Copyright 1982 by Norman Perrin and Dennis During. This article, with very minor modifications, was written by Dennis Duling, Professor Emeritus of Canisius College. It was published in the 2nd edition of Norman Perrin and Dennis Duling, The New Testament: An Introduction (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1982), pp. 4-35, now out of print. This excellent…
Biblical Archaeology Review has just named the “Shapira” Dead Sea Scrolls controversy in its annual “Top Ten” list of Biblical/Archaeological Stories, see full listing here: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/2021s-top-ten-stories-in-bhd/ Two major new books, Ross Nichols’s, The Moses Scroll and Idan Dershowitz’s The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book, came out within days of…
When I think of Mary and the birth of Jesus, I think of Roman crucifixion—not only the crucifixion of Jesus that took place before her eyes, but the horrifying mass crucifixions she witnessed at age fifteen, her infant son in her arms, just outside Nazareth, as Galilee went up in…
Breaking news–many of my readers know of the 1st century synagogue at Migdal or Magdala discovered in 2009 during a salvage dig conducted by Dr. Dina Avshalom-Gorni of the Israel Antiquities Authority at the location of a new hotel at Migdal Beach, the site of ancient Magdala. The breaking news out…
Another great post over at “Scribes of the Kingdom” which I am happy to endorse. I prefer my friend, the late Jimmy Dunn, Christology in the Making (Eerdmans 1966) to Bauckham’s Jesus and the God of Israel (Eerdmans, 2008). Dunn shows that nowhere in the New Testament documents is the Lord…
Another great blog post over on “Scribes of the Kingdom.” Alex never disappoints. I highly recommend his site and all that he posts. He is careful, dives deep, and always offers fresh new insight on biblical things–especially early emerging Christianity. Don’t miss this one: https://scribesofthekingdom.com/2021/10/17/gods-unfailing-wrath-divine-violence-and-the-cruciform-mirage/
Most of us who work in what we academics call “Christian Origins” hold to the “Two Source” theory of Synoptic Gospel origins. That is, Mark was the earliest narrative gospels, Matthew and Luke both used Mark as their core source, but they had access to another source that we call…
“One of the great puzzles for most researchers of the Shapira Affair is why he spent the final months of his life in the Netherlands. The basic story, oft repeated, is that after the official rejection of his manuscript strips by Christian Ginsburg, the dejected Shapira travelled to Amsterdam, then…
We read in the New Testament gospels of the “baptism of John,” spoken of quite specifically, with Jesus and his core original followers all joining that movement through baptism (Mark 27-33; Acts 1:21-22)–but then also the “one” baptism “into Christ” that Paul administers–which in fact makes one “united” with the…
Such a sad day. As Leonard Cohen put it, The Day They Wounded New York. Those of us who were alive and lived through it remember precisely where we were when we heard the news. I was pulliing into our main campus entrance for my 9am Intro to New Testament…
