An exhaustive and critical reevaluation of all artifacts pertaining to the archaeology of Nazareth shows that the site was not inhabited at the time Jesus Of Nazareth and his family should have been living there.

The historical Jesus is as elusive as he is appealing. Everyone wants to find who the man really was. Scholars pour over the pages of the New Testament and apocryphal literature for any clue about his true identity. People have looked in all places for answers—accept one. The Talmud contains a powerful counter-narrative to the Christian and scholarly consensus about Jesus. Did Jesus live in the first century BCE? Was he the son of a Roman soldier? Did he perform magic? Why was he executed? These are all questions that the Talmud answers, pointing us closer to knowing who the historical Jesus was and when he lived. Within these pages, you will find a clear presentation of the Talmud’s narrative and some of the implications of this narrative for our understanding of Jesus as a Jewish man from Greco-Roman Palestine.

In fourteen bold chapters accessible to both scholar and layperson, NazarethGate confirms that Jesus' hometown did not exist when the founder of Christianity allegedly walked on earth. This remarkable sequel to the author's 2008 groundbreaking book The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus reviews critical recent developments on the ground NazarethGate chronicles in riveting detail how the failed field of New Testament Archeology is a toxic stew of competing agendas, as cynical excavators alter evidence and invent facts while promoting religious tourism in Israel and salvaging a grand hoax, "Jesus of Nazareth"-an iconic figure who probably never lived. Book jacket.

This book transforms archaeological knowledge of Nazareth by publishing over 80 years of archaeological work at the Sisters of Nazareth convent, including a detailed re-investigation in the early twenty-first century under the author's direction. Although one of the world's most famous places and of key importance to understanding early Christianity, Nazareth has attracted little archaeological attention. Following a chance discovery in the 1880s, the site was initially explored by the nuns of the convent themselves – one of the earliest examples of a major programme of excavations initiated and directed by women – and then for decades by Henri Senès, whose excavations (like those of the nuns) have remained almost entirely unpublished. Their work revealed a complex sequence, elucidated and dated by twenty-first century study, beginning with a partly rock-cut Early Roman-period domestic building, followed by Roman-period quarrying and burial, a well-preserved cave-church, and major surface-level Byzantine and Crusader churches. The interpretation and broader implications of each phase of activity are discussed in the context of recent studies of Roman-period, Byzantine, and later archaeology and contemporary archaeological theory, and their relationship to written accounts of Nazareth is also assessed. The Sisters of Nazareth Convent provides a crucial archaeological study for those wishing to understand the archaeology of Nazareth and its place in early Christianity and beyond.

Lion of Judah, the Christmas story; with historians and Scriptural explanation why God dealt differently with Mary and Joseph identifying two different sects of the Jewish religion they were raised under and a forbidden love; they accidentally overcome by the common belief on the age of the virgin in Isaiah 7:14; MaryaEUR(tm)s and JosephaEUR(tm)s age caused trouble. Reader will learn about the Jewish wedding custom and wedding feast. Information concerning Jewish practice of the law dealing with a husband and his wife, being pregnant, that the child was not his. The records of criminal activities during RomeaEUR(tm)s first taxation, shows who protected Mary during her trip to ElisabethaEUR(tm)s and how Joseph protected her in the journey to Bethlehem. Correct transportation a carpenter would provide for his wife to travel almost eighty miles, carrying his Christ. Bible and historians describe Levi and his father being RomeaEUR(tm)s tax collectors. At JesusaEUR(tm)s birth, Levi was a teenager and his father was BethlehemaEUR(tm)s chief tax collector. Historians and Bible describes Lucas and his father being physician. At JesusaEUR(tm)s birth, Lucas was a teenager and his father was an army physician at Bethlehem.RomeaEUR(tm)s historical records of medical schools throughout the empire (with there being two where Lucas was born) and development of the Military Physician Core by the year Augustus first taxation was in force, gives strong evidences of two teenage boys (a Jew and a Gentile), could meet Mary and Joseph, then witness events, that did not mean a thing to them at the time, until both were born again. Read St. Matthew first and second chapters; St. Luke first and second chapters; you will have to read Lion of Judah to have a broader perspective and complete picture of the fulness of time God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.

This anthology of new critical essays written by experts in their fields, in honor of the late Victor Stenger, examines Christianity using established scientific criteria. Where science specifically touches upon the claims of Christianity the authors seek to show those claims lack the required evidence. The result is that Christianity is not a sufficiently evidenced religion. In his New York Times bestseller, God: The Failed Hypothesis, physicist Victor Stenger argued that claims of religion should be subject to the same standards of scientific rigor as any other truth claim. Taking this approach, the contributors argue that Christianity fails every known scientific test for truth. Stenger himself wrote a chapter for this volume before he died. In it he presents a brief history of ideas about cosmology, showing that Christianity’s premodern understanding of the cosmos is incompatible with current scientific evidence regarding the origin and structure of the cosmos. Other contributors examine a wide variety of topics, including biblical archaeology, Intelligent Design, the Shroud of Turin, free will, the existence of the soul, the efficacy of petitionary prayer, and more. This challenging work is indispensable reading for both skeptical readers and open-minded people of faith.