James Tabor is a retired Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he taught Christian origins and ancient Judaism for thirty-three years, serving as Chair of the Department for a decade. His Ph.D. is from the University of Chicago. He now devotes himself full-time to research, archaeological fieldwork, and publishing. Tabor previously taught at the University of Notre Dame and the College of William and Mary. Tabor combines his work on ancient texts with extensive field work in archaeology in Israel and Jordan. Since 2008 he has been co-director of the acclaimed Mt Zion excavation in Jerusalem and been involved in a half dozen other archaeological projects in the Holy Land over the past thirty years. In the early 1990s, he was involved in the release of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls and was one of the first scholars to examine and publish several very important ones. In 1995 he testified before the US Congress on the Waco tragedy, drawing upon his expertise in understanding ancient Biblical apocalyptic ideas. He has published ten books and over 100 articles, including: A Noble Death (1992), Why Waco (1995); The Jesus Dynasty (2006), and Paul and Jesus (2012). His latest book is forthcoming: The Lost Mary: From the Jewish Mother of Jesus to the Virgin Mother of God (Knopf 2024). Tabor has an active blog and Youtube channel: jamestabor.com and @jamestaborvideos. Dr. Tabor has just released a new on-line course titled “Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls."  To learn more or purchase the course, click here.