Hello and welcome to the site! I am writing this blog to help interested readers explore the historical origins of Christianity. There are many great blog sites on the internet and I encourage you to explore them. My humble contribution focuses on issues that are of particular interest to me. Who am I?
I am an adjunct lecturer in Christian origins at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The courses I teach include Introduction to the New Testament, Paul, Jesus, Early Christianity, Christian Controversies, and Women & Gender in the New Testament World. I teach in conjunction with my friend and colleague Dr. James Tabor as we educate students about the rise of Christianity, its roots in Judaism, and the culture and history of the first-century Greco-Roman world.
Throughout my career I have been fortunate to have traveled to five continents including a number of trips to Israel where UNCC conducts the only archaeological excavation in Jerusalem sponsored by an American university. During one of these trips I became fascinated with the tourist attraction traditionally identified as the upper room of the Last Supper. Curious as always, I researched and wrote about this in my book The Upper Room and Tomb of David: The History, Art and Archaeology of the Cenacle (McFarland, 2016).
I have just published my work on the apostle Paul entitled Meet Paul for the First Time: Jewish Apostle of Pagan Redemption (Wipf and Stock, 2021). You can read about elsewhere on this blog site.
I am currently researching and writing about the first Jewish followers of Jesus, complementing my work on Paul. I continue to make my way back to Israel from time to time.
I currently live in Hilton Head, SC, with my wife Ann. You can write to me at David.Clausen@uncc.edu.
Happy reading!
David Christian Clausen 
Good morning Dr. Clausen. I just subscribed to your blog and am also following James Tabor and Bart Ehrman. Teaching a bible study class and wondering when Jesus told the leper in 5:14 to show himself to a priest and offer a sacrifice per Moses, would the leper then have to travel to the temple in Jerusalem?
Thank you
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Hello and thank you for your great question!! You have referred to a largely unknown and certainly forgotten (repressed?) story of the early Jesus movement: that of Samaritan believers. The quick answer is “no,” it is highly UNlikely that the leprous Samaritan would go to Jerusalem. Samaritan Yahwists believed that God could only be properly worshiped at the temple on Mt. Gerizim in Samaria (see Jn 4:19). This temple was destroyed by the Judean John Hyrcanus in 128 BC. Nevertheless, Samaritans continued to venerate it in the time of Jesus (as well as today) and seem to have continued to sacrifice at an altar there, with or without a temple. The leprous Samaritan would have gone there. The Samaritan Jesus movement was later ignored or dismissed by the Gospels of Mark and Matthew but validated in the Gospels of Luke and John as well as in Acts. Fully two origin stories for the movement are given in the NT: John 4 and Acts 8.
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Thank you Dr. Clausen for the great and helpful response! I love learning! Even though I earned the Master of Divinity degree I am still in a lifelong adventure of discovery thanks to scholars like you.
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