The Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

I hope I did not shock regular readers of this Blog in posting Pope Benedict XVI’s end of the year message regarding Mary below. I was just so very struck by the language that so well represented the stark contrast between a more historical view of Mary, or let’s call her more acturately, Miriam, the very Jewish mother of Jesus, and the theological dogma that has developed over the centuries.

It is interesting that in the time of Jesus the name “Miriam” was by far the most common name for Jewish women, honoring the sister of Moses and Aaron, and to this day, among religious Jews, Miriam remains the most common name for women.

It is surely more than odd that a historical view of Mary/Miriam, mother of Jesus, is so out of step with this theological, or perhaps more propertly, this mythological view, that is so clearly represented here by the foremost spokesperson on earth for the Christian view of things–namely the Roman Catholic Pope.

What history tells us is that Miriam, who lived and died as a Jewish woman was the mother of seven extraordinary children–Jesus and his four brothers and two sisters. They grew up in the small Jewish village of Nazareth, just south of the Hellenistic metropolis of Sepphoris. Jesus father remains uncertain, but whether Joseph was the father of his siblings, or perhaps, as I argue in The Jesus Dynasty, his brother Clophas, the Jesus family and its contributions to the Messianic movement heralded by Jesus, deserves its proper place in our historical memory.

Unfortunately, the kind of theology represented by the Pope’s message below, robs both Jesus and his brothers and sisters, not to mention the mother that bore them, of their humanity. The very concept of an asexual “mother of God” is alien and foreign to Jewish culture and to the Hebrew Bible. Such ideas, so very familiar in “pagan” Greco-Roman culture were brought into the Jesus movement decades after the death of Jesus and were unknown even to our earliest Christian witnesses–the apostle Paul, the Q source, and the gospel of Mark. They could only thrive after 70 AD when James the brother of Jesus was dead and the original Jewish followers of Jesus were scattered with little influence or effect on the increasingly Gentile movement that was growing up outside the land of Israel. It seems that just about everything was “transferred” to a heavenly realm, and the original message of the Kingdom of God, for which Jesus lived and died, was largely lost and forgotten.
Unfortunately, Miriam as the extraordinary Jewish mother of Jesus and his siblings was lost, forgotten, or outright denied. Mary “mother of God” and “queen of heaven,” a perpetual virgin, and eventually even a divine mediator to whom one could pray, became the enshrined and dominant view.

When one backs off a bit from the theology and the mythology, the ideas reflected in the Pope’s message, as pious as they might sound to some, are in fact a kind of travesty on what she was in reality–that is the Jewish mother of Jesus and his family. It is indeed commendable that so many millions of people in our time want to remember Mary, mother of Jesus–whether Catholic or Protestant, but could removing her from her own children, and all she held dear, in terms of her life and faith, by any stretch of the imagination be considered “devotion” to her memory? I have taken more “flak” and criticism for my portrayal of Mary in The Jesus Dynasty than any other single subject I cover in the entire book. And yet, ironically, I truly believe that what I presented shows honor to Mary in a way that is long overdue.

MOTHER OF GOD, INTERCEDE TO BRING PEACE AND COMFORT

VATICAN CITY, DEC 31, 2006 (VIS) - In the Vatican Basilica at 6 p.m. today, the Pope presided at the first Vespers for the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God, and the singing of the “Te Deum” of thanksgiving for the end of the year.

In his homily, the Holy Father referred to the dimension of time, saying: “In the closing hours of each solar year, we witness the repetition of certain worldly ‘rites’ which, in the modern world, are prevalently aimed at enjoyment, often experienced as escape from reality, almost as if to exorcise negative elements and propitiate improbable turns of fortune. How different must the attitude of the Christian community be, … called to live these hours by making their own the sentiments of the Virgin Mary,” so that, with her, they may present to Jesus “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted.”

” Mary’s maternity,” the Pope explained, “is at one and the same time a human and a divine event. … The Son of God was begotten by Him, and at the same time is the son of a woman, Mary. He comes from her. He is of from God and from Mary. For this reason the Mother of Jesus can and must be called Mother of God.”

Pope Benedict called upon the “Theotokos,” the Mother of God, to intercede for the world entire, entrusting to her care “situations in which only the grace of the Lord can bring peace, comfort and justice.”

“We ask the Mother of God to obtain for us the gift of a mature faith, a faith which we would like, as far as possible, to resemble her own, a clear and genuine faith, humble and at the same time courageous, saturated with hope and enthusiasm for the Kingdom of God; a faith removed from all fatalism and that aims to cooperate in full and joyous obedience to the divine will, in the absolute certainty that God wants nothing other than love and life, always and for everyone.”

Following the celebration, in keeping with tradition, the Pope visited the nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square.

Two bits of news regarding The Jesus Dynasty:
In the UK following a prime-time special on Channel 4 that aired Christmas Eve titled “The Secret Family of Jesus,” the British edition of The Jesus Dynasty broke into the “Bestseller” ranking on the Amazon.uk Web site reaching number 16. A sample segment of the second half of the program is up on the Web on You Tube (titled “Jesus and the Rise of Christianity”).

The Jesus Dynasty in German (Die Jesus Dynastie) has climbed back on the bestseller list in Germany this opening week of 2007.

Well late last night the Associated Press sent out a new version of the Qumran “Latrine” theory that Joe Zias and I released in November based on our forthcoming article on the subject in Revue de Qumran (an academic periodical devoted to Qumran/DSS matters). One the AP gets hold of something and puts it out on the wire it moves fast so I woke up this morning to hundreds of “Latrine” stories worldwide, from USAToday to the WashingtonPost, and yes, the phone is ringing off the hook (as we said in the days when our phones had hooks).

Why is this important? Mainly because it offers a strong link, despite the views of Golb, Magen and others, that the site of Qumran was indeed the spiritual center and HQ of the pre-Christian sectarian apocalyptic/messianic group that wrote the Scrolls, and further, that this group is one known to us in classical sources (Josephus, Pliny, Philo) by the name “Essene.” The connections between John the Baptist, Jesus, and James, to this movement is explored extensively in my book, and has been well set forth by James Charlesworth, John J. Collins, Peter Flint, James Vanderkam, and yes, even the oft ignored Robert Eisenman, particularly in terms of central core ideas and vocabulary and parallel traditions.

Anyway, here is the AP story as it appeared in the Washington Post and thanks to Zias for taking the reporter around the site and responding to questions:

Ancient Latrine Fuels Debate at Qumran
By MATTI FRIEDMAN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, January 2, 2007; 11:23 PM

QUMRAN, West Bank — Researchers say their discovery of a 2,000-year-old toilet at one of the world’s most important archaeological sites sheds new light on whether the ancient Essene community was home to the authors of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In a new study, three researchers say they have discovered the outdoor latrine used by the ancient residents of Qumran, on the barren banks of the Dead Sea. They say the find proves the people living here two millennia ago were Essenes, an ascetic Jewish sect that left Jerusalem to seek proximity to God in the desert.

Qumran and its environs have already yielded many treasures: the remains of a settlement with an aqueduct and ritual baths, ancient sandals and pottery, and the Dead Sea Scrolls _ perhaps the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century.

The scrolls, which include fragments of the books of the Old Testament and treatises on communal living and apocalyptic war, have shed important light on Judaism and the origins of Christianity.

Thanks to an Israeli anthropologist, an American textual scholar and a French paleo-parasitologist, researchers can now add another find: human excrement.

The discovery is more significant than it may seem. The nature of the settlement at Qumran is the subject of a lively academic debate.

The traditional view, supported by a majority of scholars since the site was first excavated in the 1950s, is that the settlement was inhabited by Essene monks who observed strict rules of ritual purity and celibacy and who wrote many of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The second school says the people living at Qumran were farmers, potters or soldiers, and had nothing to do with the Essenes. The scrolls, according to this view, were written in Jerusalem and stashed in caves at Qumran by Jewish refugees fleeing the Roman conquest of the city in the first century.

The researchers behind the latrine finding, which is being published in the scholarly journal “Revue de Qumran,” say it supports the traditional view linking the residents of Qumran with the Essenes.

A description of Essene practice by the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius in the first century notes that Essene rules required them to distance themselves from inhabited areas to defecate and “dig a trench a foot deep” which was to then be covered with soil.

Joe Zias, a Jerusalem-based anthropologist, and James Tabor, a Dead Sea Scrolls expert from the University of North Carolina, decided to look for the Qumran latrine. If it was far from the settlement ruins and if the excrement was buried, it would offer evidence the people living at the site were Essenes.

Zias and Tabor identified an area behind a rock outcropping, took soil samples and sent them to Stephanie Harter-Lailheugue, a French scientist specializing in ancient parasites. The samples tested positive for pinworms and two other intestinal parasites found only in human feces. Samples from locations nearer the settlement tested negative.

The excrement traces were found underground _ meaning the feces had been buried, as required by Essene law _ a nine-minute walk uphill from the settlement.

“A lot of people were concerned with what went into the body, but the Essenes were perhaps the only group in antiquity concerned with what came out,” Zias said. “No one else would have gone to the trouble of walking this far.”

Still, there is no way to date the fecal parasites, which could have been left by Bedouin who are known to have inhabited the area. To counter this, the paper quotes a Bedouin scholar as saying the nomadic tribespeople do not bury their feces.

Another problem is that archaeologists have already identified a toilet at Qumran _ inside the settlement. But Zias believes it was for emergencies: In some cases, divine commandments notwithstanding, nine minutes outside the camp was too far to go.

Norman Golb, a history professor at the University of Chicago and a critic of the link between Qumran and the Essenes, called the new paper “an outrageous claim.”

“There’s no plausible connection between what they found and the conclusion that the Essenes lived at Qumran,” Golb said. “Anyone living at the site would have done the same.”

Golb maintains that Qumran’s residents had nothing to do with the Essenes or the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those who claim a connection do so because “they’re committed in their writings to it,” Golb said.

Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Stephen Pfann, of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, said questions about the parasites’ age have to be cleared up, but the find is potentially significant.

Qumran, he says, could have been inhabited at different times by different groups: first by Jews of the Hasmonean dynasty in the second century, then by a monastic group of Essenes who left after an earthquake and were replaced by a lay group of Essene date farmers, then again by Essene ascetics, before being finally taken over by Jewish rebels fighting the Roman legions and abandoned when Judea fell.

“Qumran isn’t one thing, it’s many things,” Pfann said. “This makes it more exciting, but also more complicated to understand.”

© 2007 The Associated Press

There is an interesting discussion on James Crossley’s Blog, Earliest Christian History that picks up on some of the issues related to the ending of Mark and what evidence it might offer for alternative traditions regarding the empty tomb and resurrection appearances (see my Dec 17th post “The Priority of Mark: Some Important Implications“). I want to take up some of these in future posts, particularly regarding the notion that Paul’s account in 1 Corinthians 15 of the various “resurrection appearances” is “earlier” than Mark, and thus somehow more reliable or historical, as well as what we might imagine to be the case within Mark’s community regarding the notion of the “resurrection” of Jesus–which Mark clearly affirms.

Crossley, in my view, is one of the most fascinating scholars of “Christian origins” around. His latest book, Why Christianity Happened: A Sociohistorical Account of Christian Origins (26-50 CE) [Note please the early dates!) is a “must read” for those of us ever fascinated with new approaches to understanding Jesus, Paul, and the “movement” or “movements” that emerged under their influences. Crossley teaches at the University of Sheffield and studied with Maurice Casey. There is an interesting interview with him by Jim West (featured as Biblioblogs.com “Blogger of the Month”). Crossley’s previous book, Date of Mark’s Gospel offers an alternative early date (40s AD) to the standard dating (65-70 AD), and has stirred a fascinating discussion as to Mark’s relationship to Jesus and Paul.