In celebration of our tenth year anniversary on April 18, I'm publishing all the posts from previous years on April 18.  It's a random collection.  Here's the second in the series, from 2013; it's a self-congratulatory one (!)  that I was using to explain the different kinds of colleges/universities around the country (in later posts on that thread). ****************************** It is always interesting for me to travel around the country giving lectures at different colleges and universities. This past week I have been struck with just now different institutions of higher education can be from one another. Let me preface my remarks by saying – in this post -- that I absolutely love my university. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is always ranked very near the top of state research universities in the country, and for very good reasons. The faculty are on the whole absolutely stellar. Just within my own Department of Religious Studies we have eighteen full time tenured or tenure-track faculty, not counting adjuncts and emeriti, and every single [...]

In celebration of our blog 10 year anniversary on April 18, I've decided to post the past ten years posts that were posted on April 18 of each year!   Here is the first, from April 18, 2012.  You will notice (if you pay attention to how I write these posts), that I was even more thin-skinned, defensive, and argumentative than I am now!  Ha.  I thought about editing these then thought, ah, why?  In this first from ten years ago, I was responding to an accusation that I don't do my own work. (!) ****************************** I was surprised, shocked, dismayed, incredulous, and well, OK, pretty ticked off and aggravated when some of the mythicists that I deal with in my book, Did Jesus Exist, went on the attack and made it personal.   Let me make a confession: before getting ready to do this Blog, and getting into Facebook as a preparation for it, I had no idea how grimy the Internet can be.   It is one messy place.  I know, I know – welcome to [...]

Here now is THE post that has received the very most comments in the past ten years - 233 - more than any of the 2,965 OTHER posts.  And as it turns out, it's on an unusually important topic, for both Christians and those who want to understand Christians:  is Jesus' death and resurrection predicted in the Hebrew Scriptures?  Read on:   ****************************** Readers Mailbag: Does Isaiah 53 Predict the Death and Resurrection of Jesus? May 8, 2020 I would like to get back into the practice of devoting one post a week to answering questions raised by blog members.  I have a fairly long list of good questions I haven’t been able to get to, so why not just go through them week by week?  If you have any pressing questions that are particularly intriguing or perplexing for you about the NT or early Christianity or any related topic, let me know as a comment on a post (any post will do, whether relevant or not).  If it’s not something I can address or [...]

This post appeared on Easter day, four years ago, and received the second-most comments of any that I have done (218 of them).  It is, in fact, a reflection on the significance of that holiday and how Christianity itself actually began.   ****************************** An Easter Reflection 2018 April 1, 2018 It is highly ironic, but relatively easy, for a historian to argue that Jesus himself did not start Christianity.  Christianity, at its heart, is the belief that Jesus’ death and resurrection brought about salvation, and that believing in his death and resurrection will make a person right with God, both now and in the afterlife.  Historical scholarship since the nineteenth century has marshaled massive evidence that this is not at all what Jesus himself preached. Yes, it is true that in the Gospels themselves Jesus talks about his coming death and resurrection.  And in the last of the Gospels written, John, his message is all about how faith in him can bring eternal life (a message oddly missing in the three earlier Gospels of Matthew, [...]

Here now is my #3 all time most commented-on post, coming in at 210 comments.  It's about my religious views as an agnostic.  Or an atheist?   Or, actually, how should we think about whether we even *could* imagine a God.  Read on.   ****************************** A Revelatory Moment about “God” January 12, 2020 I had a “revelatory moment” last week that I think may have changed my view about “God” for a very long time – or at least about the existence of superior beings far beyond what we can imagine. As most of you know, I have long been an agnostic-atheist, and as some of you may recall, I define “atheist” differently from most people, at least in relationship to “agnostic.”   The word “agnostic” means “don’t know.”   Is there a God?  I don’t’ know.  How could I possibly know?  How could you?  I know a lot of you do “know” – or think you know.  But my view is that if you’re in that boat you “think” there is a God – really, really think [...]

Here now is my most-commented-from-the-last-ten-years-post #4.  It is also by far the longest post I have done in all this time.  It addresses an attack on my stupidity and ignorance. I should say at the outset that the one issue/topic I do NOT enjoy going into on the blog these days (for the past three or four years) is the "mythicist" view of Jesus (the idea that Jesus never existed; there never was a Jesus of Nazareth; it's all made up).  The people who hold this view tend to have completely boundless energy and no matter what you say, they keep coming back at you like a terrier.  It's exhausting.  And so these days I stay away from it all.  Let them get on with it. But it is the topic of one of my books (what was I thinking?), and oh boy did it provoke a response.  I thought *Christian fundamentalists* were a hard audience.  HA!  Welcome to the mythicists. All that is explained in this post, which in the end elicited 207 comments. [...]

We are counting down the TOP TEN commented posts in our TEN year venture on the blog.  We've had a range of topics so far, and here now is Post #5, with 207 comments.   ******************************   The Religion of a Sixteen-Year-Old June 1, 2014 I just got home from spending a week in Lawrence Kansas, my home town.   As I’ve done now for years, I took my mom fishing in the Ozarks for a few days.  She’s 87, and on a walker, but still able to reel them in! I go back to Lawrence probably three or four times a year, and each time it is like going down memory lane.  I left there to go to Moody Bible Institute in 1973, when I was all of 17 years old; I still called it home for years, but never lived there full time, not even in the summers usually.  I was married and very much on my own only four years later.  So my memories of the place are entirely of childhood through high [...]

As we celebrate our ten-year anniversary of the blog (April 18) by reposting the ten most commented-on posts, here now is #6, with 200 comments. This one deals with one of THE most significant issues in the study of the New Testament and Early Christianity.  Maybe the single most significant.   ****************************** Are Paul and Jesus on the Same Page? January 26, 2018 In response to my previous post on the importance of Paul, I have had several people ask me about the relationship between the teachings of Jesus and Paul: are they actually representing the same religion?  I dealt with that question some years ago on the blog.  Here is the first of two posts on the issue. ****************************** I have spent several posts explicating Paul’s understanding of his gospel, that by Christ’s death and resurrection a person is put into a restored relationship with God. He had several ways of explaining how it worked. But in all of these ways, it was Jesus’ death and resurrection that mattered. It was not keeping the [...]

As we celebrate our ten-year anniversary of the blog (April 18) by reposting the ten most commented-on posts, here now is #7, with 198 comments. Let me say that I think this is one of my most important posts in the history of the blog, since it argues against a view that most NT scholars simply assume to be right without ever thinking about it....   ****************************** Did Romans Allow Jews to Bury Crucified Victims? Readers’ Mailbag January 1, 2018 January 1, 2018 Here on the first day of the new year, I was digging around on the blog and I found a post that I *meant* to make a couple of months ago that I never did.  Don’t remember why!  But here it is.  It is from the Readers’ Mailbag, and about a very interesting and controversial issue: would the Romans have allowed anyone to bury Jesus the afternoon on which he was crucified?  I think not, even though I’m in the decided minority on that one.  Here’s the post:   ******************************   QUESTION: [...]

As we celebrate our ten-year anniversary of the blog (April 18) by reposting the ten most commented-on posts, here now is #8, with 187 comments.   ****************************** Why Did Judas Iscariot Betray Jesus? June 3, 2018 In this edition of the Readers’ Mailbag I address an interesting and perplexing question about Judas Iscariot:   QUESTION You may have mentioned this (I cannot recall) but why did Judas go to the authorities in the first place?   RESPONSE               I wrestled with this question long and hard while writing my book The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, which includes a section on what we can know about the historical Judas.  In the book I argue that there are some things that we can know with relative certainty about Judas (he was one of the Twelve and was the one who actually betrayed Jesus); other things we can profitably surmise based on our evidence (e.g. what it is Judas betrayed to the authorities – not just Jesus’ whereabouts, I argue); and other things that are almost entirely [...]

Just a reminder in case you missed it the first time!  Come one, come all!   In celebration of our TENTH anniversary for the blog, I'm happy to announce a FREE webinar for anyone who is interested.  No need to register, no need to pay, no need to donate, no need to do nada.  Just come. It will be this coming Saturday, April 23, 5:00 EST.    And GOOD news.  If you can't come, it will be recorded and I will make it available to the entire known universe. The topic.  An unusually important one.   "Does the Bible Condemn Homosexuality?"   Well, does it?  The lecture will deal with the issues of sex, gender, and same-sex relations in both Old and New Testaments. I will give a 50 minute lecture and then take questions for 25-30 minutes. Interested in coming?   Below is the link.  Just come to it.  Want the recording?  I'll be posting it on the blog so no need even to inquire. Thanks so much for being part of the blog.  I hope you [...]