January seems to be the month for a host of retrospective TV documentaries and specials looking back on the disasterous events outside of Waco, Texas during the 51 day siege of the Branch Davidian Mt Carmel Center in 1993. As a result David Koresh and 80 of his followers died,…
Recent polls indicate that up to 70% of Americans, both Black and White, approve of some form of corporeal punishment of children–with Evangelical Christians coming in at over 85%. 15 States in the USA explicitly permit some form of “paddling” in public schools, with 7 States not prohibiting it, leaving…
I loved this essay by Bret Colasacco, one of J. Z. Smith’s undergraduate students in years before he retired. I found it quintessentially “Smith” and those of us who have taken that elevator ride to his office, or sat in one of his amazing courses, will identify with every part…
To understand Jesus and the movement that developed after his death we need to have a handle on a way of thinking that I call messianic apocalyptic eschatology. This is a way of describing a certain expectation and outlook on the world and human history that was characteristic of certain…
Sorting through the New Testament gospels accounts of the “sightings” of Jesus is incredibly complex. I have done my best to lay them out for comparison and interpretation in several posts on this blog, including “How Faith in Jesus’s Resurrection Originated and Developed: A New/Old Hypothesis.” One thing that any…
This extended tribute to the memory and work of Jonathan Z. Smith by by Russell T. McCutcheon, University of Alabama in Religious Studies News is particularly noteworthy. https://rsn.aarweb.org/articles/memoriam-jonathan-z-smith-1938–2017
Everyone seems to “love” the Dead Sea Scrolls though I fear, much like the Bible, few seem to have actually read them. Some years ago I remember a very enthusiastic woman who came up to me after one of my public lectures on this scrolls, exclaiming, “Dr. Tabor, I just…
The “Tomb of the Shroud,” that was discovered and investigated in 2000 by Shimon Gibson, Boaz Zissu, and me, with a team of our UNC Charlotte students in the summer of 2000, continues to yield up many scientific secrets about life and death in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus.…
Religion News Service https://religionnews.com/2018/01/02/religion-historian-jonathan-z-smith-dies/ OBITUARY Religion historian Jonathan Z. Smith dies By Yonat Shimron | January 2, 2018 Religion historian Jonathan Z. Smith from a video series. Images courtesy of YouTube (RNS) — Jonathan Z. Smith, a historian and theorist of religion widely admired for his analytic rigor in…
The braided hair of a Jewish woman was found at Masada but until recently no example of preserved hair from a Jewish male had ever been found from the late 2nd Temple period. This discovery is one of the many fascinating, but less publicized finds of the 1st century “Tomb…
