050 Barry Powell should have listened to his grammar school teacher. It was the Phoenicians who invented the alphabet. The Phoenician script was strictly consonantal. Vowels were not represented, and the reader was required to supply them from...

038 In the Acts of the Apostles, we are told that Paul made three missionary journeys. In almost every introduction to the New Testament I have seen, the author discusses St. Paul’s journeys in terms of places and dates; his concern is to...

042 Norman Gottwald is one of North America’s leading biblical scholars, and he has just published a comprehensive introduction to the Hebrew Bible that will soon make his name known to a very wide audience. It is titled The Hebrew Bible—...

0008009 In the Gospel miracle stories, Jesus does wonderful things. But the divine power that he dispenses flows through his person while leaving him untouched. In the Transfiguration episode,...

034 The documentary hypothesis states that the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, is a compilation of several originally independent documents. Ancient editors or redactors collected these documents, which had been composed at various...

042 Adjacent to the 11 caves on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea where the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were found are the remains of an ancient settlement overlooking the Wadi Qumran. It is almost certain that the people who lived in this...

014 Almost from the moment the first Dead Sea Scrolls came under scholarly scrutiny, the question of their relation to early Christianity became a key issue. The early days of Qumrana research produced some spectacular theories regarding the...

016 Many of the ritual and community practices of the Qumran covenanters, who lived near the Dead Sea and who produced what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls, have impressive parallels among New Testament Christians. Here are just a few: Acts...

034 035 The Copper Scroll (3Q15 or 3QTreasure) is an anomaly in the inventory of scrolls from Qumran. It does not fit readily into any of the categories customarily included when the scrolls...

033 The book of Jubilees belongs to a category of literature that contemporary scholars designate by the pleasantly vague tag “the Rewritten Bible.”1 The author of the book, like a number of other ancient Jewish writers, found it convenient to...

040 Aquila and his wife Priscilla are the most prominent couple involved in the first-century expansion of Christianity. They were Paul’s hosts at Corinth (Acts 18:2–3). Subsequently they directed house-churches at Ephesus (1 Corinthians 16:19)...

020 021 Why did Jesus go back to preach in Galilee? The question may seem a silly one. After all, he was a native of Nazareth in Galilee, and it was natural that he should preach to his own...

032033 The Latin words Via Dolorosa mean the “Sorrowful Way.” They were first used by the Franciscan Boniface of Ragusa in the second half of the 16th century as the name of the...

When Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem, the site of what would one day be the Holy Sepulchre Church was an abandoned stone quarry. A catacomb cut into the western side of the quarry attests that the quarry had fallen into disuse. The innermost chamber of the catacomb contains kokhim tombs. These deep recesses into the rock, typical of the first centuries B.C. and A.D., can still be seen behind the Syrian Chapel in the Holy Sepulchre Church today.

028 029 The scene has stimulated the imagination of great painters. The light of a full moon accentuates the shadows in a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives. A lonely figure prays in...

What sorts of men were Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John—crude, ignorant laborers or savvy and practical men of the world? The reliability of much of the Gospels rides on the answer.

Three gospels tell of the devil testing Jesus in the wilderness, an incident so remarkable as to seem almost certainly unreal. But is it? Our author suggests a historical core to the tale, a substratum reflecting struggles Jesus faced in his lifetime.

041 040 Steve Mason has probably made the best case possible that we should adopt an “agnostic” position regarding the birthplace of Jesus. But although Mason has examined the literary data...

032 What is the appeal of that curious collection of tales known as the Book of Enoch? It is (and was) that it provides a glimpse into the beyond. As George Nickelsburg suggests in his new commentary, Enoch reassures the faithful that there was...

034 Controversy over the burial of James, the brother of Jesus, is nothing new. As early as the fourth century A.D., the location of James’s tomb was disputed. In the words of the church father Jerome, writing in 392 A.D.: “Some monks think James...