It’s written in stone, but still not everyone believes it. There are still those who maintain that the Aramaic inscription on a First Century limestone ossuary that says, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” is a forgery. Nonetheless, the Israeli courts determined that the inscription could very well be authentic, and that the bone…
Twelve percent of Americans harbor deeply anti-Semitic attitudes, according to a new poll conducted by the Anti-Defamation League. The figure marks a decline of 3 percentage points from the last time the ADL took such a poll, in 2011, but approximately the same number as in an ADL poll in 2009. The latest ADL national…
The Vatican has withdrawn thousands of official papal medals from sale after discovering they had misspelled Jesus’ name. A Latin inscription around the edge of the medals to mark the first year of Pope Francis’ pontificate referred to “Lesus”. The medals, produced in gold, silver and bronze by the Italian State Mint, went on sale…
Are you Jewish or Christian? Increasingly, Americans seem to be checking both boxes, according to the 2013 Pew Research Center Survey of U.S. Jews. It’s not just that a lot of Jews have Christmas trees, though 32% say they do; it’s that 34% of Jews said that they think being Jewish is compatible with believing…
A Tennessee judge on Wednesday restored a baby boy’s given first name of “Messiah,” ruling unconstitutional a lower ranking judge’s order changing it to “Martin” on the basis that “Messiah” is a title earned only by Jesus Christ. The parents of Messiah DeShawn Martin had gone before Tennessee Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew in…
You may have read about Lu Ann Ballew, the Tennessee judge who recently changed a 7-month-old baby’s name, Messiah, to Martin. Her ruling was based not on compassion for the poor infant, but on the opinion that “the word Messiah is a title and it is a title that has only been earned by one…
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth By Reza Aslan Random House, 336 pages, $27 Is it possible to change the tenor of public debate on a subject with a piece of writing? Is it conceivable that the “general reader” still exists, that judgment-suspended individual who picks up a book because she or…
It has been dismissed as a tempest in a teapot, but the recent brouhaha over JC Penney’s now-infamous Hitler teakettle may be more significant than it initially appears. Click to enlarge/Kurt Hoffman illustration. Far from being an isolated incident, it is merely the latest in a long series of news stories in recent years about…
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