Bill Pratt | July 11, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt A common complaint about the reliability of the letters and books contained in the New Testament is that we don’t know, for sure, who wrote all of these documents. In particular, the four Gospels are singled out as being anonymous since there is nothing in the text of the four Gospels [...]
Bill Pratt | October 12, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt The Bible History Daily website announced in July 2011 that archaeologists had discovered the Apostle Philip’s tomb. Here is an excerpt from the article: Italian archaeologists working at the site of Hierapolis in southwestern Turkey believe they have discovered the tomb of St. Philip, one of Jesus’ 12 apostles. According to [...]
Bill Pratt | July 27, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt The earliest existing painting (seen above) portraying a biblical scene was found in a building called the House of the Physician in the ruins of the city of Pompeii, a city destroyed in AD 79 by Mount Vesuvius. The painting is a striking rendition of the scene from 1 Kings 3 [...]
Bill Pratt | June 29, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt Archaeologists reported on June 22, 2010 that they found images of the apostles Andrew and John that date to the 4th century. Here is an excerpt from the article at CNN.com. The oldest known image of the apostles Andrew and John have been discovered in catacombs under the city of Rome, [...]
Bill Pratt | May 22, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt I ran across a fascinating article about a small group of Christians who have preserved the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke. Here is a an excerpt: The Aramaic language of the earliest Christians lives on in the church services of a tiny village on the Turkish Cypriot side of the Mediterranean [...]
Bill Pratt | May 18, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt We have featured the findings of archaeologist Eilat Mazar in previous blog posts (here and here). She has been digging in Jerusalem since 2005 and continues to make amazing discoveries. Her claims, however, are not universally accepted by other archaeologists. In a recent article in Biblical Archaeological Review, she lays out [...]
Bill Pratt | March 5, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt Eilat Mazar has potentially made another astounding discovery. She has unearthed a section of an ancient city wall of Jerusalem which she believes dates from the tenth century B.C. and would have been built by King Solomon. According to Biblical Archaeology Review, “If Professor Mazar is correct about the dating, then [...]
Bill Pratt | December 22, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt In the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Eilat Mazar reports that she has discovered a portion of Nehemiah’s Wall. These are the walls that were described in the book of Nehemiah in chapters 3 and 4. The wall was discovered as Mazar continued excavations of King David’s Palace. If this [...]
Bill Pratt | December 12, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt For the last several years, a lot of hay has been made concerning the Gospel of Thomas, an alleged fifth Gospel only discovered in 1945. A few New Testament scholars have tried to make the case that the views espoused in Thomas represent a competing strain of Christianity that was suppressed [...]
Bill Pratt | December 5, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt The usual story about why Jesus’ birthday is celebrated on Dec. 25 is that Christians were trying to convert a Roman pagan festival into a Christian festival. But it seems this theory may not be true. Andrew McGowan, professor of early Christian history, has written a fascinating article which links the [...]
