At the intersection of an unpaved forest road with the path to Horvat Hani lies an almost invisible rocky mound in the western Bethel foothills. Miriam Feinberg Vamosh suggests this site of a ancient convent is actually the intersection of three traditions remembering a remarkable woman of Scripture: Hannah.
The Mikveh and Ritual Immersion in Jesus’ Day
The complete 2006 lecture is now accessible to JP users. View now!
World’s Oldest Biblical Scroll Discovered?
This past Wednesday evening (21 September, 2016) the BBC reported that a scroll discovered in the ancient synagogue at Ein Gedi “reveals the earliest text ever found of the Old Testament.” Is this startling claim true?
The Recently Discovered Pool of Siloam
In this free sample lecture from the 2006 Jerusalem Perspective Conference, archaeologist and JP contributor Ronny Reich discusses the excavation of the first-century remains of the pool of Siloam discovered in Jerusalem. The complete collection of presentations delivered at the 2006 Jerusalem Perspective Conference is available through the En-Gedi Resource Center.
Character Profile: Pontius Pilate
In this video Marc Turnage reexamines Pilate’s character based on ancient literary sources, including the New Testament, and archaeological finds.
Windows into the Bible (2): First-century Coins
In this video Marc Turnage discusses what we can learn about first-century Jewish history by studying ancient coins.
Video Clip: Gabriel Barkay on “Was Jesus Buried in the Garden Tomb?”
In this video Gabriel Barkay, world-renowned archaeologist of the Bar Ilan University, discusses burial customs in the first century, and what archaeology can tell us about the burial site of Jesus.
Herod’s Tomb, Ehud Netzer and a Case of Mistaken Identity
The Herodium is a great place to bring people who are exploring the Holy Land for the first time. I always felt that the site spoke eloquently to visitors of both the brilliance and madness of Herod the Great.
Jesus the Galilean, a Stranger in Judea?
Follow Garcia as he challenges Taylor’s work and brings about the conclusion that “We should attribute any differences between Galileans and Judeans primarily to issues of opposing halakhic opinions.”
A Response to Kilty and Elliott on the Talpiot Tomb
Kevin Kilty and Mark Elliott have written yet another article arguing that the Talpiot tomb is likely to be the tomb of Jesus’ family. Their new article aims to overturn a number of objections made by Jodi Magness in her book Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). As with their earlier work, Kilty and Elliott’s latest effort displays a faulty understanding of the numbers involved in calculating the odds that the Talpiot tomb is the tomb of Jesus’ family.
Evidence of an Editor’s Hand in Two Instances of Mark’s Account of Jesus’ Last Week?
It has been noted that in instances where Mark’s editorial hand restructured his story, Luke has preserved a more primitive form of the account, a form that is independent of Mark’s influence. Gospel scholars need to properly evaluate Mark’s editorial style and acknowledge that frequently a theological agenda influenced his rewriting.
Views That Have Vanished: The Photographs of David Bivin
Todd Bolen (founder of BiblePlaces.com) has created a digital collection from the best of my photographs.
Is Faith Contrary to Empirical Support?
The apostles possessed more empirical supports for their faith than we can ever hope to possess, and certainly their spiritual “report cards” did not suffer for the fact.
The Statistics behind “The Tomb”
Rather than being treated as liabilities to a statistical study, conjectured details are turned into historical givens and are even factored in as positive data. Consequently, most of the connections made in the documentary fall under the heading of “special pleading.”
James Tabor Responds to JerusalemPerspective.com Review
Professor James D. Tabor, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has responded to Dr. Jack Poirier’s critical review of Tabor’s recently published The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
Book Review: James Tabor’s The Jesus Dynasty
Tabor has an annoying habit of promoting remote possibilities into even possibilities, and then into probabilities.
Another Look at the “Cleansing of the Temple” Story
Based on archaeological excavations near the southern wall of the temple, the research of Shmuel Safrai, and a nuance of the Hebrew verb that is one of the equivalents for Greek ekballein (drive out, banish; throw out; throw away, reject; cast out of a place, expel; remove, get rid of; put out), it may be necessary to reinterpret the gospel accounts of Jesus’ “cleansing” of the temple, even suggesting a different location for Jesus’ action.