A short note to readers: The month of October I took a break from posting on the blog due to personal family reasons–we have had two deaths in the family in recent months, as well as being out of the country the last of the month. I just returned from…
I wish all of you a Happy Yom Teru’ah, the Hebrew term for what is commonly called Rosh Hashanah–(lit. “head of the year”)–or the “Jewish New Year.” In fact, according to some Jewish traditions it is not so much the Jewish New Year, as the remembrance of the “birth…
Over the decades I have heard dozens of interviews with John Crossan, listened to his lectures, read his books, and spent time together in Jerusalem in 2007 with him and his wife Sarah, in endless conversation, visiting some of the “off the beaten tourist paths” places with Shimon Gibson. He…
In this informal presentation I relate our very human attachment to “old things,” to which we attach emotion and meaning–including some of my own personal experiences–and how that is connected broadly to “archaeology”–that is, the scientific exploration of the human material past. Our imagination connects us to the past–places, artifacts,…
In Part Two I relate the story of the ossuary or “bone box” from 1st century Jerusalem inscribe: “James son of Joseph Brother of Jesus” and its possible relationship to either the Shroud tomb or the Talpiot “Jesus Family” tomb. If you missed Part One see the previous post on…
Most of the important archaeological discoveries of of time have been almost wholly accidental. Those who look, never find, and those who are not looking, hit upon something amazing! The following is one of the greatest examples of that in my own 30 years of doing archaeology in the Holy…
Parallels Between A New Dead Sea Scroll Fragment (4Q521) and the Early New Testament Gospel Tradition One of the more intriguing of the Dead Sea Scrolls released in the 1990s, after being held by the DSS committee for decades, is a fragment that most now title “Messianic Apocalypse” (4Q521).…
I wanted to welcome several hundred new subscribers to my Blog that have come our way via my growing Youtube Channel. I have plans to more and more integrate this blog with Youtube videos–lectures, interviews with various scholars, and the latest treatments of a long list of topics I have…
This groundbreaking article by the late Bargil Pixner, a Benedictine priest and my dear friend, mentor, and colleague, was published in Biblical Archaeology Review in May/June, 1997 as a cover story. One of my great honors was to edit this article from the German and put it into BAR magazine style…
On May 3, 2022 I taught my last college class after a 43 year career at three universities: Notre Dame, the College of William and Mary, and UNC Charlotte. Over the years many of my blogs readers have said they wish they could take one of my courses. In the…
