Archive for March, 2009

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.

I wanted to update readers on the various foreign editions of The Jesus Dynasty. Just yesterday I received a copy of the new paperback of the Italian edition. The book has done very well in Italy and has been on bestseller lists, so having it out in a handsome paper edition is most welcome indeed. A few days ago I heard from a reader in Moscow who had just joined the new Facebook group, and who had picked up a copy in Russian–also just out.

Besides the hardcover and revised paperback U.S./Canadian editions (Simon & Schuster), The Jesus Dynasty has been published in hardcover and paperback in the UK (HarperCollins), and on CD, read by the author. The book is also now available in 14 languages:

Chinese (Complex/Taiwan); Czech; Dutch; French; German (hardcover and revised paperback); Hungarian; Indonesian; Italian (hardcover and revised paperback); Japanese; Portuguese (Portugal & Brazil); Russian; Slovak; Spanish and Swedish

It is soon to appear in: Bulgarian, Chinese (simplified/Mainland), Danish, Greek, Korean, Norwegian, Romanian.

The cover art and design is quite interesting in the various editions. As an author I have no say in such matters and it is always a surprise to see how a certain publisher has chosen to market my book. I have put scans of most of the covers on the Facebook Jesus Dynasty photo album and will add more over the next week or so.

For those of you who have a Facebook account, and if you do not you can create one by going to Facebook.com, I have created a new Facebook Group called The Jesus Dynasty. The following is a general description of the group:

“The Jesus Dynasty Facebook group draws together those who have learned and benefited from the insights presented in Dr. James D. Tabor’s book, The Jesus Dynasty. Its particular focus is on the historical Jesus understood within his messianic Jewish apocalyptic contexts and in keeping up with the latest in archaeological and historical research related thereto.”

I have received over 4000 e-mails from readers of my book, The Jesus Dynasty, since it came out in 2006. These responses are mostly from the US and Canada, but also from over a dozen foreign countries. Most of these responses have been positive, probably 98% or so, which does not mean everyone loves the book–not by any means. But it has been both gratifying and fascinating to hear from so many readers–and they have taught me a lot. Since my e-mail and the Web site is not published in the book itself this means that these people had to expend the effort to look me up and take the time to write. I have slowly responded personally to each of those readers and as a result there is a loosely joined “readers community” with whom I correspond. I thought it might be interesting to try to bring them together a bit more through this group for exchanges and social interaction. They are a motley crew, in the best sense of the phrase, with little they would agree upon other than a passion for understanding Jesus as a human being in his own time and place, and the repercussions thereof.

I look forward to seeing some of you around the Facebook cyberspace.

Please go to my new TaborBlog for latest regular posts.

I am pleased and humbly surprised to report that this new Blog, only a month old this week, made the latest listing of “Top 50 Biblioblogs,” coming in modestly at number 24. Since most of my regular readers were habitually wedded to this Jesus Dynasty site, I had not expected the migration of traffic to my new TaborBlog to be as successful as it has been in such a short time.

A “Biblioblog” is one that deals in some way with Biblical Studies and it turns out that in the Blogging World this area of discussion is very much alive and kicking. I can hardly keep up with things myself and I recommend readers who are not familar with all that is available to do a bit of browsing on some of these major sites. I am as impressed as I am amazed at how much fascinating material is available, day by day. week by week.

Thanks to Mark Elliot and the editors of the newly revived Web site Bible Interpretation for carrying a featured article on the latest report on our very exciting Mt Zion excavation in Jerusalem. You can read the report with pictures here. Bible Interpretation was, in my view, one of the finest sites on-line and it is great to see it back, up and running.

For more general information on the upcoming 2009 Dig Season at Mt Zion, as well as full reports, videos, pictures, and a history of this important excavation see our main Web site:

digmountzion.com

We accept volunteers of all ages and walks of life and students from any accredited college or university in the United States can enroll for academic credit. Please write me directly with any questions or comments: jdtabor@uncc.edu