My interviews on the PBS Series “Closer to Truth,” hosted by Dr. Robert L. Kuhn, have now been posted on line–twelve topics in all on topics ranging from the historical to the theological. This amazing show is in its third season and the new series on  “Cosmos, God, & Consciousness” pulls together top experts from the worlds of science, philosophy, and religion…The site as a whole is well worth endless browsing far beyond my meager contributions…

You can access the following topical clips at the link below:

Does God Know the Future? (James Tabor)
How is God the Creator? (James Tabor)
What would a Judgment be Like? (James Tabor)
Is This the End Time? (James Tabor)
Do Angels and Demons Exist? (James Tabor)
Arguing God from Miracles & Revelations? (James Tabor)
Does God Intervene in the World? (James Tabor)
Authentication and Conflict in Religious Belief? (James Tabor)
A New Heaven & A New Earth? (James Tabor)
Imagining Immortality and Eternal Life (James Tabor)
What is Immortality? (James Tabor)
What is an Afterlife? (James Tabor)

http://www.closertotruth.com/participant/James-Tabor/104

Sometime in Spring, 2006 I was browsing one of the local bookstores here in Charlotte and came across a title that seemed to jump of the shelves–The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity by Jeffrey Bütz. In thumbing through the book I immediately realized that the brother in question was none other than James the Just, head of the Jerusalem Nazarene movement following the death of Jesus. I was aware, of course, of Robert Eisenman’s well known book, James the Brother of Jesus and John Painter’s valuable study, Just James, as well as several edited volumes on James by Craig Evans, Bruce Chilton, and Jacob Neusner. In fact, in our field of Christian Origins it seems that James, marginalized and forgotten for centuries, was having a bit of a renaissance. I had never heard of Jeffrey Bütz but decided to get the book anyway and see what it might offer. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. My own book, The Jesus Dynasty had just been published and dealt substantially with James the brother of Jesus. I quickly realized that Bütz and I had independently come to many of the same conclusions and we began to exchange e-mails, eventually met, and even spent time together in the Jerusalem, digging at Mt. Zion and hanging in the Old City where Bütz was doing research on his next book, just out, with the provocative title The Secret Legacy of Jesus: The Judaic Teachings That Passed from James the Just to the Founding Fathers.

I read the manuscript in draft form and found this latest work by Bütz both fascinating and provocative. On the face of it the thesis of Reverend Jeffrey Bütz’s new book might strike one as far-fetched if not downright absurd, namely that the “true teachings” of Jesus were passed in some underground fashion, down through the ages, and ended up shaping the vision of the Founding Fathers as they forged the principles and ideals of the United States of America. Over the past decade the bookstores have been full of new titles claiming to reveal at last some lost, forgotten, suppressed, hidden, “underground” stream of Christianity, with connections to various esoteric traditions within Western history. The titles speak for themselves: Holy Blood, Holy Grail, The DaVinci Code, The Hiram Key, The Templar Revelation. Few of these works have received the attention, much less the academic endorsement, of mainstream historians, and probably for good reason. They are often long on speculation and short on hard evidence. It would be a mistake for readers to classify Bütz’s latest work in this genre. In contrast, it is a serious work, in touch with mainstream scholarship, and characterized by full references to original source materials.

Admittedly the trail Bütz follows, from Jesus to Jefferson, is a faint one, with many dead ends, twists, and turns. After all, groups such as the Ebionites, the Desposyni, the Elkesaits, and the Cathars are hardly household names. Bütz’s imaginative but careful consideration of evidence pays off and results in a fascinating thesis that informs the very roots of our American culture.

The book is divided into three parts. Parts I and II, making up about two-thirds of the whole, deals with the roots and history of what Bütz calls “Jewish Christianity.” The term refers to those original Jewish followers of Jesus, led by James the brother of Jesus, who continued in their Jewish beliefs and practices, rejected Paul and the Nicean Church, and according to most scholars continued into the late 4^th century, particularly in areas east of Palestine. These followers of Jesus valued the royal “bloodline” of the Jesus family, whether that of Jesus himself, if he was married with children, or that of his brothers and immediate family. Indeed, Bütz argues that these successors of Jesus and his brother James can properly be viewed as a type of “Caliphate,” in many ways similar to the Shiite branch of Islam. Bütz further argues that these “Nazarenes” set up a provisional government with their own Sanhedrin led by James as high priest, and the Twelve apostles as a kind of inner ruling cabinet. Bütz further locates the operations of this sectarian “government,” on the southwest hill called Mt Zion where both Armenian and Catholic traditions place the “throne” of James, the “Upper Room,” and the house of Mary and the Jesus family.

By far the majority of scholars who have dealt with this branch of “Jewish Christianity” have tended to trail things off in the late 4^th century where most of our records seem to terminate. Bütz take things much farther, and herein lays the special value and contribution of his work. Not only does he pick up on the “Ebionite” trail through an obscure sect of southern Mesopotamia known to us as the Elkasites, but in Part III of his treatment he convincingly traces the key characteristics of this original “Jewish Christian” perspective into early Islam as well. Although the chapter on Islam is somewhat of an excursus, Bütz returns to his more linear story line as he moves from the Elkasites through the Cathars, and thus to the Templars and earliest roots of Freemasonry. It is these last one hundred pages of his book that Bütz truly offers the reader, and in my estimation, the academic world as well, the skeletal framework of a wholly new perspective on the ideas that were most influential upon our Founding Fathers. Here I have in mind specifically the ways in which they imagined America as a sort of New Jerusalem/Promised Land. Other historians have touched on this sort of biblically based idealism, but I think Bütz might be the first to suggest there is an actual current or stream of influence running back into antiquity. I for one find it rather convincing. The history of ideas always remains a tenuous enterprise with no definable terminia post/ad quem, but as Jonathan Z. Smith, the most eminent history of religions used to put things—even an exaggeration in the direction of the truth is progress. I believe that Reverend Bütz has provided us with new perspectives waiting to be tested with subsequent review and consideration. I for one am grateful to him for the opportunity to consider this innovative approach to understanding the roots of our American founding and its ideals.

There is a most interesting and helpful article on the Talpiot “Jesus” tomb titled “Talpiot Dethroned” by Kevin Kilty and Mark Elliot on the Web site The Bible and Interpretation. Kilty and Elliot have previously  published two papers on the subject of the statistical probabilities of the names-cluster found in the tomb, “Probability, Statistics, and the Talpiot Tomb,” and  “Inside the Numbers of the Talpiot Tomb,” which can be downloaded as a PDF files here and here respectively. This latest article focuses on some of the more recent academic discussion of the “statistics” related to the Talpiot tomb names and attempts to point our some of the fundamental errors in getting the facts straight that appear to be quite common on a number of fronts, including a fairly extensive treatment of Dallas Theological Seminary professors Darrell Bock and Daniel Wallace in their 2007 book, DeThroning Jesus.

One new feature at the Web site The Bible and Interpretation is that “Comments” are open on the various articles and posts. There is a most interesting exchange regarding this present article between Kilty/Elliot and Randy Ingermanson, who has also published work on the statistics related to the Jesus tomb. Ingermanson is a rare breath of fresh air in the discussion, despite my own disagreement with his conclusions, in that he has shown himself to be as open-minded as he is honorable in the way he goes about dealing with this quite controversial topic.

In case you missed it, if you are interested in why all the statisticians seem to disagree on their conclusions when it comes to the Talpiot “Jesus” tomb the article by Jerry Lutgen, “The Talpiot Tomb: What are the Odds” is also posted on The Bible and Interpretation.

I was away in Israel on two separate trips in December, 2009 and want to catch up on quite a few news items, books, and notices that I have not had time to post. Some of this might be old news by now but I wanted to go ahead with a series of posts, for the record, and in case some of you too have been very busy with the holidays and end-of-the-year activities.

The discovery of the 1st century CE ruins of a house in Nazareth on the grounds of the convent near the Church of the Anunciation by the Israel Antiquities Authority excavation directed by Alexandra Yardenna has been up on the IAA Web site for some time but had not yet received much attention. On December 21st a more popular press release was put out with video interviews and photos, and was picked up worldwide–just in time for Christmas. The story in HaAretz is representative of the coverage and has some good pictures and there is a nice MSNBC video report here, plus a Fox News interview with Yardenna here (you have to endure the ads at the beginning). Despite the orchestrated timing, the story is quite important for understanding Jesus and his village background, growing up just outside of Sepphoris, the major urban center of Galilee and capital of Herod Antipas. The discovery also addresses the issue, raised by a few scholars (e.g. Rene Salm and Frank Zindler), as to whether the village of Nazareth even existed in 1st century Roman Galilee. Until now no remains of living areas, preserved to this extent, had been dated solidly dated to the time of Jesus and Josephus does not mention the village in his inventory of Galilean towns.

I was filming in Nazareth in December and was able to see the area firsthand. Both the size and style of the house points to the kind of modest Jewish village typical of the time and fits well with what many of us had postulated regarding Nazareth itself, see Crossan and Reed, Excavating Jesus (chapter 2) and my own discussion in The Jesus Dynasty (chapter 5). Nazareth was a very small hamlet, perhaps sheltering a few dozen families, and its significance and name might well derive from its inhabitants laying claim to Davidic lineage–the Hebrew word netzer, meaning “branch,” from which the name is taken, is used in Isaiah 11 to refer to the royal house of David. The presence of stone vessels, found in the excavation, also indicate its inhabitants were observant of ritual purity laws of the Torah.

As it turns out, the drawing that the artist Balage Balogh, who was commissioned by Crossan and Reed in Excavating Jesus, and by me for illustrations in The Jesus Dynasty, seems to have captured pretty accurately how such the village might have looked in the time of Jesus. This latest discovery, along with the tombs and agricultural remains, seems to reflect a coherent picture of a rather typical 1st Jewish century village located near a natural spring in the valley surrounded on hills, with Sepphoris just to the northwest. This location also fits our early Christian tradition of Miriam, mother of Jesus, growing up in the outskirts of Sepphoris where her parents Joachim and Anna lived.

One might hope that further archaeological investigation of such a significant site might be undertaken in the future but unfortunately this excavation was a “rescue” operation in a very densely populated area surrounding the Church of the Annunciation. It appears unlikely that much more than this area will be exposed, at least in the near future.

Tis the Season” love it or not but for an alternative take on Jesus’ birth, December 25th, and a different kind of “Silent Night” see my essay, just up on the Web at Bible&Interpretation, a site well worth a bit of browsing:

http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/xmas357921.shtml

I love this wonderful Armenian portrayal of the meeting of Miriam with her kinswoman Elisheva in the region of Ein Kerem in the “hill country of Judea,” west of Jerusalem. Note that the unborn babies are shown in situ as if by ancient ultrasound. According to Luke’s gospel the women were separated in their pregnancies by six months and Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months, implying that she was attending at the birth of John/Yehochanan.

Here is the link to the academic peer-reviewed paper that can be dowloaded as a PDF or printed, that has generated the various news stories about the Akeldama “Tomb of the Shroud” around the world. Although much of the media focus has been on the “shroud” material and how it differs from that of the Shroud of Turin, which though important and interesting was reported some years ago, and was discussed last year at the Boston Society of Biblical Literature Meeting by Antonio Lombatti and elsewhere. This paper is not about the shroud, but the skeletal remains of the one shrouded, who suffered from Hanson’s disease as well Tuberculosis, and also represents perhaps the first attempt to provide DNA profiles of an entire population of an ancient Jewish tomb from the Herodian period. The C-14 dating of the shroud material (early to mid 1st century CE), carried out by the University of Arizona lab under UNC Charlotte auspices, is accordingly relevant, as it places the organic material in the tomb, in temporal situ with the skeletal remains.

Molecular Exploration of the First-Century Tomb of the Shroud in Akeldama, Jerusalem

Carney D. Matheson1,2,3*, Kim K. Vernon3,4, Arlene Lahti1,5, Renee Fratpietro1, Mark Spigelman3,6, Shimon Gibson7, Charles L. Greenblatt3, Helen D. Donoghue6

1 Paleo-DNA Laboratory, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Canada, 2 Department of Anthropology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Canada, 3 Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel, 4 Department of Anthropology, Department of Zoology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Australia, 5 Department of Biology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Canada, 6 Department of Infection, University College London, London, United Kingdom, 7 University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina, United States of America

Abstract: The Tomb of the Shroud is a first-century C.E. tomb discovered in Akeldama, Jerusalem, Israel that had been illegally entered and looted. The investigation of this tomb by an interdisciplinary team of researchers began in 2000. More than twenty stone ossuaries for collecting human bones were found, along with textiles from a burial shroud, hair and skeletal remains. The research presented here focuses on genetic analysis of the bioarchaeological remains from the tomb using mitochondrial DNA to examine familial relationships of the individuals within the tomb and molecular screening for the presence of disease. There are three mitochondrial haplotypes shared between a number of the remains analyzed suggesting a possible family tomb. There were two pathogens genetically detected within the collection of osteological samples, these were Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae. The Tomb of the Shroud is one of very few examples of a preserved shrouded human burial and the only example of a plaster sealed loculus with remains genetically confirmed to have belonged to a shrouded male individual that suffered from tuberculosis and leprosy dating to the first-century C.E. This is the earliest case of leprosy with a confirmed date in which M. leprae DNA was detected.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0008319

The “Tomb of the Shroud” which was discovered and investigated in 2000 by Shimon Gibson, Boaz Zissu, and me, with a team of our UNC Charlotte students  in the summer of 2000, continues to yield up many scientific secrets about life and death in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. I related the basic story of the exciting discovery of this freshly robbed tomb in the Introduction to my book The Jesus Dynasty in 2006 and Shimon Gibson has recently provided a more thorough analysis in his new book, The Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence (HarperOne, 2009). We published a preliminary report in the journal Hadashot Arkheologiyot (vol. 111: 2000, pp. 70-72, figs. 138-139) but a major monograph is planned for 2011 and various aspects of the research are beginning to appear in scientific journals. Although the burial shroud itself continues to receive great public interest (see the latest in today’s The Daily Mail), other aspects of research on this tomb are quite notable. DNA profiles were done on all the bones in the tomb, so far as we know for the first time in an ancient tomb in Jerusalem from the Herodian period. We also have the only substantial example of male hair from the period (lice free, cut reasonably short, and well groomed), and most important, the earliest case of leprosy ever found–in the Holy Land or elsewhere. The significance of the latter discovery is a major contribution to our understanding of ancient disease and has recently been published in the current issue of the Public Library of Science Journal. Yesterday’s Jerusalem Post had a nice feature update on the tomb and its secrets, highlighting the leprosy finding:

Remains in tomb near Old City show first known case of leprosy
Dec. 15, 2009

Judy Siegel-Itzkovich , THE JERUSALEM POST
DNA taken from the shrouded remains of a man discovered in a tomb next to the Old City of Jerusalem shows him to be the first human proven to have suffered from leprosy, according to Hebrew University researchers and North American and British collaborators. They published their findings in the December 16 issue of the PLoS One – the US Public Library of Science journal.

Prof. Mark Spigelman and Prof. Charles Greenblatt of the Sanford F. Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at HU in Jerusalem, along with Prof. Carney Matheson and Kim Vernon of Lakehead University in Canada, Prof. Azriel Gorski of New Haven University and Dr. Helen Donoghue of University College London performed the molecular investigation. The archeological excavation was led by Prof. Shimon Gibson, Dr. Boaz Zissu and Prof. James Tabor on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

The burial cave, known as the Tomb of the Shroud, is located in the lower Hinnom Valley near the Jaffa Gate and part of a first century CE cemetery known as Akeldama, or “Field of Blood” (mentioned in the Book of Matthew 27:3-8, and Acts 1:19 in the Christian Bible). It is located adjacent to the spot where Judas is said to have committed suicide.

The tomb of the shrouded man is also located next to the tomb of Annas, the high priest (6 CE to 15 CE), who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest who betrayed Jesus to the Romans. It is thus believed that this shrouded man was either a priest or a member of the aristocracy. Gibson suggests that the view from the tomb would have looked directly toward the Second Temple.

The tomb is very unusual because it is clear that this man, whose remains are dated by radiocarbon methods to 1 CE to 50 CE, did not receive a subsequent burial. Secondary burials were common practice at the time, when the bones were removed after a year and placed in an ossuary (a bone box made of stone). In this case, however, the entrance to this part of the tomb was completely sealed with plaster. Spigelman believes this is because the man had suffered from leprosy and died of tuberculosis, as DNA of both diseases was found in his bones.

Historically, disfiguring diseases such as leprosy led to the sufferer being ostracized from their community. However, a number of indications – the location and size of the tomb, the type of textiles used as shroud wrappings, and the clean state of the hair – suggest that the shrouded individual was a fairly affluent member of Jerusalem society, and that tuberculosis and leprosy may have crossed social boundaries at that time.

This is also the first time fragments of a burial shroud have been found from the time of Jesus in Jerusalem. The shroud is very different to that of the Turin Shroud, until now assumed to be the one that was used to wrap the body of Jesus after his crucifixion. Unlike the complex weave of the Turin Shroud, this is made up of a simple two-way weave, as textile historian Dr. Orit Shamir was able to demonstrate.

Based on the assumption that this is representative of a typical burial shroud widely used at the time of Jesus, the researchers conclude that the Turin Shroud did not originate from Jesus-era Jerusalem.

The excavation also found a clump of the shrouded man’s hair, which had been ritually cut before he was buried. These are both unique discoveries because organic remains are only rarely preserved in the Jerusalem area owing to the soil’s high humidity levels.

Spigelman and Greenblatt state that the origins and development of leprosy are largely obscure. Leprosy in the Jewish Bible may well refer to skin diseases such as psoriasis. The leprosy known to us today was thought to have originated in India and brought over via bacteria to the Near East and Mediterranean countries during the Hellenistic period. The results from the First Century Tomb of the Shroud fill a vital gap in our knowledge of this disease, they said.

Furthermore, the new research has shown that molecular pathology clearly adds a new dimension to the archeological exploration of disease in ancient times and a better understanding of the evolution, geographic distribution and epidemiology of disease and social health in antiquity.

The co-infection of both leprosy and tuberculosis here and in 30 percent of DNA remains in Israel and Europe from the ancient and modern period provided evidence for the postulate that the medieval plague of leprosy was eliminated by an increased level of tuberculosis in Europe as the area urbanized.

Back in October, 2002 when Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review revealed the existence of an ossuary that had once held the bones of “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” few in the media or the public knew what an ossuary was or that Jesus even had any brothers. A lot has happened since, much of it chronicled in the archives of this Blog, but the charge that the owner of the ossuary, Israeli antiquities collector Oded Golan, added the phrase “brother of Jesus” to an original that said merely “James son of Joseph” is at the center of a criminal forgery trial in Jerusalem.

The case for and against the charge of forgery is a complex one with many twists and turns, involving a who’s who of leading characters in both the academic community and world of antiquities collecting. This week the Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Shuka Dorfman, who had spearheaded the forgery charge in behalf of the IAA, was called to testify. For the latest see the Jerusalem Post coverage by Matthew Kalman:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1251804522111

Last week TIME ran a major story, also written by Kalman, highlighting the ways in which the physical evidence of the case for forgery, appears to have become more problematic than previously revealed since various letters in the phrase “brother of Jesus” appear to be ancient, and thus authentic:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1920720,00.html

Matthew Kalman, who reports from Jerusalem for TIME, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Channel 4 News in Israel, is the only reporter who has covered the trial from day one. He has his own Web site where all his reports are conveniently chronicled, see: http://jamesossuarytrial.blogspot.com/

There is also a useful collection of materials and documents archived at the Biblical Archaeology Society Web site: http://www.bib-arch.org/debates/antiquities-trial-00.asp

In the meantime, the consensus of many leading academics that the ossuary inscription is a forgery has been generally reflected in major media reports, such as a series of updated segments on Sixty Minutes that have aired over the past two years as well as several major magazine stories. That case, with its charge of media sensationalism, is most recently argued in a new book, Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus: The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Relics, edited by Ryan Bryne and Bernadette McNary-Zak (University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

I have been thinking lately about the essential differences between Judaism and Christianity, or more properly, the kind of religion reflected in the Hebrew Bible and that of the Greek New Testament. I have long ago rejected as personal options the major contemporary manifestations of Judaism and Christianity — by that I mean the Mishnaic-Talmudic forms of the Classical Jewish faith that developed after Second Temple times, and the Orthodox Catholic versions of Christianity that developed in the West and East after Constantine. I am interested in religious and philosophical truth, but my training is that of an historian, so perhaps that is why I am drawn to the more ancient forms of these two faiths, i.e., the Hebrew faith as formulated by the Prophets and final redactors of the Hebrew Bible, and earliest Christianity as reflected in the New Testament. In considering these two “religions” or ways of thinking about God, the world and human purpose, I find that I am much more drawn to the former than the latter. Why is that so? What is it about the Hebrew Bible, even on a purely mythological level, that seems to draw me so? Conversely, what is it about early Christianity, especially the systematic interpretations of Paul or the Gospel of John, that puts me off so?

The Hebrew Bible’s Ambiguity

As for the Hebrew Bible, the whole notion of the One, true and living Creator, the God of Abraham is most appealing. Humans are seen as mortal, made of dust. Consequently, death and human history are taken very seriously. They are made in the image of God, capable of reason and free choice, of good as well as evil. God reveals Divine laws, the “Way” for humankind; a way that brings blessings not curses. The human race is seen starkly in its wayward and sinful condition, yet there are those who love and follow this true God in the midst of it all. Their mission is to be a witness to the “nations” (non-believers) and to bring about the establishment of righteousness, justice, and peace on the earth. On an individual level, as in Psalms or Job, there is a lot of questioning after God. The ways of God are far from clear. There is certainly expectation of intervention, a longing for God’s help and care, but simplistic view of things is rejected. The Hebrew canon (with the exception of Daniel) essentially closes with this kind of ambiguity. Humans are to seek God, to live the ways of God on the earth, but much is left open, whether individual ideas of immortality or broader schemes of historical plans and purposes. The essential idea of the Shema is the heart of it all: God’s people are to acknowledge God’s nature, to love God, and to follow the ways of God revealed in the Torah and Prophets. Ecclesiastes shows clearly how many questions are simply left unanswered. True, the Prophets do offer many predictions of a restoration of Israel and even a transformed age to come. However, the texts themselves express lament-full doubts about when, and even whether, this will ever come (e.g., Psalm 89; Habakkuk). The Hebrew canon closes with II Chronicles 36:23 — “Let him go up” — which could bear some symbolic period: all if open, Israel’s future is still unwritten, and individuals are called to respond.

The New Testament’s Answers

The New Testament comes out of a wholly different milieu. First, it is part and parcel of the broad changes in religious thought that we know as “Hellenization.” It is characterized by a vast and expanded dualistic cosmos, an emphasis on immortality and personal salvation, i.e., on escaping this world for a better heavenly life. At the same time, and to be more specific, it is absolutely and completely dominated by an apocalyptic world view of things, whereby all will be soon resolved by the decisive intervention of God, the End of the Age, the last great Judgment, and the eternal Kingdom of God. In addition, the Christology that develops, even in the first century, is thoroughly “Hellenistic,” with Jesus the human transformed into the pre- existent, divine, Son of God, who sits at the right hand of God and is the Lord of the cosmos. The whole complex of ideas about multiple levels of heaven, fate, angels, demons, miracles and magic abound. It is as if all the questions that the Hebrew Bible only begins to explore — questions about theodicy, justice, human purpose, history, death, sin — are all suddenly answered with a loud and resounding “Yes!” There is little, if any, struggle left. There are few haunting questions, and no genuine tragedy or meaningless suffering. All is guaranteed; all will shortly be worked out. Of course, various attempts are made to reinterpret this early Christianity for our time, usually in terms of ethics or some existential core of truth. But early Christianity rests on two essential points, both of which resist easy demythologization: it is a religious movement built upon an apocalyptic view of history; and an evaluation of Jesus as a Hellenistic deity, i.e., a pre- existent divine Savior God in whom all ultimate meaning rests. If these are unacceptable in the modern world, or incompatible with the fundamental Hebrew view of things, then the whole system become difficult, it not superfluous. This is not to say that there are no similar problems with the Hebrew Bible, but fundamentally things are different. Even Daniel, that begins down the path of fantastic apocalyptic answers to hard human questions about the meaning of history, is somewhat vague about it all. That is one good reason Daniel was never included among the Prophets in the Jewish canon. Of course, the Hebrew Bible, like the New Testament, is framed around God’s intervention in human history: God calls Abraham, delivers Israel to Egypt, reveals the Torah at Sinai, gives the Land to the Israelites, expels them, promises to bring them back, etc. It is an interventionist story. And yet, in contrast to the New Testament, God is often silent, there are many dark areas, many unanswered queries, and much doubt and debate expressed about it all, even within the texts themselves. But more important, the two of the major problems for the later Hellenistic age–human mortality and theodicy, are left largely unaddressed.

My Attachment to Both Canons

I find myself drawn to these texts, these ideas and images, tempered through the sifting and sorting out that comes through historical criticism in an effort to separate myth and history. I want to neither devaluing the former or ignore the latter. The opening chapters of Genesis powerfully expresses any number of fundamental perceptions around which my own approach to human life is shaped. God as the “Power of all powers” (Elohim) orders the chaotic planet earth with humans, created from the, “dust of the earth,” but reflecting the image of the Elohim. Humans and beasts are given only “green herbs” to eat. It is only after the Flood that meat is allowed, when sin and violence had filled the earth. Are we to re-present to the world in this small way, this way of peace from which we have fallen? It is a powerful idea, as Isaiah himself knew when he spoke of the child’s leading the lion, the infant’s playing at the nest of the scorpion–“They will not hurt nor destroy on all My holy mountain, says the LORD” (Isa. 11:9). Human are to “dress and keep” the garden and have both the power and responsibility to exercise custody over the good earth, even in the world of “thorns and thistles” outside the gates of Eden. When it comes to the New Testament the cosmically triumphant theologies of Paul and John are dominant but running through the Gospel materials are layers in which one finds a Jesus wedded to the ethics and perspectives of the Hebrew Prophets, who surely not God, who is vulnerable and “human all-to-human,” and who, as Schweitzer puts it, throws himself onto the wheel of history in an effort to move things forward but is tragically crushed. Those contingent, conditional, and open-ended aspects of the Jesus story I find most compelling, and most in keeping with the Hebrew view of history and human possibilities.

A version of these thoughts was published in the Journal of Reform Judaism (Summer, 1990): 35-38. An interesting similar perspective by Harvard Hebrew Bible scholar Frank Moore Cross can be read at my TaborBlog.

I am most pleased to have in hand a copy of Jesus-Dynastin: Den dolda historien om Jesus, hans kungliga familj och kristendoms foedelse, namely The Jesus Dynasty in Swedish, published by Schibsted Foerlagan in Stockholm. It is a most handsome edition, hard cover, nicely printed, with the the illustrations and photos produced in high quality. I love the artistic design of the cover, which I reproduce here.

This particular translation brings me special pleasure because of the memory of my closest male friend of my life, Olof James Ribb. Olof died January 16, 2006 at a much too young age 59, of a very aggressive form of bone cancer, just as my book was being published. I mention Olof in my Acknowledgments, as some readers might recall. Olof was of Swedish background and heritage and as an adult taught himself Swedish quite fluently. He traveled to Sweden several times to locate and meet relatives of his immigrant family who had moved to the Dakotas in the 19th century. Olof was a high school teacher of German and Latin in Burlington, NC, much beloved of students, family, and friends. Olof was one of the truest people I have ever known, and one of the most brillant as well. I miss him immensely and think of him every day. There is a Web site, olofribb.com with photos and tributes. German was Olof’s main academic expertise, though he had learned Italian and Spanish quite well, and was a master of Latin. His great loves were history, philosophy,religion, and literature, though he maintained a curiosity about almost everything, including the latest in science.

Because of his “roots” he plunged into Swedish with a special passion. I remember asking him once, since I knew his Germany was so fluent, if his Swedish would compare, and he answered simply “Yes.”  He had become over 20 years as comfortable in Swedish as in English or German. I don’t know of anyone from outside my academic field who had followed my work and research on the historical Jesus more avidly than Olof. But he was much more a dialog partner and a critic than a fan. I benefited immensely from his input and he read every word of my manuscript along the way and gave me helpful feedback on nearly every page. He traveled with me to Germany when I was doing the Pantera research in October, 2005, just a few months before he died. I can’t begin to imagine the pleasure it would have given him to see, hold, and read The Jesus Dynasty in Swedish.