Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

I want to begin to reflect upon some of the content, queries, and observations found in James Strange’s review of my book The Jesus Dynasty, published in this month’s issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Dr. Strange wrote:

“…Tabor seems to have a personal stake in letting us in on his ‘discoveries and insights.’ I wish I knew what that stake was, besides telling us that Christianity is all a mistake. Has he finally, after centuries of systematic doubt from Feuerbach, Freud, Voltaire, Bruno Bauer, Lüdermann [sic], Spong, the Jesus Seminar and others, finally got the Jesus story straight?”

This is quite an interesting list of figures, some of whom I would gladly associate myself with out of admiration for pioneering courage, given their culture and times (Freud, Voltaire), but other than Lüdemann, none of those listed would have much in common with my own approach or results in terms of the quest for the Historical Jesus. Bauer concluded that even the Gospel of Mark, though our earliest, was almost wholly fiction, a position quite opposite from my own. Indeed, I built my basic narrative framework around Mark and what I consider the reliable primitive structure of the Gospel of John. The Jesus Seminar, though hard to characterize with a single brush, would by and large scoff at the degree to which I accept the historical reliability of our Gospel sources. I actually think we can say with some assurance all sorts of things that Jesus did and said, and with a linguistic, chronological, and geographical detail that many critical scholars would question. In that sense I end up strangely “conservative” by such measures of conventional scholarship on the New Testament and early Christianity.

It is interesting that Prof. Strange mentions Gerd Lüdemann on this matter of whether I consider Christianity as all a mistake. I do indeed value Lüdemann’s pioneering and controversial book, The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology (Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1994). In fact, I consider it to be one of the most important studies on the subject of the “historicity” of the notion of the “Resurrection of Jesus Christ” ever written. Its explicit aim was to prove the nonhistoricity of the resurrection of Jesus and thus encourage Christians to find a new grounding for faith based entirely on what he considers to be “the historical Jesus.” I strongly share that aim and consider my own work a small step in that direction. However, in Lüdemann’s subsequent work, The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry (Prometheus Books, 2004), I am disappointed to see that Dr. Lüdemann repudiates his former position regarding a potential Reformation of Christianity on historical grounds, but frankly states that his latest work “…spells out in detail why the result of the nonhistoricity of the resurrection of Jesus leaves little if any room for Christianity.” In other words, Lüdemann gives up in his later work what I hold most dear–that a genuine recovery of the perspectives of the historical Jesus can, ironically, spell “life from the dead” for the cause that Jesus himself lived and died for–call it Christianity or not. The mistake I think he makes is to equate Paul’s visionary experience, which I think fundamentally dominates all subsequent definitions of “Christianity,” as determinative for defining what Jesus himself was all about, lived and died for, and for that matter–would have repudiated!
I guess what it comes down to is how one defines Christianity. My argument is that as one gets closer to the Founder, one also draws close to the original faith that one can define as a movement separate from other groups in “Judaism,” namely a Nazorean form of “Christianity,” indeed the “faith once delivered” that was subsequently taken in a decidedly different direction by Paul.

I hope that most readers of my book will sense on many levels, whether the academic, the descriptive, or the personal, that I have a high stake in the enterprise. Far from being an iconoclastic secularist, my whole life has been committed to what I consider to be the original and “true” view of Jesus of Nazareth himself. Accordingly, far from wanting to tell folks that “Christianity was all a mistake,” I want to affirm the opposite–that the original vision of John, Jesus, and James his brother can provide a new dynamic perspective in the new millennium. Yes, I do think it has been “hidden” and “lost,” as sensational as that sounds. But I present my arguments for a tiny glimpse of that original faith peeking through the mist of history, and I hope and trust these points will be not only convincing but inspiring to many who want to be faithful to Jesus. I try my best to say this in the Conclusion to the book, a section over which I labored long and hard to make clear. I regret that Dr. Strange did not seem to grasp that central point of my book. Yes, it is indeed a “personal narrative,” but one that argues with a passion that a recovery of the original vision of the founders of the movement we subsequently know as Christianity can truly lead to a new and fruitful faith. In that sense I am disappointed that Dr. Strange would want to cast me with the likes of Voltaire, Freud, Bauer, and even the collective Jesus Seminar–as much as I can appreciate the contributions of each of these. I stand decidedly on different ground, and as I try my best to convey. My model here is Albert Schweitzer–whom I consider to be a singular hero of the past century–as honest as one can be historically, but never deaf to the ethical call of Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God on earth.

More to come…

There is a very interesting and provocative two-page review of my book, The Jesus Dynasty in the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (Nov/Dec 06) by my friend and colleague, Dr. James F. Strange, Professor of New Testament at the University of South Florida. The BAR web site does not offer the full review on-line, just a teaser introduction, but I know many readers are subscribers to this magazine and it is also widely available on newsstands and at bookstores such as Barnes & Noble or Borders.

It was Professor Strange who gave me my first field experience in archaeology at Sepphoris where he has been excavating since the 1980s. He is a brilliant scholar and one of the most careful and capable archaeologists in the field. On the whole Strange’s review is negative and he highlights what he considers to be the book’s many deficiencies, although he also remarks that it is a well-written fascinating read with much of value and importance. I want to begin to address some of his queries and objections in this Blog as I think his evaluations and my responses will be of general interest to readers. Stay tuned and in the meantime see if you can find a copy of the review to read for yourself.

Greg Doudna, an old friend going back 30 years, and also an accomplished and published Dead Sea Scrolls scholar in his own right, recently posted something on the YahooJesusDynasty discussion list that I thought might be of more general interest, especially his report of visiting Dr. Hugh Schonfield in the 1980s. He also refers to my departed lifelong friend, Olof J. Ribb, whom I mention in the Acknowledgments in The Jesus Dynasty. I also recommend Greg’s new book, Showdown, a personal testimony to his own experiences and lifelong Quest, but maybe of interest to many of wider circles. For more on this book itself there is also a Website, The Scrollery, which I encourage interested readers to visit. Anyway, here is Greg’s post in whole:
A propos of James Tabor’s mention of the impact of Hugh Schonfield’s
books: I can also attest to that. I visited Schonfield in 1985 when he
was age 83, in his flat in London. He seemed in some ways a lonely
figure, reviled from both Jews and Christians because of his
insistence in holding to Jesus as a non-divine, solely-human messiah
of the world. He openly said that Jesus and Jesus’s early followers
had it wrong concerning expectations of the end of the age, signs
in the heavens, and all of the miraculous expectations. He had no
notion that Jesus had risen from the dead or had gone to heaven.
Yet he still believed that the idea of Jesus would save the world through
what he called “the Servant Nation,” which was his idea of a 20th-21st
century equivalent to “the Jesus party” anciently. He envisioned a
citizenship of the Servant Nation that would have its own passports
and be independent of existing nation-states and ultimately gain
United Nations recognition even though without controlling territory
or having an army. He told me that during the Cuban missile
crisis of 1962 when the world came close to nuclear war he had
written letters to both Kennedy and Khrushchev and that he wondered
if that had played some small role in that crisis’s resolution without
further escalation. Sure his Servant Nation idea seemed quixotic.
But Schonfield gave it his all.

Tabor’s post reminded me of these things, and even earlier of my first
acquaintance with Schonfield’s writings, which was early 1970s when a
faculty member at a small college in Texas I was attending gave me
Schonfield’s book _Those Incredible Christians_ and recommended it.
That book struck me and changed me, much as Schonfield’s writings
struck Tabor. I was 18 at the time. I was able to later tell
Schonfield personally in his living room of the impact of his book on
me when I was 18, and he just seemed gratified, as if it was this
kind of feedback that was his greatest reward in writing his books.

I did not know it all this time until two or three months ago, but James
Tabor was personally responsible for that book coming into my hands
so long ago when I was 18, even though I did not know James Tabor’s
name at that time and Tabor was then many states away. For the faculty
member who passed on Schonfield’s _Those Incredible Christians_ to me was
Tabor’s friend Olof J. Ribb, and Olof Ribb had been told of that
book by Tabor. That was how Ribb had the book to pass on to me.

And by another coincidence, Tabor’s post on this appears the same
week, this week, that my own book, _Showdown at Big Sandy_ (2006)
is released and now publicly available, which on its pages 19-20 tells
this story of the impact of Schonfield’s book which happened
because of the unknown role of Tabor so long ago. (Description
and sample pages of _Showdown_ can be seen at the Web site.

And so the world turns…

Greg Doudna

I just received word this week that The Jesus Dynasty is on the non-fiction best-seller lists in both Germany and Italy--these are the editions I have mentioned before in those languages. I am beginning to get some very interesting responses, both informally from readers as well as more formal treatments in the Press. I will be highlighting some of the queries and issues that are coming out of these venues over the next few weeks. I am scheduled to fly to Europe the first week of November to give several public talks, lectures, and interviews about the book. The Dutch publisher is bringing me over, as that edition is scheduled for release the end of this month.

I also plan to post an extensive entry on the whole idea of “The Two Messiahs” based on some of the recent work I have done with one of my graduate students who chose this as a topic of research in an advanced seminar that Dr. Michael Stone of Hebrew University is conducting this semester at UNC Charlotte. Dr. Stone, distinguished professor from Hebrew University and expert in both ancient Judaism and ancient Armenian studies is spending a year here as a visiting professor. He has brought a wonderful presence here in Charlotte within the community and among our graduate students, as well as in the larger North Carolina region with its impressive concentration of Judaic Studies expertise. In the Spring Dr. Stone will be teaching an advanced course for both undergraduates and graduates.

For over 40 years, since the publication of the best-selling book The Passover Plot by Hugh Schonfield in 1965, I have been avidly reading “Jesus books,” i.e., books that attempt to offer an historical analysis of the central question–what do we really know about Jesus and how do we know it? Over the decades I have collected most of them and I often found myself with a new book in hand, flipping through it, and reading the final chapters first, anxious to see how the author would deal with what I found to be one of the most fascinating questions regarding the historical Jesus–the empty tomb.

Schonfield’s book really centered on that issue. He argued that Jesus “plotted” his crucifixion and his subsequent survival, and with the help of several loyal supporters was taken away to recover from his wounds, thus accounting for the tomb being empty. I well rememer the absolute stir of controversy Schonfield’s book caused. It was recently issued in a 40th anniversary edition and if any of you have never read it I would highly recommend it. I am not at all persuaded by his theory of the “Passover plot,” but the book is a thrill to read and contains much good history and lots of provocative ideas. Schonfield was a bit of a maverick scholar, but he was a trained academic and one always full of provocative ideas and new and creative interpretations of data. I corresponded with him over a period of a few years until his death in 1988. I might mention that although The Passover Plot was by far his most successful book, of the 40 or so works that he published, the one I would most highly recommend for its enduring value is the sequel titled Those Incredible Christians.

I should add here that Schonfield was a great admirer of Jesus and considered him a hero for representing and forwarding the advancement of Israel’s Messianic hopes and dreams. In fact, late in life, Schonfield was instrumental in forming a society, now called The World Trust Service, dedicated to a recovery of a “Messianic vision,” of a “Servant nation,” that would lead the world toward peace and justice. It is still in operation today.

I mention The Passover Plot because for me it was a kind of “coming of age.” It was an introduction, on a popular level, to some of the alternative approaches to the historical Jesus and Christian Origins to the rather fundamentalist version of things I had been exposed to as a child growing up, and through my undergraduate years in college.

But back to the empty tomb. What I appreciated about Schonfield is that he believed historians had to take seriously the “empty tomb.” By far most critical scholars have taken the position that the story in our earliest gospel, in Mark 16 (which forms the core upon which Matthew, Luke, and John are based), where women come to Jesus’ tomb early Sunday morning and find it empty of his body, has no historical basis and was concocted long after the events in order to bolster the preaching of Christians that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Thus to seriously discuss “how the tomb became empty” would be a worthless enterprise–since the whole thing was made up. Some have even argued that Jesus was not buried at all, but that his body was left on the cross to decay as a final shame inflicted by the Romans upon a potential rebel.

I have never found such arguments convincing. It seems to me that the fundamental core story of the early Sunday morning visit by the women followers of Jesus to his tomb has a ring of authenticity. I believe that Jesus was really dead, and that he was hastily put into that garden tomb nearby just as the sun was setting and Passover drew near. I am further convinced that the women who visited the tomb on Sunday morning, with the intention of completing the rites of Jewish burial and putting Jesus in a permanent resting place, were shocked to find the tomb empty. What I question are the stories of the extensive “appearances” of Jesus that day in Jerusalem to Peter, John, and the rest of his Disciples, and over the next few days, as reported by Luke and John.

Mark has the tomb empty, but no appearances or sightings of Jesus at all (the original ending is at 16:8). He does believe that Jesus is raised from the dead, but in his story the women are explicitly told that the Disciples will meet Jesus in Galilee. Matthew also lacks these stories of appearances in Jerusalem that day and over the next weeks. Instead he records a mountain top experience in Galilee, one that sounds very similar to the visionary experience of the Transfiguration, where some of the Eleven disciples were convinced, and others doubted–that they had really seen Jesus (Matthew 28:16).

What this tells me is that the earliest traditions about the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus had nothing about these Jerusalem appearances to Peter, John, James, and the Twelve. Instead their focus was on “seeing Jesus in Galilee.” These Jerusalem stories seem to come to us from Paul, who records them in 1 Corinthians 15. They are then expanded into narrative forms in Luke and John. I find it very hard to believe that Mark and Matthew knew such stories and simply left them out. They do not include them, if they have even heard them, because they do not consider them a part of the early and most authentic tradition. It is Luke, the great advocate of Paul and his mission and message, who first fleshes out for us a whole set of narratives about appearances to Peter, various other disciples, and the Twelve, in Jerusalem.

For that reason, it seems to me, our focus should really be on Galilee, since both Mark and Matthew, our earliest non-Pauline witnesses, know nothing other than this tradition. John also knows of this Galilee tradition, and yet it is only in his “appended” chapter 21–after he has basically closed out his story in 20:30-31, with its Jerusalem stories, that he mentions it. I think this is very important and most telling–particularly since that final chapter 21 of John has the disciples returning to their fishing businesses in Galilee, which makes no sense at all if they have been eating and hanging out with the risen Jesus in Jerusalem for weeks following the crucifixion. What we have in John is a precious bit of independent tradition, that goes well with Mark and Matthew, regarding the recovery of “faith” in Galilee.

But back to the empty tomb. I think the essential key to understanding why the tomb was empty is to realize that there is no evidence whatsoever that this tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea. It is amazing to me how strongly traditions can be built on a thread. Mark, our earliest Gospel does not mention this as Joseph’s tomb, though he has Joseph burying Jesus, nor does Luke or John! If Joseph was the owner it is inconcievable that they would leave this out. Only Matthew tries to make this connection, and it is clearly an addition of his to his Markan source. His interest is in showing prophecy fulfilled, namely that Joseph was a “rich man,” so that if Jesus is put in his tomb it would be a fulfillment of Isaiah 53 where the Suffering Servant is buried with a rich man. What John adds to the tradition sheds even further light on this matter. John is very good on geography, place, and location. He knows details that the Markan/Synoptic tradition simply lacks. John says that the tomb in which Jesus was hastily buried just before the Passover began was “in a garden, near the place of crucifixion.” In other words he makes clear that this was a burial of necessity, of opportunity. To imagine Joseph of Arimathea just “happening” to have a family tomb nearby is incredulous, and since we can clearly see how and why Matthew alone makes this connection, there is no reason to give it any veracity.

So what we are left with is quite interesting. What this means is that we would expect the tomb to be empty! Jesus was hastily put in this tomb with no time for carrying out full and proper burial rites just to hold things until after the Sabbath. It was not a tomb that belonged to anyone in the movement or the group. The core followers, after all, were from Galilee, not Jerusalem. They could hardly carry a corpse to a home or guesthouse, nor could they just leave it in the open. Since an unfinished tomb was nearby it makes good sense that Jesus’ body was put there and a stone was moved to block the entrance, keeping the corpse safe from jackels and other predators. So, the point is, this tomb was never intended to be a final resting place for Jesus, so we would expect his body to be moved in a relatively short period of time–as soon as arrangement could be made for permanent burial.

Whether Jesus was subsequently and permanently buried in the Jerusalem area, or as I think might be more likely, in the Galilee, where he was from, we will perhaps never know. What we can know, however, is that the entire Jerusalem tradition is likely late and based on Paul, and written by Luke and John in the last decades of the 1st century, when all those involved were dead. Mark, in contrast, can be dated around 65 AD, before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. That he knows nothing of these Jerusalem appearances to the apostles is most telling.

I realize that many of my critics, coming from an evangelical Christian persuasion, have asked–what about all the appearances, what about the sealing of the tomb, what about the earthquake, and the testimony of all those eyewitness? How can you simply reject that out of hand? The answer is a simple one–Mark, our earliest gospel, knows nothing of such things! They only come to us as late embellishments of the tradition, written in the 80s and 90s AD, when Christianity has begun to solidify into its Pauline contours. And further, the Galilee tradition is early and grounded in Mark, Matthew, and the addition to John. We should give it priority. We will never know what actually happened in Galilee but what we can be sure of is that the little discouraged and disheartened group, having returned to their homes and business, found a renewal of their faith in Jesus and his cause living on–despite his death. To insist that that faith depended upon the corpse of Jesus walking out of the tomb and making all sorts of appearances in Jerusalem, and then rising off the Mt. of Olives into the clouds and disappearing the the heavens–well that is clearly the stuff of legend and mythology.

When the group returned to Jerusalem for Shavuot or Pentecost, approximately seven weeks after the crucifixion, they apparently have reconstituted themselves, with James at their head, and a strong commitment to carry on the work of their beloved Teacher Jesus, whose spirit they surely felt as if he were still with them. I am convinced that this is the most credible historical explanation of the empty tomb, and it does the best job of accounting for the ways in which the movement survived, went on, and maintained its vitality. And because it is credible, in the end, for rational people, it can be more inspiring than stories of revived corpses and bodies ascending the heaven.

My book The Jesus Dynasty has gotten extraordinary attention with many press reviews and other informal news stories. Academic reviews by colleagues and qualified scholars often come slowly in this business. So far, six months after publication, I have seen none until this week. Prof. Dennis E. Groh, noted scholar of early Christianity, has graciously given me a copy of his own review of my book that he prepared in conjunction with my visit to Illinois Wesleyan University as a lecturer this week. I have his permission to pass it along on this Blog. Dr. Groh has his Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He was subsequently hired at Garrett Theological Seminary/Northwestern University where he reached the rank of full Professor. He is retiring this semester from his post as Professor of Humanities and Archaeology, and University Chaplain at Illinois Wesleyan University and will devote his time to writing. He has served as President of the North American Patristics Society and is the author or co-author of six books and over 100 articles. Perhaps his most enduring and notable contribution is his study, with Professor Robert Gregg of Stanford University, titled Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (1981), unfortunately now out of print. This single work has completely tranformed our understanding of “how Jesus became God” and the history and development of what is called “Christology.” It is rare that a single book transforms an entire field–but that was in fact the impact of Groh & Gregg on Arianism. Dr. Groh is not only a textual scholar but a highly accomplished and widely experienced archaeologist. I truly appreciate his input and perceptive evaluation and to have a person of his stature and accomplishment to review my book is truly an honor.

James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty. The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006. ISBN # 13: 978-0-7432-8723-4

Is there anyone who has been so cut off from the religious scholarship and news reporting of the last decade that s/he does not realize that our portrait of the person and message of Jesus has been seriously “messed with,” if not “messed over” [i.e., intentionally distorted] as it has been transmitted to us in the traditions of both the New Testament and early catholic Christianity? We can now add to the myriad of books offering new pictures of what has come to be called “The Jesus Movement” yet another reinterpretation of its founder and progress.

James D. Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, a distinguished scholar of the texts and archaeology of first century Palestinian movements, has written a book that offers a real alternative to historic interpretations of Jesus founded on, and (he thinks) obscured by, the literature of early Gentile Christianity—most notably Paul’s letters and Luke/Acts. In fact, Tabor proposes a different list of literary sources from which he reconstructs a far different picture of Jesus and his movement, one that builds on Jewish prophetic and royal messianic movements:

“The Christianity we know from the Q* source, from the letter of James, from the Didache, and some of our other surviving Jewish-Christian sources, represents a version of the Jesus faith that can actually unite, rather than divide, Jews, Christians, and Muslims . . . or at least open wide new and fruitful doors of dialogue and understanding among these three great traditions that have in the past considered their views of Jesus to be so sharply contradictory as to close off discussion.” (316).

Tabor has utilized recent archaeological finds from first century Jewish ossuaries to stabilize and verify the authenticity of family names attributed to Jesus by the New Testament and other literary remains of the period; he has leaned heavily on the genealogical tables of the Gospels and upon the notices in the New Testament and contemporary literature on the relatives of Jesus; he has drawn on the picture of contemporary Messianic prophecy and scriptural fulfillment from Qumran and the New Testament; he has mined early Christianity for notices of so-called “Jewish Christianity”; and he has accepted as historically accurate many statements from the narrative framework of the Gospels, usually ignored by biblical scholars as purely theological constructs. The picture of Jesus, his expectations, and the successor movement we know as early Christianity departs in a completely different direction from the Christianity long-associated with triumphant Gentile Christianity—that of Paul and Luke/Acts.

Briefly stated, Tabor’s thesis can be summarized as follows:

Jesus was “the firstborn son of a royal family—a descendant of King David of ancient Israel. He really was proclaimed ‘King of the Jews’ and was executed by the Romans for this claim.” (4). Neither a religion-founder or a church-founder, “he established a royal dynasty drawn from his own brothers and immediate family.” (4). The Hebrew Prophets which pointed to a leader from this blood line in the Last Days and the Dead Sea Scrolls gave precision to this expectation that Herod’s house and the Roman rulers worried about and watched-out for. “Shortly before he died, Jesus set up a provisional government with twelve regional officials, one over each of the twelve tribes or districts of Israel, and he left his brother James as the head of this fledgling government. James became the uncontested leader of the early Christian movement. This significant fact of history has been largely forgotten, or as likely, hidden. Properly understood, it changes everything we thought we knew about Jesus. . . . The pivotal place of James, the beloved disciple and younger brother of Jesus, has been effectively blotted from Christian memory.” (4-5).

Not surprisingly, such a radical thesis from so respected a scholar has generated a storm of discussion plus an unusual amount of curiosity in the wider public. The Jesus Dynasty was featured on ABC 20/20 and Nightline, the centerpiece of a cover story by USNews and World Report**, and shot immediately upon publication to number 22 on the New York Times best-seller list.

Some key conclusions of Tabor’s—ossuary evidence confirming Jesus’ familial names (including accepting the authenticity of the disputed “James Ossuary”); his assertion that Jesus’ brothers and sisters were children of Mary by a second marriage (likely to Clopas or Alphaeus, the brother of Joseph); the location of Jesus’ probable permanent burial [hence, Tabor’s denying any resurrection claims], along with that of James, somewhere near the Mount of Olives where he thinks Jesus was actually crucified—really push the boundaries of the evidence to its extremities. And his case is not helped by “what if” thinking that he reports from various historic locations he visits in ancient Palestine. But despite its radical ragged-edges and popularist speculations, this book makes a major contribution to a new picture of Jesus which takes into account very crucial and completely disregarded aspects of early Christianity. I want to take you on a sampling of three “soundings” into Tabor’s research that show how truly interesting and controversial his work is.

1. Jesus Relationship to John the Baptizer. One of the clearest embarrassments of the written Gospels is the priority in time and importance of John the Baptizer. John not only began the “Kingdom” preaching first; it was John who baptized Jesus, not the other way around. The writers of the four Gospels respond by stressing the clear superiority of Jesus to John, emphasizing that he was only a forerunner of or witness to Jesus’ messianic status (cf. 136-137). ). Here, Tabor turns to the Q* document’s saying in Luke 7:26, that there is “no one greater than John,” which Luke or the early Christians amended to, “yet the least in the kingdom is greater than he” (136). Clearly, Jesus had considered John an equal in the original form of the saying. Another Q saying preserved in Luke 7:32-34 (which Tabor does not cite) underscores the contention that early in his ministry, Jesus considered John and him to be equal partners in announcing the news of the Kingdom. Thus when Jesus’ disciples ask to be given a prayer, as were the disciples of John, Tabor suggests the Lord’s Prayer Jesus taught his disciples was the very one he himself learned from John (137).

In Tabor’s complicated and intriguing reconstruction, early in his ministry Jesus moved south into Judea baptizing while John remained baptizing in the north—at the crossroads of Herod’s territory, the Galilean routes south, and the safety of western Transjordan (that is, out of what he supposed was the “reach” of Herod Antipas). Drawing on the Qumran literature, Tabor argues for a joint message to Israel delivered in concert by the Priest Messiah (John the Baptizer) and a Davidic Royal Messiah (Jesus) (pp. 147-150).

“Later, after Jesus’ death, when a replacement on the Council of Twelve was chosen for Judas Iscariot. . .it was specified that only candidates who had been with Jesus and the group ‘beginning from the baptism of John’ would be considered for this important office (Acts 1:22). Christians later tended to separate the two movements—that of John the Baptizer and Jesus, as if one was ‘Jewish’ and the other ‘Christian.’ In the lifetime of Jesus, and among his immediate followers, there was one unified movement and one baptism.” (150). It is only with the shocking and sudden arrest and killing of John, that Jesus realizes he must go on alone proclaiming: “the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand.” (157).

2. Jesus’ Genealogy and Family. While most scholars skirt the genealogies of Jesus that open Matthew and Luke, Tabor mines them for the strange inclusions that appear there. He treats the information as historical data and not just as the Gospel writers’ inventions of interwoven quotations from the Septuagint [i.e., the Greek translation of Hebrew Scripture cited in the New Testament]. These genealogies provide Tabor with important clues to Jesus dynastic claims. Noting that especially Luke includes the names of women associated with the Leviticus (Priestly) tradition, he argues that Mary possess both the Davidic and Priestly lines of descent which she passes on to Jesus (56). In fact, Mary has both the royal and priestly lines one expects in an “anointed king” [a priestly king; cf. Aaron, actually the first ‘Messiah’ in the bible: Exodus. 40:12-15]. (56). The Talpiot family tomb-find (near Jerusalem) shows another first century example of the family association brought about through the intermarriage of individuals descended from both Priestly and Davidic lines (51-56).

Most importantly to Tabor is the fact that all four Gospels avoid claiming paternity for Joseph, thus clearing the way for him to argue for an unknown (human) father for Jesus and a second marriage for Mary (61-62), producing the four brothers and two sisters of Jesus that Mark 6:3 mentions (73).

It is on his biological family that Jesus builds his dynastic hopes: “Jesus by age thirty functions as head of the household and forges a vital role for his brothers, who succeed him in establishing a Messianic Dynasty destined to change the world. This extended family of Jesus is the foundation of the mostly forgotten and marginalized Jesus dynasty and it is long overdue for resurrection. By restoring the various historical possibilities related to the family, we are prepared to gain a truer understanding of Jesus and how he might have understood what he believed was his God-ordained mission as Messiah and King of a restored nation of Israel.” (81).

3. The Leadership of the Jerusalem Church. Despite efforts to skip over, or minimize, the fact, when the curtain opens after Jesus death, James leads the The Twelve. The leadership of the early New Testament church has passed to Jesus brothers, especially James.
“This is perhaps the best-kept secret in the entire New Testament: Jesus’ own brothers were among the so-called Twelve Apostles.” (165).

Everyone assumes that Jesus brothers never believed in him. “This spurious opinion is based on a single phrase in John 7:5 that many scholars consider to be a late interpolation. Modern translation even put it in parentheses.” (165). James, in fact, is not only a disciple; he is the beloved disciple (165).

Thus, the latter part of Tabor’s book is spent carefully introducing the kind of Christianity that was dominant in the succession of Jesus relatives [note: not Peter] as heads of their church (until 106 CE) (291-293), whose movement continued to exist into the fourth century CE. The theology of this earliest movement existed in sharp contradistinction to the Pauline views of the heavenly, divine Christ whose Gospel abrogated the Jewish Law. For the Jesus Movement, who saw themselves as “faithful Jews” (not “Christians,” and certainly not “Jewish Christians”), no abrogation of the Law, no matter how widely the good news was to be proclaimed, was ever conceived (266). Paul’s insistence that the Law was a temporary or custodial guardian until Christ or a “temporary revelation” and his bitter polemic against Jewish observance was totally different from the Messianic Movement’s proclamation and aims (cf. 267).

I have only scratched the surface of this book in the three soundings above; but I encourage you to read it for yourselves. Because Tabor is constructing a new thesis on all kinds of evidence, a number of his statements are educated “guesses” and speculation to be tested by future information and study (cf. his discussion of DNA evidence, pp 11-12, 14, 22). Many who read this book will be outraged by his arguments and conclusions. But, from my point of view, a thesis rarely flies into my scholarly life out of nowhere that makes me rethink my entire scholarly framework; and The Jesus Dynasty is certainly one of those very rare birds.

For contemporary “children of Abraham,” by emphasizing the human, prophetic, ethical and messianic center of the Jesus Movement, Tabor has put interfaith dialogue on an entirely different basis. He has set the very matrix and foundation of early Christianity back into a world comprehensible in terms of both ancient Judaism and the rise of Islam.

*Behind both Matthew and Luke was an oral sayings-collection common to both and unknown to Mark. The German word Quelle (or “Q”) which means “source” was given to this collection of sayings, which most scholars believe began as an oral source but was eventually written down, perhaps as early as 50 AD in a form that served as a source for Matthew and Luke, either directly or through one using the other’s work.
** Jay Tolson, “The Kingdom of Christ,” USNews and World Report, April 17, 2006, 49-55. This is a first-rate and easily-understandable review of Tabor’s and others’ views of Jesus, nicely set within the modern history of Jesus research.

I am en route to Bloomington, IL this morning, to do a reading, book signing, and lecture on The Jesus Dynasty at Illinois Wesleyan University. This highly rated and venerable University, founded in 1850, has quite an illustrious history with a Who’s Who’s of famous alumni. It is located in the heart of “Lincoln Country” and both Lincoln and Grant were from this area.

I go at the invitation of Dennis Groh, a notable scholar and professor of Early Christianity, and retiring University Chaplain. Denny and I go back a long way, first during my Chicago days when he was at Northwestern and I was finishing up at the University of Chicago and later teaching at Notre Dame. In the 1990s we dug together at Sepphoris and Denny has served as a an associate director of that excavation along with Tom Longstaff (retired from Colby College) and Tom McCollough (Centre College), under the supervision of Jim Strange (University of South Florida).

This is not my first visit to Illinois Wesleyan, nor my only contact with students and faculty there. In fact my associations there are thick and rich. I did a lecture there back in Y2K days, mostly summarized now in my published article: Why 2K? The Biblical Roots of Millennialism, published in Bible Review. I also met many Illinois Wesleyan students who came with Dr. Groh to dig at Sepphoris and some of them have kept up with me over the years, as well as with some of my UNC Charlotte students. April DeConick, with whom I have done two Biblical Archaeology Society Seminars now on “Lost Christianities,” was formerly at Illinois Wesleyan and Denny Groh is the one who first put me in touch with her. She now holds the Chair of Early Christianity at Rice University. Carol Myscofski, who was a fellow student of Jonathan Z. Smith during my University of Chicago days is also at Illinois Wesleyan, serving as Chair of the Religion Department.

BTW, April DeConick is the one who has just published a very important book, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, arguing that in its original form, before subsequent development, this important work reaches back to the Jerusalem Jesus movement led by James the Just, brother of Jesus. I hope to write more on this when I finish reading her book.

What I think is rather notable about this particular trip/lecture is that I will address the Thursday morning Chapel Service at the University speaking about the “historical Jesus” as I understand him, and his relevance for Christian faith today. It is surely a credit to Dr. Groh, who does not agree with all my conclusions in The Jesus Dynasty, to invite me to initiate such a dialogue. Dr. Groh is a church historian, an archaeologist, and a Christian theologian, so I could hardly ask for a richer context in which to explore some of the key ideas in my book. I am arriving with a fair amount of publicity, in that the local NPR station has carried an interview with me and Dr. Groh has done a good deal of promotion himself, including a nicely done critical review of my book which he privately circulated among his students. I am looking forward to a very stimulating time and I relish the opportunity to get into some of the issues that I anticipate this sharp and keen group of faculty and students will raise with me.

La Dinastia di Gesu was released in Italy on September 30th. It is published by Piemme I have already begun to hear from Italian readers. It will surely be interestlng to follow the reaction in various Roman Catholic areas of Europe, but Italy in particular. I have the impression so far that there is a great openness to historical research on Jesus even in traditionally Catholic regions.

The German edition, Die Jesus Dynastie, is the subject of a five page article, just out today, in Focus, the national newsmagazine of Germany. Along with Der Spiegel and Stern, it is one of the three such magazines in Germany, something akin to Newsweek.

Here is another Blog reveiw of The Jesus Dynasty by Tim Gebhart that recently showed up on Blogcritics.org. I thought I would pass it on to my readers. I thought it was fair and honest and I can’t ask for more than that. I am receiving similar “informal” reviews from all over the world now, several a day, as readers weigh in with questions, reactions, and comments on the book–now also translated into Portuguese, Japanese, German, Italian, and Dutch, with many more languages and countries to come. I am pleased that the book is having an impact, even with readers who can’t agree with all I say. No author could ask for more than to be fairly read and considered.
Book Review: The Jesus Dynasty by James D. Tabor

October 06, 2006

Tim Gebhart

The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity James D. Tabor

Run a Google search for “the historical Jesus” and you end up with more than 650,000 results. But the search for a historical Jesus itself isn’t anything new. In fact, not only did it start in the 18th century, but Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer published his classic work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, in 1906.

If anything, popular interest in Christianity’s origins has grown over the past several years with the success and attendant news coverage of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. The title of James D. Tabor’s nonfiction work, The Jesus Dynasty, would make it seem yet another entry in the market based on the premise that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and produced offspring. Tabor’s work, however, is a serious exploration of the so-called historical Jesus and the origins and development of what we now call Christianity.

The Jesus Dynasty does contains some assertions that will attract attention and even be considered heresy. For example, Tabor not only postulates that Jesus was fathered by a man but also that his mother, Mary, was married more than once. But these are not the main points of the book, merely factors Tabor uses to develop his theme.

Tabor points to history, the Christian canon, works that were excluded from the Bible and archaeological evidence to advance a theory that is, at bottom, quite simple and not unique. According to Tabor, Jesus was a follower of John the Baptist and together they founded a Messianic movement. This was not the type of messiah as Jesus is viewed today. Rather, John (who Tabor calls John the Baptizer) and Jesus were messiahs in the sense that John, representing the priestly line descended from Aaron, and Jesus, representing the royal line descended from David, were destined to bring to Judaism “God’s kingdom on Earth.” Tabor argues that prior to his death, Jesus entrusted control of the movement to his brother, James, and that for decades thereafter James and other brothers of Jesus led the movement. That is the dynasty – the leadership of this movement were all descendants of Mary.

Similarly, Tabor, the chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, asserts that Jesus was not establishing a new religion. Instead, Jesus was a Jew whose Messianic Movement was an apocalyptic one in which the kingdom of God would be realized on earth if Israel repented and fully embraced the Torah and the prophets. This kingdom would be one in which the earth would be filled with the knowledge of God. Thus, Jesus’ message was attempting to teach the moral, spiritual and ethical principles that would enable the realization of that kingdom.

How, then, did the “Jesus Dynasty” and its principles become what is now known as Christianity? Tabor says those ideas came from Saint Paul. Although Jesus designated his brother as his successor, Paul managed to gain popular control and converted John the Baptizer into a follower rather than a leader and Jesus from a man to the son of God. Tabor points out how the gospels and other literature of the time reflect this change and how his theories are far more consistent with 1st century ideas and thought than what is accepted today.

Tabor makes a well-reasoned and credible, although not always compelling, case. If anything, he suffers the same hindrances as others seeking the historical Jesus. There is certainly no definitive information and, thus, conclusions must be based on personal analysis of particular parts of the puzzle. Plainly, others can – and do – reach different conclusions looking at the identical evidence or by emphasizing other evidence. And this is where The Jesus Dynasty tends to suffer. Tabor tends to make definitive statements when, in fact, he is expressing his opinion.

For example, he writes, “By the time he was thirty years old [Jesus] had begun to formulate a plan that he believed would lead to the complete overthrow of all that Rome and its Jewish sympathizers and supporters represented[.]” Similarly, Tabor later notes that in traveling to Capernaum in northern Galilee prior to Passover in 27 A.D., “Jesus definitely had something strategic in mind.” While Tabor can muster evidence to support these positions, it is impossible for him to definitively state that Jesus formulated a plan or that anything he did was a strategic move. Yet these are just two of many instances of Tabor asserting his hypotheses as fact. While that may make the book readable, it cannot help but undercut trust in whether other statements are ones of fact or theory.

Still, The Jesus Dynasty is a highly readable exploration of not only Christian origins but also life in the 1st century and Jewish tradition and customs. In fact, when Tabor takes the reader to various archeological sites, you can understand the excitement he expresses about being there. It is rare that an alternative exploration of Christian history and its original thought comes in such a non-polemic and entertaining package.

Tim Gebhart lives in Sioux Falls, SD, where he practices law in order to provide shelter for his family, his dog, and his books. His blog de guerre is A Progressive on the Prairie.

My thanks to Blogger Gertjan from the Netherlands for a refreshingly dispassionate review of my book with a nice academic and balanced tone. The book is out in Dutch and I will be traveling to Holland and Belgium in November, but I am not sure if Gertjan read it in English or in Dutch…I hope this kind of approach to the book will be typical of many Europeans who are less interested in Theological Tradition and Dogma and more interested in History as we can construct it…

He writes the following:
Dr. Singor –who is one of my teachers– advised us to read the book ‘The Jesus Dynasty’ by prof. dr. James D. Tabor. I bought it, read it and am incredibly impressed. The remaining part of this blogpost will be about this book.

The Jesus Dynasty by James D. Tabor.

First of all a negative, this book was published in the mediahype that surrounds Dan Brown’s ‘Davinci Code’ it yells the same silly screams on the cover like ‘Stunning New Evidence’ ‘The Story of Jesus: The Facts’ etc. Let’s blame the publisher for this since what you get is the thesis of Tabor, historian and archaeologist, who for over forty years has been part of archaeological teams in Israel and expert scientist in understanding the New Testament. What he does in ‘The Jesus Dynasty’ is to give us his scientific ideas on the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth. ‘Scientific’ means in this case – for all you ‘I-know-Christian-history-because-I read-Dan-Brown’ persons out there – theory based on the interpretation of facts compared to theory based on the interpretation of well, nothing. But to get it over with, and reduce the amount of Brown-bashing: Brown is a fantast, Tabor a scientist. Tabor creates a stunning picture of Jesus as a Jew who at first belonged to the messianic sect of his kinsman John the Baptist to grow out to become one of its leaders. Tabor works around the idea that Jewish religion was not waiting for one but for two messiahs – the priest and the king – who openly challenged the established authorities to bring the Kingdom of God on earth. References to the coming of the Son of Man are to be interpreted as the re-establishing of the people of Israel instead of directly linking to Jesus himself. Tabor continues to create a restive Palestine whose Israelite citizens are eager to see the coming of God in their days. Based on the prophecies of the Torah, and the interpretation of John the Baptist and Jesus all signs are pointing to the fulfilment and the end of the Age. I help you remember that we are still talking scientific theory here and not Brownite overinterpretation.

After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus and his family are continuing his work. Nobody can tell whether or not Jesus himself believed he would be rescued by God from the cross, it is very likely that he would have expected the apocalypse during the Passover festival. After his death his followers were lead by his brother James the Just. Up until the crucifixion Tabor reconstructs the messianic movement in its historic context. After Jesus’ death he tries to rebuild his true teachings through James. He basically works with the idea that Paul ‘hijacked’ the group’s messianic, apocalyptic, Jewish teachings. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God would be established on earth, he would be king but there was no need for armed rebellion, because God would come to free the oppressed and the righteous. Jesus saw himself as the teacher of a message. Paul made him, in order to be able to work among the Romans and convert non-Jews, into the message himself. Paul claimed Jesus to be the Son of Man and created the spiritual Kingdom of God in Heaven. In short Paul made Jesus God. Jesus never did and his brothers were appalled by these teachings. Through deduction and scientific textual analysis Tabor and others have managed to find parts of the New Testament, non-biblical gospels and texts that refer to the original ideas of Jesus and his family. Ideas that have been overgrown by Christian mysticism and theology which deified Jesus, his mother and disciples instead of realizing the value of their human ideas.

“Love God first, and your fellow human as yourself, and whatever you find hateful to yourself, do not do to another, but do others as you would have them do to you. This is the essence of the Torah and the prophets. Don’t think I came to destroy the Torah or the prophets; I came to fulfill. Whoever relaxes one of the least of the commandments will be considered “least” by those in the Kingdom of God. Be doers of the Torah and not hearers only, for faith without works is dead.”

Jesus was a Jew and never intended his teachings to become the foundation of a contending religion. Tabor ends his work with the notion that although controversial, his work is intended to build and not to tear down. He states that with new interest in the historic figure and ideas of Jesus of Nazareth the three world religions can actually grow towards each other. He quotes the Jewish philosopher Buber: “I do not believe in Jesus but I believe with him”. Tabor’s ideas make striking connections with the way the prophet Isa (Jesus) is depicted in the Qu’ran which clearly rejects all Pauline doctrine. Without ever degrading these doctrines Tabor managed to make his point in the ‘Jesus Dynasty’ brilliantly. As a bonus, he proves that history can be much more intriguing than any made-up story. He has written in a popular language so his work is easily accessible to any non-historians, non-theologians and non-whateverians. In short, I am going to lend this book to a lot of people!