In case you haven't heard of the "Pantera/Panthera" tradition of Jesus' lineage, here's a moderately lengthy but readable discussion of it on Ben Witherington's blog. The post is a couple years old and was originally posted in response to James Tabor's book, The Jesus...
Jesus bloodline mythology
Was Jesus Married According to the Gnostic Texts from Nag Hammadi? (Video 1)
Most people who read The Da Vinci Code never bothered to actually read the Gnostic Gospels themselves to see what they say about Jesus being married. That was unfortunate, and is a textbook example of why you should always go right to the source material for your...
Logic and the Jesus Tomb Discussion, Part 1
As I and others have noted before, the real weight of the Jesus tomb debate hinges on primarily two points of data: (1) Whether a name that refers to Mary Magdalene is on one of the ossuaries, and (2) Whether the inscribed name "Yoseh" corresponds to the Yose of the...
When Jesus Tomb Math Doesn’t Count
There's one thing that practically everyone who has discussed the Jesus Tomb can all agree on: If you don't have the name "Mariamne" (the alleged Mary Magdalene) in the tomb, the statistical odds have no chance of supporting a Jesus family tomb. It seems that many who...
New Book Critiquing Jesus Mythicism
Another bad day for the Zeitgeist crowd. Prof. Larry Hurtado (Emeritus, University of Edinburgh) alerted his blog readers to a new book by Prof. Maurice Casey (Emeritus, Nottingham University). The title is Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? Hurtado...
Mythical Canon Fodder on Bible Secrets Revealed
Hope you caught the pun. Except for football, I don't watch TV, so I sadly (!) missed this latest round of Bible secrets nonsense. I let others suffer in my place, like the author of "Bible Secrets Revealed?: A Response to the New History Channel Series (Part 3)." The...
The Authenticity of the James Ossuary Inscription: My Opinion is Shifting
I just got done reading this article about the Oded Golan trial. The point of fascination is that Golan mentions a picture taken in the 1970s of some shelves inside the home of Golan's parents. The photograph shows the now-famous James ossuary -- with the complete...
Was Jesus Married According to the Gnostic Texts from Nag Hammadi? (Videos 2, 3, and 4)
The format for these videos is the same as the first one, where I searched the Nag Hammadi Gnostic gospels for any occurrence of the word "marry" (including married, marries, marrying, etc.) connected to Jesus. In these videos I search for other terms: "Wife" and its...
James Tabor and Jesus Tomb Math
Will someone please keep James Tabor away from math? Dr. Tabor is a New Testament scholar and, judging by my exchanges with him, a very nice guy. He just happens to be the only scholar out there who is still defending the idea that the Talpiot tomb ("Jesus Tomb") is...
Update on Second Talpiot Tomb
This is about Talpiot B, the tomb with the alleged "Jonah and the fish" symbol on one of the ossuaries. Most people don't think this is a coherent identification. I don't ("Jonah" still looks like a ball of string to me). I've posted before about what the image...
Jesus Tomb Website: 17 Errors
Not sure how how missed this 2007 post on Mark Goodacre's blog, but a recent post of his drew my attention to it. With more Jacobovici nonsense having recently arrived for Easter, I thought this was still worth letting you all know about.
Logic and the Jesus Tomb, Part 2 (of 2)
As I suggested in my first post on this issue, there is a serious need for clear thinking with regard to the Jesus tomb theory and the names in the tomb. The Jesus tomb theory is only compelling if two items are true: (1) that the Jesus of the tomb's Jesus ossuary...