The mysterious woman, otherwise unknown in our New Testament texts, Mary Magdalene, briefly appears and disappears toward the end of Jesus’ life in all four of the New Testament gospels. As this video makes clear, it is Mary Magdalene who is the KEY figure in our historical reconstruction of what…
Few think of Jesus of Nazareth as part of the royal family of David–even though Paul affirms the same as our earliest source–namely that he was descended from the messianic lineage of King David (Romans 1:3). Given that pedigree, that means Jesus’ brothers and sisters, as children of Mary, which…
I usually don’t do personal reflections on this Blog–which is reserved for academic biblical/historical matters. However, it is called TABORBlog–so why not. On this day, June 2, 1952, marks the 70th Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth–the longest reigning monarch in English history. My two sister and I were there in London…
In 2006 I published a best-selling book with what seemed a rather odd and clumsy title for a Jesus book, namely The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (Simon & Schuster). Every term in that title was carefully and deliberately chosen–and the phrase “the…
In this 2015 lecture I talk about the ways in which dualistic forms of thinking about the cosmos, often referred to as “Enochian” in their Jewish forms, and “Gnostic” in the wider Hellenistic world, basically took over the Western world and fundamentally transformed Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into religions of…
Quoting what were considered “sacred texts,” in this case what becomes known as the Hebrew Bible (or Christian Old Testament), was a most complex process, ranging from allusions, metaphors, typology to a more literal “proof texting” in which one tries to show a kind of “this is that” correspondence between…
In this 2006 lecture, part of a series on “Lost Christianities,” I talk about the alternative ways in which Jesus was viewed in his own time, in contrast to the Orthodox Trinitarian versions of “Christianity” that triumphed and spread to over two billion people in our own time. Arians, Ebionites,…
In this 2006 lecture I explore some of the rather remarkable textual readings of the 14th century polemical treatise Even Bochan [Isaiah 28:16] written by Shem-Tob ben-Isaac ben-Shaprut Ibn Shaprut, a Castilian Jewish physician, living later in Aragon. The 12th/ 13th book contains a Hebrew version of the complete text…
I thought some of you might enjoy this lecture I did in 2019 at the Georgia Southern University College of Science and Mathematics to a diverse group of scientists interested in the technical and scientific aspects of some of the archaeological discoveries in which I have been involved. This was…
This video lecture from 2006 covers new textual and archaeological evidence on “Yochanan HaMatvil,” or “John the Dipper,” including the Suba cave west of Jerusalem of which I have written much over the years–in both my books (especially The Jesus Dynasty –which is on sale right now in paperback for $14. If…
