I've been concerned for the past months (among many other things, of course) about PhD's trying to get teaching positions in colleges and universities. Even when there is not an economy-busting pandemic, it's hard. Very hard. Many years ago when I was on the market, [...]
In my post a few days ago I mentioned the widespread rumor in the ancient Roman world of the first couple of centuries CE that Christians were flagrantly immoral, engaging in wild sex and infanticide and homicide in their weekly meetings. A couple of readers [...]
I am making this post free to everyone, so that, if you're not a member of the blog, you can see what you're missing. Every week I make five posts on everything connected to the New Testament and Christianity of the first four centuries. Members [...]
As many of you know, I am now working on a scholarly monograph dealing with an aspect of the afterlife, on the heels of having written a "trade" book (that is, for popular audiences) on the topic more broadly. The trade book is coming out [...]
I’ve been explaining how the tours to heaven and hell – both of them Near Death Experiences – in the Acts of Thomas are meant to show the Christian alternatives to Greek and Roman views of the afterlife. For early Christians it would not be [...]
I recently received an important question about a highly significant textual variant in Luke 23:34, the one and only place in the NT where Jesus prays for those responsible for his death “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” The verse is not [...]
In my previous post, ostensibly on the genealogy of Luke, I pointed out that there are good reasons for thinking that the Gospel originally was published – in a kind of “first edition” – without what are now the first two chapters, so that the [...]
This is the second of my two posts on the Gospel of Peter, and in some ways it is the more important one. Here I talk about what we knew about the Gospel, before it was discovered, from the writings of the ancient church fathers. [...]
Bruce Metzger, my mentor in graduate school, for both my Master's degree and my PhD, has been invoked a number of times in recent comments on the blog. I thought it might be interesting to repost a few reminiscences I made about my work with [...]
I just flew into London on the red eye this morning. As many of you know, my wife Sarah is a Brit, and we have lots of family here. About fifteen years ago we bought a flat in Wimbledon, which is our base of operation [...]