One of the most controversial chapters in my book Paul and Jesus is the idea I present in chapter 9, “The Battle of the Apostles,” that despite the early attempts of Paul and the Jerusalem apostles to reconcile their differences in the end they broke with one another over sharp differences. I…
I have begun to do a series of interviews with various Youtube channels from hosts who have long ago requested such. I have cleared some of my other immediate writing projects before moving on into July-August. During this window of time I have done interviews with Jacob Berman and Derek…
The current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review has a lead feature article titled “New Testament Religious Figures Confirmed” by Lawrence Mykytiuk, as part of his fascinating series on whose identity in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament can be confirmed by extra-biblical sources–whether literary or archaeological. What Mykytiuk has done is…
I have written quite a bit since February about the controversial Moses Shapira Dead Sea scrolls–sixteen leather strips containing two copies of the final address of Moses to the children of Israel, delivered in the first person. When Shapira presented his manuscripts to the academic world in 1883-with scholars from Germany,…
In 1965 I well remember the publication of British biblical scholar Hugh J. Schonfield’s controversial and best-selling book, The Passover Plot. I like millions of others read it avidly and followed the controversies closely. I remember traveling on a flight just after it came out and seeing half a dozen people…
This by far the best 3.33 minutes of the Aronofsky Noah film. Beautiful, stunning, unspeakably profound…incredible! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwSWRdbSQK0 I have already posted my view on the film as a whole that I saw on the day it was released, see https://jamestabor.com/bashers-of-the-noah-film-need-to-re-read-their-bibles/ As most of you know I have focused a lot…
Who are you? Are you the Messiah? Or the Prophet? Or Elijah? We find this series of questions addressed to John the Baptizer in the gospel of John. One of the ideas I explore and develop in my 2006 book, The Jesus Dynasty, was the notion of the expectation…
Did you know that Joseph, husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is never mentioned in the gospel of Mark? Since Mark is our earliest gospel that seems all the more striking. Mark has no account of the birth of Jesus whatsoever, much less any story of the virgin birth. When Jesus…
Many Christians know the traditional “Seven Sayings of Jesus on the Cross,” that are a compilation of all that Jesus said during his last hours hanging between life and death on the cross based on our four New Testament gospels. Few could sort out which gospel says which, or which sayings…
Most of my readers know that the anonymous author of the writing we refer to as the “Gospel of Luke,” in fact, wrote a second volume to his work–known to us today as the “Acts of the Apostles.” The author refers to himself in the first person in the opening…
