As the center of the Christian faith, early Christians didn’t hesitate to bring all sorts of stories about Jesus and his life. These stories were floating around during the first several centuries Read more

Historical investigation of any religion comes with certain challenges and controversies. It is almost impossible to avoid it. I remember reading about the life of Muhamed and discovering several important aspects of his life that were not accepted as Read more

As a part of a curriculum, one lecture within my course on Roman Empire is about the Historical Jesus and the origins of Christianity. The logic is simple: Christianity emerged in the 1st century as a minor Jewish movement Read more

This is the last post in a series about the Historical Jesus. The basic idea is to suggest a way forward. How do historians today deal with sources about Jesus? For the last several decades scholars have applied something Read more

As I mentioned earlier, the traditional Church’s view is that the authors of the New Testament Gospels are Mark (the interpreter of St. Peter), Luke (the companion of St. Paul), and two apostles: Matthew the tax collector, and John Read more

In the last post, I talked about the internal evidence for the anonymity of the Gospels. I’ve shown that the internal evidence points towards the conclusion that the New Testament Gospels were written as anonymous documents – without Read more

In the previous post, I talked about the oral traditions passed on for decades before they were written down. Our first biography of Jesus was written c. 70 CE (Mark), our last c. 90-100 CE (John). Before that, Read more

In the last post, I introduced the quest for the Historical Jesus defining it as “the reconstruction of the life and teachings of Jesus by critical historical methods, in contrast to religious interpretations”. Furthermore, I have shown the Read more

I was always attracted to controversial things from the past. Numerous years ago (time really flies!) I was lecturing in a Church about the historical Jesus and early Christianity. I was still a student – looking for my Master’s Read more