10 June 2021
I’ve discussed the fact before that the first Christians believed Jesus was secretly an angel who came down from heaven in the guise of a man (a conclusion with which even Bart Ehrman now concurs). Even if Jesus was a historical person they believed this (a key...
7 June 2021
The Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR) is hosting the 2021 International eConference on the Historical Jesus next month, July 24–25. I will be among the presenters. Registration is super affordable, only $15. Which is even discounted for GCRR members (a...
28 May 2021
This month I have been showcasing how apologetics is fundamentally bankrupt methodologically. It depends on fallacious reasoning, held up as sound and professional, yet which adheres to the methods of no actual legitimate academic field—except those very fields...
9 May 2021
Even the historicity of Daniel the man is dubious. Unlike other prophets, he has no patronymic, profession, or place of origin, and he first appears in historical records when “Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the...
30 April 2021
This book is the definitive starting point for anyone intent on questioning or defending the resurrection of Jesus. Introductory and aimed at a broad audience, but thoroughly researched, all the key works are here cited and arguments addressed, and with sound...
26 April 2021
I have written many times before on the strange history of my scholarly involvement in the so-called “Table Talk” of Adolf Hitler. The most prominent example is the inclusion of my peer reviewed article in German Studies Review, with a new epilogue and...
22 March 2021
My dissertation advisor at Columbia University was William V. Harris, who employed his own Ph.D. in straightforward political history to cultivate a wide range of specializations in ancient Roman history, ranging from dream culture to history of emotions, to ancient...
20 March 2021
And yes. We know that for a fact. Like QAnon, which is a new secular religion spreading, quite bizarrely, across the globe, I have noticed another strange conspiracy theory gaining popularity and spreading worldwide: the belief that Christianity was invented in the...
14 March 2021
It’s not common that major, respected academic journals exhibit a catastrophic failure in their peer review process. But it happens. Everything from creationist dribble to just about anything in any field has “slipped past” peer review protocols in...
13 March 2021
Dennis MacDonald and I have discussed the question of Jesus’s historicity many times over the years. These are among the most important kinds of discussions to have, as MacDonald isn’t a Christian apologist and actually agrees the Gospels are almost...
27 February 2021
A while ago I composed Historicity Big and Small: How Historians Try to Rescue Jesus, summarizing and categorizing the main arguments pushed in a kind of phylogeny. Here I will expand on that by adding a few more arguments, within the same scheme I constructed there....
26 February 2021
There is a sub-category of Neopaganism today called Kemetism, or Egyptian Neopaganism. It is often heavily wrapped up in Black Supremacist or Afrocentrism movements. By analogy to Wicca, the most well-known variety of Neopaganism, which is based on a European pagan...
25 February 2021
I recently realized a minor underlying fact in the background knowledge I laid out in my peer-reviewed book On the Historicity of Jesus has gone unnoticed. It seems trivial to me, but too many things do. I realize this stuff I take for granted is really shocking or...
18 February 2021
This is part two of my series on Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book and BBC series A History of Christianity, or as the book is sometimes titled, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, referring to the fact that Christianity evolved out of trends that began a...
1 February 2021
I’ve been asked a lot about Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book and BBC series A History of Christianity, or as the book is sometimes titled, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, referring to the fact that Christianity evolved out of trends that began a...
28 January 2021
Years ago I sat for a day of interviews for a film by Marco Bazzi about a geologist obsessed with the alleged earthquake at the time of Christ’s death. The resulting movie is now available (you can find it in most of the usual places, including Amazon Prime or...