As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases with no extra cost to buyers Back in 1989, as I was beginning my career as a young assistant professor, I was asked to contribute a chapter to this most interesting topical volume: Morton Smith and R. Joseph Hoffmann, eds. What the…
I sent out this monthly newsletter for June yesterday via email to subscribers to the Blog. I usually don’t post it here but decided to do so to encourage any readers who have not signed up for it can do so–and you can also sign up for notifications for…
In this archive interview footage from November 1991 I talk about three Dead Sea Scroll texts–two of them newly released at that time, all of which relate to the idea of a suffering Messiah figure who is then connected to the idea of resurrection of the dead. Although Christians later…
Ken Dark, Archaeology of Jesus’ Nazareth (Oxford, 2023) (Kindle link), is a marvelous little “must have” volume for anyone interested in the a readable summary of the evidence. The archaeology of ancient 1st century CE Nazareth has been controversial over the years, with some even claiming there was no such…
Contrary to what is often asserted by scholars as well as general readers, the early traditions that Jesus had a biological father named “Pantera” has nothing to do with an assertion that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier. Further, the name Pantera was never said to be a pun…
I really enjoyed this interview with Paul Williams, host of the Youtube channel @Blogging Theology. I offer an overview of the “real” Paul as similar to the “quest” for the historical Jesus–with a lot more to go on in terms of sources! We have FOUR layers of sources on Paul–along…
One of the fundamental challenges of any serious study of what scholars refer to as the “historical Jesus,” is to sort out the relationship between our three “Synoptic” gospels, which appear in the New Testament as Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They have a clear literary relationship–but the question of “priority”…
Critical scholars, using the most rigorous historical-critical criteria, have concluded that the following statements of Jesus from the Synoptic tradition are unquestionably authentic. This is not so say that other materials are necessarily inauthentic, but that these particular sayings are at the core of the unedited tradition. These results are…
I have been working this week on a brand new feature on my Blog–that along with the Jewish Roman World of Jesus, will grow into a really major resource for my readers and subscribers. I am called it “Tabor BookShelf.” It is in the top menu, easy to access anytime.…
The question of how the earliest followers of Jesus viewed Jesus as well as the “God of Jesus,”–that is the One God so central to most forms of Judaism, is a complex one that has been explored extensively in the field of New Testament and Christian Origins studies. I highly…
