Mar 26 Blog
By: BAS Staff
Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute who repented or simply an influential female follower of Jesus? Mary from Magdala has popularly been saddled with an unfavorable reputation, but how did this notion come about?
Feb 12 Blog
By: James Tabor
James Tabor discusses the wedding at Cana from the Gospels of Mark and John. Whose wedding was this and why were Jesus and his family present?
Mar 27 Blog
By: Hershel Shanks
I’ve been reading a new book titled Pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem “On the Life and the Passion of Christ”: A Coptic Apocryphon by the Dutch scholar Roelof van den Broek.1 In case it has escaped your attention, it provides a new translation of an eighth-century Gnostic gospel in Coptic from Egypt that has been in the Morgan Library in New York since 1908, a gift of J.P. Morgan.
Jan 23 Blog
By: Megan Sauter
When did the ancient Egyptians stop writing in hieroglyphs, and what came next? From the fourth to ninth centuries C.E., Egypt was predominantly Christian. During this time, the language used by the masses was Coptic.
Dec 24 Blog
By: Biblical Archaeology Society Staff
In part one of a two-part series, Douglas Boin presents new archaeological and historical research in the study of early Christianity.
Nov 26 Blog
By: Ellen White
Constantine Tischendorf’s chance finding of Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest New Testament manuscript, at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai—and his later removal of the manuscript—made him both famous and infamous. Is he a hero or thief?
Oct 25 Blog
By: Christopher Rollston
The so-called Jerusalem Papyrus is purported to be an ancient papyrus from the seventh century B.C.E. that mentions “Jerusalem,” “the king,” and “jars of wine.” Epigraphist Christopher Rollston thinks it’s a fake.
Jul 24 Blog
By: Roberta Mazza
Recently, the Hobby Lobby corporation—owned by the Green family—agreed to pay a $3 million fine for the purchase of thousands of artifacts believed to have been smuggled out of Iraq. Given the connection of the Green family and their massive collection of artifacts to the soon-to-be-opened Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., how are we to understand the significance of this civil case? Cultural heritage expert Roberta Mazza of the University of Manchester explains in this guest blog post.
Jun 10 Blog
When Harvard’s Karen King announced at a 2012 scholarly conference in Rome that a fragment of an authentic fourth-century gospel had come into her hands in which Jesus, speaking in the first person, refers to “my wife,” that was only the beginning.
Nov 4 Blog
BAR editor Hershel Shanks discusses a recent article in the Atlantic unmasking a fake ancient inscription in which Jesus refers to “my wife.”
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