him…his Plenary Address to the American Academy of Religion in 2010. https://vimeo.com/20286150 You can read an informal fascinating interview with Mr. Smith (as Chicago professors are called–no titles please!) published in The Chicago Maroon in 2008 here. Don’t miss this one!…
Fundamentalism relies on two pillars. First one needs an inspired and Holy Book, and second one must forget that that book has a history… Joseph Hoffmann (paraphrased)
In this new series I have gathered together a list of fateful New Testament passages that have been both understood and misunderstood over subsequent ages in ways that reinforce and foster incalculable harm to our lives. I did not try to order these into any kind of priority and I…
For many years I have been interested in the controversial question of whether Christopher Columbus might have been Jewish–and thus functioning in the Spanish Court as a converso or “secret” Jew. It is surely not without significance that August 2, 1492 was the 9th of Av (Tisha b’Av) on the Jewish calendar,…
Many years ago a man from the BBC came to me and he asked me if the Dead Sea Scrolls will harm Christianity. I said to him that nothing can harm Christianity. The only thing which could be dangerous to Christianity would be to find a tomb with the sarcophagus…
In April 2015 the Sunday New York Times broke a major full-page story, “Findings Reignite Debate on Claim of Jesus’ Bones” based on new chemical tests done on the ossuaries from the Talpiot “Jesus” tomb comparing it with the controversial “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” ossuary that came to…