Elaine Pagels, the Princeton biblical scholar whose books on the Gnostic gospels in the 1970s and 1980s were a huge success, has published a new book on the final and perhaps most controversial book in the New Testament. Her book is titled Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, & Politics in the Book of Revelation. Read a March 2, 2012, column […]

Bart D. Ehrman, a leading New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a best-selling author on books about the historical Jesus, in March released a new book, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. While Ehrman is himself an agnostic whose writings have ruffled the sensibilities of […]

A feminist theologian in England raised eyebrows, to say the least, when she claimed that Jesus may have been a hermaphrodite. In a paper titled “Intersex & Ontology, A Response to The Church, Women Bishops and Provision,” Susannah Cornwall argues that it is not possible to know “with any certainty” that Jesus did not suffer from […]

Daniel B. Wallace, a New Testament professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, in February revealed that he has found a first-century fragment of the Gospel of Mark, which would be the earliest-known fragment of the New Testament. Wallace also said he had authenticated an early sermon on Hebrews and the earliest-known manuscripts of Paul’s letters. Wallace has […]

Read a March 14, 2012, article from Christianity Today about the scholarly reaction to Oded Golan’s acquittal in his forgery trial. Scholars and experts who have long doubted the authenticity and interpretation of the bone box are quick to say that Golan’s acquittal does not validate the historicity of the ossuary.

Read a March 14, 2012, article from The Globe and Mail. After a nearly decade-long trial, Israeli antiquities collector Oded Golan was acquitted of charges that he forged the inscription on a first-century ossuary that some claim held the bones of Jesus’ brother James, and was the earliest archaeological evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth.

Read an April 4, 2012, story at Christianity Today about a blog set up on the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) website to provide a platform for scholars to react to the discovery of a tomb with potential early evidence of Christianity.

Read a Feb. 28, 2012, article from Live Science about filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and biblical archaeologist James D. Tabor, professor and chairman of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Jacobovici and Tabor claim to have discovered the earliest evidence of Christian belief in the Resurrection in a first-century tomb in Jerusalem. They also […]

John Lofland is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Davis, and author of Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization and Maintenance of Faith, which stemmed from research among the Unification Church’s U.S. members in the 1960s.