Outside the Gates of Eden 25 Aug 2013 | 10:59 pm

“Satan” (שׂטן) in the Hebrew Bible, is used as a verb or a noun. It means “the one opposing,” in a very generic way , totally unlike in the New Testament and other late 2nd Temple period Jewish litera...

A Review of my book The Jesus Dynasty 15 Aug 2013 | 05:19 pm

I have been asked by countless readers if I will be reviewing Reza Aslan’s new and controversial book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. I should have a full and comprehensive review po...

The 2013 Mt Zion Excavation: An NPR Interview and Update 6 Aug 2013 | 03:26 am

A group of 22 UNC Charlotte students (including 10 Levine Scholars and three graduate students) participated in the 2013 Mt Zion excavation in Jerusalem this summer, along with 40 other participants a...

Strange Twist in the Oded Golan Case: Is The Jehoash Tablet Genuine? 1 Aug 2013 | 04:01 pm

Matthew Kalman has just published a fascinating update on the Israeli trial in which Oded Golan was recently acquitted of forging  both the infamous “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” ossuary ins...

The Earliest Account of the Discovery of Jesus’ Empty Tomb: What It Says and What it Does not Say! 28 Jul 2013 | 11:24 pm

I have previously argued in my books and on this blog that the earliest account of the discovery of the empty tomb of Jesus is now embedded in John 20:1-18 in which Mary Magdalene visits the tomb alon...

TaborBlog hits Half-a-Million Page Views! 23 Jul 2013 | 02:02 am

Sometime in the dark of the night this past weekend this blog topped 500,000 page views since the counter began ticking away in December, 2009. The blog itself goes back much longer than that, but num...

Mt Zion 2013 Discoveries: A 1st Century Hidden Chamber! 21 Jul 2013 | 10:22 pm

We finished Weeks 3 and 4 of our Mt Zion excavation on July 11th and now that I am back in the States and have been able to sort through all of our photos I wanted to offer readers a series of prelimi...

Visting Jerusalem in 1871: Lincoln’s Secretary of State William H. Seward 18 Jul 2013 | 04:12 pm

Thanks to Robert Eisenman for calling attention to this fascinating post by Lenny Ben-David (via Aish.com)  on Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William H. Seward, and his visit to Jerusalem in 1871, afte...

Two Weeks Digging at Mt Zion 29 Jun 2013 | 01:43 am

Yesterday we finished our 2nd week of the Mt Zion excavation. It has been an amazing time. It is remarkable what one can accomplish with the proper organization and over 40 dedicated participants thro...

A Picture Worth A Thousand Words… 24 Jun 2013 | 12:16 am