012 Many early copies of the New Testament abbreviate sacred words (nomina sacra). The earliest of these abbreviations stand for “God,” “Lord,” “Christ,” and “Jesus.” Abbreviations of these...

040 For Paul, as well as for the Gospels as they have come down to us, the most meaningful moments of Jesus’ life were his crucifixion and—beyond that—his resurrection. It is not difficult to understand, however, why contemporary cartoons and...

010 Karl Marx, when he was living in Highgate, London, was once asked to address a group of theologians. On his arrival, the meeting place was full of tobacco smoke, and Marx remarked, “Theologians always cloud the issues.” When I remind...

53 people from the Hebrew Bible have been confirmed by archaeology. What about the New Testament? Lawrence Mykytiuk examines the political figures in the New Testament who can be identified in the archaeological record and by extra-Biblical writings. Find out who makes the cut.

043 What do the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us about the New Testament? One possible answer is: Nothing. The scrolls were associated with a relatively small group, or, rather, with several small groups.a Other Jewish people, like the first Christians,...

055 Finds of ancient manuscripts, often fragmentary, and quotations by the Church Fathers have shown that during the first and second centuries, at least ten gospels were circulating.1 The New Testament had not yet been canonized. That the...

044 How did the Church decide which books to include in the New Testament? When was the decision made? By whom? The surviving evidence unfortunately does not provide answers in the detail we would like, but it does document a number of the...

034 The relatively plain ossuary (bone box) described in the preceding article by André Lemaire is doubly important to the study of early Christianity. It is the earliest archaeological artifact ever found that refers to Jesus; in fact, it is the...

027 Throughout his long and extraordinarily productive career, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) turned repeatedly to the Bible as a source of inspiration for his paintings, drawings and etchings. Although his composition, themes and pictorial style...

030 Surely one of the most exciting moments in the life of a Biblical archaeologist is finding something that seems to illuminate the Biblical text. The recent discovery of the Siloam Pool where, according to John 9:1–7, Jesus cured a man who had...

059 Most Jews do not grow up with New Testament stories. While the term “Prodigal son” may be familiar, Jewish readers may not know that this very Jewish parable, which begins “There was a man who had two sons” (Luke 15:11), evokes the Hebrew...

More than two centuries ago, it occurred to a few European intellectuals that Jesus as a figure of history may have been quite different from Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels. With the awareness of that potential difference, the scholarly quest for the Jesus of history began. At that time and in...

022 Let’s face it. Christians have a problem when it comes to the use of the Old Testament in the church. We have found a variety of ways of overlooking or de-emphasizing or simply dismissing the Old Testament and its inherent value for the...

037 After almost forty years of intense Biblical research and teaching, Roland de Vaux, O.P. died in Jerusalem, on September 10, 1971. The world of Biblical scholarship mourned the passing of one of its most illustrious colleagues. Père de...

The Shepherd of Hermas was one of the most popular Christian texts in the first centuries of the church. True, it did not make the final cut; that is, it was not included in the New Testament.a But it was considered canonical by the influential second-century church father Irenaeus...