Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

I want to highly, even extravagantly, recommend a book by Barrie Wilson, York University professor in Toronto, titled How Jesus Became Christian (New York: St. Martins Press, 2008; Random House in Canada). I will go so far as to say that I judge this single book to be one of the most important contributions to an understanding of Christian Origins published in many decades. Prof. Wilson’s book represents an absolute “sea change” in our understanding of how one moves from the historical Jesus (Jewish Prophet, Charismatic Healer, Teacher, Messiah figure), to the new religion called Christianity, created by the apostle Paul and given a definitive stamp of approval by what became the “standard story” of Christian Origins preserved in Luke-Acts.

Books that explore the “From Jesus to Paul” theme are quite common in the scholarly field: From Jesus to Paul (Klausner); The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity (Maccoby); From Jesus to Christ (Paula Fredrikson); From Jesus to Christianity (Michael White); Paul: Founder of Christianity (Lüdemann); and Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (Segal), to name a few more recent titles. However, in my view, Wilson has advanced the discussion miles beyond any previous work with his daring hypothesis regarding the stark and uncompromising dichotomy between what he calls the “Jesus Movement” and the “Christ Movement,” created and espoused singlehandedly by the apostle Paul. Wilson goes a long way to putting an end to the wishful thinking that there is somehow of some kind of continuity between Paul and his “gospel” and the message of James, Peter, and John, and those early Jewish followers of Jesus commonly known as “the Jerusalem Church.”

Wilson’s writing style is clear, his documentation is impeccable, and he makes his case with a strength and a level of persuasiveness that in my judgment leaves counter proposals in the wayside. The book is already a best-seller in Canada and it is beginning to climb the charts on Amazon in the U.S. Prof. Wilson also has a Web site, with many features and additional materials including an interview and Blog. The Toronto Globe and Mail had this to say in a recent review:

Jesus the Jew and the Christian Coverup:
HOW JESUS BECAME CHRISTIAN
By Barrie A. Wilson
Reviewed by Allan Levine
March 22, 2008

Forget about Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and fictional conspiratorial machinations about whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene had children, Barrie Wilson has produced a significant and sensational work of scholarship. And it is truly religious dynamite.

Acknowledging Jesus’s Jewish background is nothing new, but arguing, as Wilson does, that Christianity is largely the result of a deliberate and deceptive manipulation is more intriguing and contentious. “Jesus never converted to another religion,” Wilson claims. “Nor did he start one. If he were to return, he’d probably be amazed – perhaps bewildered or possibly even angry – at what has been created in his name.” Adding for good measure that, “of all the Jewish males who ever lived, Jesus was by far the most influential.”

A professor of humanities and religious studies at York University in Toronto, Wilson has drawn on decades of his own research into the history of early Christianity and, like the superb teacher he must be, invites readers to accompany him on a wondrous journey back in time to understand Jesus’s life, the ordeal of being a Jew in a world ruled by Romans, the construction of the New Testament, and the powerful forces that have transformed Western civilization.

Admittedly this is no easy task, but he pulls it off brilliantly. He is an academic who can write for a non-specialist audience and does so exceptionally well – guiding, explaining Scripture, and even creatively integrating imaginary newspaper columns and blogs into his prose. All of which brings Jesus and his epoch alive.

Using an array of biblical sources, both Jewish and Christian, he builds his case step by step, searching for clues in the Gospels, offering concise summaries, and posing difficult questions – many of which, he concedes, cannot be answered. We do not know, for example, the precise details of Jesus’s day-to-day life – his emotional state or the real reasons he opposed Roman rule – and probably never will. But it is possible to offer reasonable and intelligent speculations based on solid research. That is what Wilson does very well, and by the last page he has convincingly made his case.

The short version of Wilson’s thesis, which he calls the “Jesus Cover-Up Thesis,” is this: The spiritual figure that billions of Christians worship worldwide as the Son of God was, in fact, a Jew, a rabbi, and a revered teacher of the early first century who obeyed and championed the Torah. Jesus (or more accurately in Hebrew, Yehoshua or Yeshu) prayed in synagogue and urged his followers to adhere strictly to Jewish law. Only in this way, he promised, would the Kingdom of God become a reality. Wilson probes the Jewish roots of the Lord’s Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper (which is more commonly recognized as a Passover seder, although there were likely many more people in attendance than the 12 disciples portrayed in Leonardo da Vinci’s celebrated painting). In Wilson’s view, Jesus wanted to improve Jewish life, not abolish it. He did not proclaim himself to be a “Christ” figure or a “Son of God.” That came later.

Living as second-class citizens in their own country and dominated by a foreign power in Rome, Jews needed hope and Jesus provided it. His growing number of followers began to think of him as a “potential Messiah.” Led by Jesus’s brother, James – whose writings until recently have been largely ignored – these Jews established the “Jesus Movement.” After Jesus was killed by the Romans, in about 30 AD, they waited for him to return to create the promised Kingdom of God.

With James’s death in the early 60s, the Jesus Movement suffered a leadership crisis, and in Wilson’s words, was eventually “upstaged” and “hijacked” by the Christ Movement launched by Paul of Tarsus, a Hellenized Jew living in the Jewish Diaspora. The two movements should have remained separate and parallel religious sects, but subsequent events changed this. Paul did not know Jesus, yet nevertheless linked him to the Christ Movement. In the process, he tore Jesus from his Jewish roots.

Wilson shows that the most significant development in this synthesis occurred 60 years after both James and Paul died and was accomplished by the unknown author of the Book of Acts (part of the Gospel of Luke). This new “take” on Jesus was so credible that, as Wilson puts it, “we tend to think of Paul’s Movement as just another form of early Christianity. It wasn’t. It was a brand-new religion entirely.” It was thus what Wilson terms “Paulinity” – “a Hellenized religion about a Gentile Christ [and] a cosmic redeemer” – rather than the Jewish-inspired religion of Jesus, which was embraced by the Gentiles of the Roman world in the period from the second to the fourth centuries.

The New Testament is not a neutral document. The Gospels and other writings are arranged in a particular order to give weight to Paul’s interpretation of the link between the Jesus and the Christ Movements. Moreover, it was not sufficient for authors of several Gospels to distance Christianity from Judaism, they had to vilify it: Jews became equated with Satan. According to Wilson, this made the cover-up complete. The devastating result was religious anti-Semitism and the perpetuation of the accusation that the Jews killed Christ.

In fact, it was only one Jewish sect, the Sadducees, who turned against Jesus. They wanted to maintain the status quo with the Romans and feared that Jesus’s preaching about a Kingdom of God and altering the world was dangerous. Once the Romans accepted Christianity, it was not possible to blame them for Jesus’s death, so the Jews were identified in the Gospels and later Church decrees as the true evil murderers of the Son of God. Centuries of persecution followed.

One major reason, Wilson notes, for the hostile reaction to The Da Vinci Code was “its suggestion that Jesus was human.” And that criticism was levelled at a novel. Wilson’s firm belief that Christianity must refocus on the human and Jewish Jesus and accept the truth of the cover-up is sure to generate an even greater controversy.

The Toronto Globe and Mail, Canada’s leading newspaper, ran a story yesterday titled “University of Toronto Scientist Puts Odds on Lost Tomb” that headlines Prof. Andrey Feuerverger’s statistical conclusions on the Talpiot Jesus tomb. Award winning writer Michael Posner, author of the piece, also offers a kind of “state of the question” update on a number of current issues related to the academic discussion of the tomb and its significance. It can be accessed on-line .

U of T scientist puts odds on lost tomb

Chance that ancient Jerusalem burial tomb did not contain bones of Jesus and family
calculated at 1 in 1,600

MICHAEL POSNER
FROM TUESDAY’S GLOBE AND MAIL
APRIL 22, 2008 AT 4:17 AM EDT

A University of Toronto mathematician is lending new support to the controversial claim that
an ancient burial tomb near Jerusalem once held the bones of Jesus of Nazareth and his
family.

In a peer-reviewed article published last month in the prestigious Annals of Applied
Statistics, Andrey Feuerverger places the odds of the 2,000-year-old tomb not belonging to
the Jesus family at 1 in 1,600.

This figure is even more bullish than the 1-in-600 figure that Dr. Feuerverger calculated a
year ago, when interviewed for The Lost Tomb of Jesus, a $4-million documentary produced
by James Cameron and directed by Toronto’s Simcha Jacobovici.

The tomb, now sealed beneath a housing development in Talpiot, east of Jerusalem, was
accidentally discovered in 1980. Its contents included 10 limestone ossuaries, six of which
were inscribed with evocative names, including “Jesus, son of Joseph, Maria, Jose [perhaps a
brother of Jesus], Mariamne, Matya and Judah, son of Jesus.”

It was Judaic custom at the time to place a deceased’s bones, a year after death, into bone
boxes stored in family tombs. Archeologists stumbling across these crypts typically turned
the remaining bone fragments over to Orthodox officials for reburial; inexplicably, there is
no report of what happened to the bones found at this site.

The film, adducing DNA evidence that suggested Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have
been married and had a son named Judah, triggered a tsunami of debate. Many orthodox
Christians viewed its claims as challenging the very foundations of the faith, which maintains
that Jesus never married, never fathered a child and, three days after he died, was resurrected
physically and ascended to heaven.

In the past year, six books and three other documentary films have been released, all
attempting to refute the thesis of The Lost Tomb of Jesus. Websites and bloggers, academic
and lay, have led a vituperative chorus denouncing the film as sensationalism and its findings
as shoddy science.

The filmmakers say orthodox Christianity has even flexed its power to suppress their
message. There’s no hard evidence of such tactics, but Britain’s Channel 4, which paid
£200,000 for British rights to the film, has yet to broadcast it. Discovery U.S., which aired
the documentary a year ago to enormous ratings, has since declined to rebroadcast it.
For years, archeologists attempted to deflect speculation about the tomb, saying that the
names inscribed on the Talpiot ossuaries were common to the period. But Dr. Feuerverger’s
analysis rejects that argument, noting that while the individual names might have been
common, this specific cluster of names so resonant of the New Testament is not. Indeed, in
January, at a symposium with about 50 academics in Jerusalem, no one made the case for
commonality.

Instead, opponents have challenged Dr. Feuerverger’s historical assumptions, notably that the
unusual Greek name Mariamne found on one of the ossuaries is an appropriate designation
for Mary Magdalene.

But even discounting the Mariamne assumptions, Dr. Feuerverger’s 51-page paper says that
the tomb has a 0.48 chance of belonging to Jesus. That means, says James Tabor, head of
religious studies at the University of North Carolina, “that if we had two tombs to examine,
one of them would be the Jesus tomb. With Feuerverger’s paper in print, a more responsible
discussion of the Talpiot tomb name frequencies and statistics can take place.”

One surprise development at the Jerusalem conference was the appearance of Ruth Gat,
widow of the Israeli archeologist who first excavated the Talpiot tomb. Presented with a
lifetime achievement award on his behalf, Mrs. Gat told the assembled academics that her
husband had died with the conviction that the tomb belonged to Jesus Christ and his family.
A Holocaust survivor, Mr. Gat had confided his views to his wife. He never went public, she
explained, because he feared doing so would produce a global backlash of anti-Semitism.

“The fact is,” maintains Mr. Jacobovici, the filmmaker, “that the conference shifted the
fulcrum of academic opinion from ‘couldn’t possibly be the Jesus tomb’ to ‘very well might
be.’ ”

Although most scholars remain deeply skeptical - 15 of those at the Jerusalem parley signed
an online manifesto rejecting the Jesus tomb arguments - cracks have formed in the academic
front.

“I don’t believe the idea can be simply dumped into the garbage heap of pseudo-science and
history,” says Israeli geologist Aryeh Shimron. “And no manifestos are going to change my
mind that easily. It deserves further, very detailed scientific study.”

University of Detroit professor Jane Schaberg, one of the world’s ranking experts on Mary
Magdalene, says it is “quite possible, even probable,” that the inscription on that ossuary
describes Magdalene and adds that the tomb “may very well belong to Jesus and his
followers, as opposed to Jesus and his family. My gut tells me it’s a movement site.”

What are the implications for orthodox Christians? “It means they should start studying what
was meant by resurrection in the first century,” Dr. Schaberg says. “Resurrection is not a
simple thing, where the body just stands up and walks out.”

“We might be dealing with the most tangible evidence ever of the existence of Jesus and his
family,” adds University of Toronto social historian Claude Cohen-Matlofsky. Even the
conference’s lead organizer, Princeton University’s James Charlesworth, a New Testament
scholar, said afterward, “I have reservations, but I can’t dismiss the possibility that this tomb
was related to the Jesus clan.”

Symposium delegates ultimately voted unanimously to reopen the investigation into the
Talpiot tomb as well as a second still unexamined crypt only nine metres away. So far, no
action has been taken.

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Our best historical evidence, based on the computer programs that reconstruct the astronomical past, as well as various ancient calendars, including the Jewish, indicate that Jesus was crucified on a Thursday, April 4, in the year 30 AD.

That means today at sundown, April 3/4, as Thursday fades into Friday by Jewish reckoning, marks the actual day and date, 1978 years ago, that Jesus died. For those readers who are unfamiliar with the evidence that Jesus died on a Thursday, rather than on the traditional “Good Friday,” see the evaluation and discussion in my Book, The Jesus Dynasty, Chapter 12.

I append here the relevant calculations based on a highly accurate computer program developed by Eugene Faulstich:

The subject heading is the title of a most famous book by Jim Bishop, The Day Christ Died, published in 1957 by Harper Collins with an official Imprimatur by the famous Archbishop of New York Francis Cardinal Spellman–guaranteeing it “free of doctrinal or moral error.” The book is still available in reprint editions. I highly recommend it for a kind of retrospective history reading. I remember devouring this book when it came out. I was eleven years old. It captivated me utterly, I could not put it down.

Fifty years later I write this post on a Thursday night, on the eve of “Good Friday,” that happens this year to also be the night of Purim as well as the Vernal Equinox–a kind of triple package of markers and observances. Today is Thursday. I have been absolutely convinced for several years now, as I explain in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, that Jesus died on Nisan 14th, which in the year A.D. 30, fell on a Thursday not a Friday. So this is indeed, the “day Christ died.” He was put in the temporary rock hewn tomb just before sunset, and Friday, the following day, was the first day of Passover. This means the Passover meal or Seder was eaten that Thursday night, just as the Gospel of John records (John 13:1; 18:28). The next day, Friday, was indeed a “Sabbath,” but not Saturday, the weekly Sabbath, but rather one of the seven “annual” Sabbaths of the Jewish festival cycle (see Leviticus 23:7). This means there were two Sabbaths, back to back, Friday and Saturday, that year. Sunday morning, when Mary Magdalene went early to the tomb and found it empty, it was indeed “three days and three nights” that Jesus had laid in that tomb (Thurs, Friday, Saturday nights), which comports with the tradition that Matthew has received (Matthew 12:40). Surely a million Sunday school kids over the years have asked, not to mention adults, how can you get three nights, from Friday to Sunday morning. It simply will not work.

Modern astronomical programs completely confirm this chronology of the Spring of A.D. 30. I have had quite a few dozens of readers write me to point out that the Jewish calendar never allows the 14th of Nisan to fall on a Thursday. But this adjustment in the calendar, based on what are called “postponements,” was not instituted until well into the 2nd century. In the time of Jesus the month of Nisan was set by the new moon, and that particular year, A.D. 30, the 14th day of the first month (14 days after the new moon) fell on a Thursday. The “last supper,” that Jesus ate with his disciples the night before, a Wednesday evening, was not the Passover Seder, but a messianic banquet or Eucharist of “bread and wine,” such as mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Didache. One way of putting it is that Jesus did not eat the Passover, he was the Passover, at least as understood by the Gospel of John and by Paul (1 Corinthians 5:7). According to Josephus it was between 3pm and sundown the Passover sacrifices were made, just as the 14th of Nisan ended and the 15th, an annual Sabbath, began. Christians subsequently saw great symbolism in this chronology.

According to the Coptic Gospel of Philip, found in Egypt in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi collection, Jesus had three intimate woman named “Mary,” or Mariam, in his life, namely, his mother, his sister, and his “companion,” Mary Magdalene. However the passage that lists these three Marys is confusing, in that Jesus’ sister Mary is first called his mother’s sister–obviously an impossibility. Marvin Meyer and other translators have actually amended the Coptic text at this point, but I received this most thoughtful treatment of the passage from Jennifer Duba-Scanlan and pass it on with her permission. The Gospel of Philip, is the text that also contains the passage about Jesus loving Mary Magdalene more than the other disciples and kissing her often (Gospel of Philip 59). Several English translations are available on the Web, see the every helpful ECW site.
James Tabor

From Jennifer Duba-Scanlan:

“There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary.” Gospel of Philip 36

I was always confused about it, because it first states that the three who always traveled with Jesus were “his mother and her sister” and Mary Magdalene. But the next sentence claims that Jesus’ “sister” (not his mother’s sister, his aunt) along with his mother and companion “were each a Mary.”

As well, if Jesus’ sister Mary traveled with him, why isn’t she mentioned in the first sentence as regards those women who “always walked with the Lord”? Or did both of his sisters travel with him as well, Mary and Salome, but just aren’t mentioned? After all, in the NT it doesn’t even give Jesus’ sisters names. Just a mention of “sisters” on a couple occasions.

This passage in Gospel of Philip, due to it’s puzzling aspect, should tell us something. As you’d be apt to say, James, “something is definitely going on here.”

And now, due to your book The Jesus Dynasty, this passage makes sense to me after reading “The Mystery of the ‘Other Mary’ ” (pg.77-80)

It’s as though, in the Gospel of Philip, they left a ‘clue’, or rather a ‘riddle’ to try to figure out -maybe they (whomever wrote it), also knew that Mary, the wife of Clophas, was not the sister or cousin or sister-in-law of Jesus’ mother Mary, as many others thought, (and still think today), but that both Marys were actually Jesus’ mother, as they are one and the same person, which you wrote about in your very insightful book.

Why else would the Gospel of Philip write it in this puzzling way as regards the trio of Marys and Jesus’ maternal aunt?

It adds, in a sense, more weight to your argument, (which I find highly likely), that the two Marys were really one and the same - Jesus’ mother Mary married Clophas, the brother of Joseph, after Joseph died, ‘possibly’ leaving Mary with no children other than Jesus, whom he wasn’t the biological father of, and thus, the father of Jesus’ half-brothers and sisters would thus be Clophas.

As well, you’d wisely noted in The Jesus Dynasty (pg 79):
“Is it really likely that these two women, both named Mary, whether sisters or sisters-in-law, married to brothers and had three sons with the same names and born in the same order: James, Joses, and Simon?”

No, not likely at all. After all, how many sisters or brothers do you know of who have the same name? Whether today or way back in the days of Jesus and family. A father/son or a mother/daughter with the same name, is one thing, and quite acceptable, but two sisters/daughters or brothers/sons with the same name, no that’s a horse of a different colour, and isn’t something you ever hear of, really. (with the exception of Michael Jackson’s sons!)

The passage quoted here from Gospel of Philip at first leaves one with the impression that there were three Marys who constantly traveled with Jesus - yet his aunt isn’t mentioned in the second group of women named Mary in Jesus’ life, so she wasn’t a Mary, least not going by what is stated here, or she’d have been listed as such - shouldn’t it have thus said: “His sister and his mother and his aunt and his companion were each a Mary.”

Also, while it lists the three Marys in Jesus’ life whom he was close to - his mother, sister and companion - it doesn’t state that all three of them traveled with him. While we know his mother Mary and Mary Magdalene did, his sister Mary may or may not have traveled constantly with him.

John 19:25:
“Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary [the wife] of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”

I think it’s ‘possible’ that Salome is the wife of Zebedee, mother of James and John, and though it’s not mentioned directly, is the sister of Jesus’ mother Mary. Salome was at the cross and went to the tomb to anoint the body, with Jesus’ mother Mary, and Mary Magdalene, so she was close to Jesus and family, likely a family member of some kind.

In the above quote from John you could add Salome:

“Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister Salome, Mary [the wife] of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”

Or, add Salome (as Mary’s sister) to your “decrypted version of John” in your book (pg 80):

“Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother Mary wife of Clophas, his mother’s sister Salome, and Mary Magdalene.”

And while Jesus had a sister named Salome, I believe the Salome I’m writing of here has two sons who are perhaps close in age to Jesus’ brothers, as they’d be first cousins, so it wouldn’t be Jesus’ sister.

Mark 15:40:
“There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and of Joses, and Salome.”

So here it could be speaking about Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ mother Mary, and his aunt Salome - his mother’s sister.

The most intriguing passage, if Salome (though not mentioned by name here) is viewed as Jesus’ aunt, his mother’s sister, is from Matthew 20:21:

“Then came to him the mother of Zebedee’s sons, kneeling down, desiring a certain thing of him. And he said to her, What wilt thou? She said to him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left, in thy kingdom.”

Jesus gently rebukes them and in Matthew 20:23, Jesus notes “..to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give..” And in Matthew 20:24 it states “And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren.”

Though in Mark, they leave out “the mother of Zebedee’s children” and have the sons of Zebedee making the request of Jesus. (Mark 10:35)

This could be seen/interpreted to fit with your ‘Jesus Dynasty’, because she asks Jesus for special privileges for her sons (or else her sons do on their own, as per Mark), and if she’s Jesus’ mother’s blood sister, his aunt, she carries the same maternal royal bloodline as Jesus’ mother Mary, and thus her sons have the same bloodline as Jesus and his brothers and sisters, so they are part of the dynasty - a main branch of it.

Why else would she dare to ask Jesus such a thing? And she must have known Jesus well enough to be so bold. Not to mention, in those days, first off, women weren’t apt to speak to men unless they were part of the family in some way. Secondly, women at that time also weren’t likely to speak up like this, be so forward, and make such an (audacious) request of any man. Though if she’s of the bloodline of Jesus, as she’s his maternal aunt, it at least makes a bit more sense why she would ask this of her nephew, Jesus. Even if it wasn’t the ‘proper’ thing to do (thus the other apostles were annoyed. Perhaps some were actually envious?)

Mark 16:1:
“And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.” (i.e., Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ mother Mary, and her sister, his aunt Salome.)

Thus, on the hypothesis that Salome is the sister of Jesus’ mother Mary, we can add Salome to the passage in the Gospel of Philip, so it makes more sense, or at least it causes one to read the sentences as separate statements, and not mistakenly conclude that three Marys “always walked with the Lord.” (thus I’ll split them up here):

“There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister Salome, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion.”

“His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary.”

This is an informal post sent to me by e-mail from Wendy Pond. I asked her for her permission to pass it on. This matter of sorting out the Marys in the three anointing scenes in our gospels (Mark/Matt; Luke, and John) is a complex one. I have shied away from identifying Mary “called Magdalene” with “Mary of Bethany” in John, and also leaned toward the idea of two pair of sisters named “Mary and Martha,” one in the Galilee and another in Jerusalem/Bethany (Luke 10 & John 11 being a different family) but I remain open and consider this matter unresolved. Here is Wendy’s take on things:
Luke seems purposefully to juxtapose the introduction of Mary Magdalene (as exorcised of 7 demons in 8:1-3) with the woman of the city identified as a sinner in 7:37-38 who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair and anoints his feet - perhaps to cause intentional blurring/association of MM with the sinful woman of the city, i.e., to obscure/demote/sully any close relationship MM might have had with Jesus and thus her important status as part of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples.

Further to this, the act of washing and anointing the feet so intimately as done in Luke would be expected to be performed only by a man’s wife or servant/slave. It would have been considered sinful for any non-attached woman to do this to a man (especially in front of witnesses!). If the author of Luke was intentionally distancing MM from Jesus, he would have known this (whether he was Jewish or Gentile, I think!), so if, from Luke’s original knowledge or source, MM actually had performed this act and was close to Jesus such as wife/companion, but Luke did not wish to present her as such, Luke would have had to paint her as a sinner - even if he didn’t name her - therefore he made the association by juxtaposing 7:37-50 with 8:1-3. (”Woman from the city” could also be a true remnant from an early source descriptive of MM - from Magdala or another large, possibly Hellenized/pagan - “sinful” - city.)

I will add that within that Jewish-Mediterranean culture, when women were traveling with men, it would have been assumed they were either wives, sisters, daughters or servants/slaves, i.e., attached to the men as family/household/property, and a man meeting a mixed group of travelers on the road would likely never even bother to ask another man about the relationships of women traveling with him. The fact that Jesus’ group had independent women traveling with them was probably highly unusual, and why Luke mentions it 8:3 - maybe he couldn’t avoid/omit it. Once again, Luke associates MM with these important, independent women (wealthy? and/or had left their families/husbands?) who provided for Jesus/the group from their means. But was MM truly independent - as in, unattached, no relation to Jesus at all other than spiritually/part of the movement? Luke has sandwiched MM between these two vignettes, and has painted her as a woman who was (at least formerly) ill/mentally unstable, on top of it all.

While Mark does not identify the woman, John identifies her as Mary, sister of Lazarus and Martha, and both annointing accounts take place in Bethany. In both accounts, “some” present (disciples? other guests?) or Judas Iscariot complain/s about the waste of the costly spikenard, but no-one complains about how sinful or shocking it would have been for a woman not related to Jesus to perform such an intimate act (any form of touching!), especially the case in John where, again, the act involves Mary wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair! Clearly the authors of both gospels wished to emphasize the act of anointing the Messiah, but I believe any close relation the woman/Mary had to Jesus was quietly omitted from the story - the fact that there is no shocked reaction from the men in attendance to this intimate act is the loud, red flag, and it seems to indicate that those in attendance either knew or just assumed the woman/Mary (especially Mary in John) was closely related to Jesus. (That, or Jesus’ disciples and friends just accepted the fact that Jesus had an unusually open, egalitarian and casual attitude/approach toward all women - which I do believe at any rate.) I think I pointed this out in an earlier email to you, but in contrast, in the account of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well (John 4:27), the disciples are rather surprised to find Jesus talking to a strange woman; a man would never bother - a woman was unimportant or it wasn’t even proper. But in the annointing account with Mary, no surprise at all - why? Because Jesus’ and Mary’s relationship may have been omitted.

I believe Mary of Bethany in John is the same as the woman in Bethany in Mark 14:3-9 (clearly in that she wipes his feet with her hair - a memorable scene in deed!), and same as the woman in Luke 7:37-50, and she is Mary Magdalene. And she would have to have been Jesus’ wife or close/intimate companion. Luke unwittingly connects the dots with Mark and John, ID’ing her as MM, even though he tries to paint her in the worst light. Matthew doesn’t even mention her until the crucifixion! It’s why MM is at the tomb (with Jesus’ mother - the 2 most important women in his life, in that order!) to anoint Jesus’ body - she was his wife/companion, the first person to whom he appeared, and why none of the gospel authors could omit her completely from the story. Thus we have:

(A) Woman in Bethany - Mark
(B) Sinful woman of the City; wipes J’s feet with hair - Luke
(C) Mary of Bethany; wipes J’s feet with hair - John

Because A and C are the same (it’s doubtful 2 anointings took place in Bethany), and because B and C are also likely the very same, highly memorable story (intimate/sensual wiping of Jesus’ feet with the hair - again, it’s not likely to have happened twice with different women!), then A and B must also be the same woman. Luke connects the dots to Mary Magdalene. Luke also put the anointing story much earlier in Jesus’ mission and turns it into a moving story about forgiveness of sins rather than the anointing of the Messiah before his death - a way of downplaying Messianism vs. Son of God or the Jewishness of Jesus? What’s also amazingly odd is that Mark omits the woman’s name even tho’ he cannot erase/omit Jesus’ words about her - his proclamation that “what she has done will be told in memory of her.” A woman to be remembered the world over with no name….

Scholars are aware of the rich and diverse ways in which the term “Son of God” is used in the Hebrew Bible, in subsequent Jewish literature, and in the New Testament writings themselves, not to mention various non-Jewish texts (including inscriptions and coins) of the Greco-Roman period. Most of us who teach in the field of Christian Origins get asked from time to time by students or in public lectures, “Professor, do you believe Jesus was X.” Sometimes X is “Messiah,” other times it is “Divine,” but in my experience, most often, the question is “Do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God.” In good Socratic fashion one is tempted to reply, “Well what do you mean by the term ‘Son of God,’ and such a counter question is certainly more than subterfuge.

1) In the Hebrew Bible the precise phrase “son of God” does not occur, although the plural phrase “sons of God” (b’nai ‘elohim) occurs five times in the Masoretic text (Genesis 6:2,4; Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7), likely referring to a group of “angelic” beings who comprise God’s heavenly court and are charged with the responsibility of overseeing, ruling, and reporting on human affairs. In Psalm 82:6 this group is directly addressed: “You are Gods, sons of the Most High all of you.” In the Dead Sea Scroll copies of Deuteronomy, the phrase “sons of God,” occurs two more times in the “Song of Moses,” also likely referring to these heavenly custodians of human affairs (Deut 32:8; 43), and these two additional references are also found in the Greek Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew from the 2nd century BCE. There is also an Aramaic reference (bar ‘elahin) to such a heavenly being who is said to be like “a son of the Gods” in Daniel 3:25.

2) The anointed kings of ancient Israel were referred to as “son of God.” Samuel tells David that God has promised to make a covenant with him and his royal descendants will rule as kings forever. Yahweh declares, according to Samuel, “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me” (2 Samuel 7:14). According to a later Psalm, the Davidic ruler will cry “You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation” and God will make him “the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:26-27). This is the background of Psalm 2, where Yahweh says to the king, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Some scholars are convinced that this language was used in some kind of coronation ceremony, and various Psalms are classified as “royal Psalms,” in that they celebrate the reign of Israel’s King as Yahweh’s direct human agent (Psalm 45, 72, 110).

3) The people of Israel are called “God’s son.” Moses tells Pharaoh of Egypt “Thus says Yahweh, Israel is my firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22), and the prophet Hosea, looking back to that time, has God declare, “when Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (11:1).

4) In late 2nd Temple Jewish writings one who devoutly follows God is said to be his “son” (Wisdom of Solomon 2:16-18; 5:5; Sirach 4:10). For example, the various patriarchs such as Noah, Lamech, and Shem are addressed as “my son” regularly in 1 Enoch.

5) Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, and subsequent Roman emperors were regularly referred to as “son of God” (divi filius), on coins and inscriptions, as were a host of Greco-Roman “heroes” whom were called “divine men.” Some of these were said to have been “fathered” by a God, while others were honored for their extraordinary deeds. However, the terms “Lord,” “Son of God” and “Savior,” in the time of Jesus, was used rather widely in Greco-Roman materials to refer to such legendary, political, philosophical, or religious figures.

6) Adam, and by extension, all humankind, is called the “son of God” on the basis of being created in God’s image and likeness (Luke 3:38; Acts 17:26-29). This is akin to the general notion of God as Creator being “Father” of humankind.

7) Jesus at his baptism hears a voice from heaven that declares “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). Mark records no birth narratives of Jesus at all. Matthew follows Mark here but there were versions his gospel in Hebrew that added the phrase “Today I have begotten you,” based on Psalm 2:7. This interpretation was referred to as “adoptionism,” meaning that Jesus was made and declared to be God’s son at his baptism when the Holy Spirit came upon him. Apparently such a view was held by some early Jewish followers of Jesus, associated with James the Just, the brother of Jesus, who came to be labeled in later years as “Ebionites.” We are told that they used the gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, but in a version that lacked the virgin birth story of chapters 1-2, that they believed Jesus had a human mother and father, and that he was designated (”adopted”) as God’s son at his baptism as an indication of being chosen and favored as Messiah.

8) Jesus is said to be the “son of God” based on his mother Mary becoming pregnant through the Holy Spirit, with no human father, as explicitly stated in Luke 1:35. This idea of no human father is found in both Luke and Matthew. Even though the gospel of John has no explicit account of the “virgin birth,” his statement about the “Word (Logos) becoming flesh and dwelling among us” likely reflects this same idea of incarnation–the Son of God born in the flesh (John 1:14).

9) Jesus declared to be the “Son of God” by his resurrection from the dead. This idea is most explicitly stated by Paul in Romans 1:3-4, where he says Jesus is a descendant (”seed”) of David in the flesh, but a “Son of God” in the Spirit. The same idea, including the quotation from Psalm 2:6, “You are my son, this day have I begotten you,” is applied to Jesus through his resurrection from the dead in Acts 13:33. We have no indication that Paul thought Jesus was born without a human father, indeed, he says that he was of the “seed” or lineage of king David, but his status as “Son of God” was, according to Paul, based on his resurrection from the dead.

10) According to Paul those followers of Jesus who have received the Holy Spirit are made “sons of God,” and indeed, Paul says that Jesus is “firstborn of many brothers” (Rom 8:14-17; 29-30). Paul uses the term “adoption” to describe this idea that one becomes a “son of God” and calls God Father upon receiving the Holy Spirit. The writer of Hebrew speaks explicitly of these “many sons of God” who are to come (Hebrews 2:10). John expresses a similar idea of an extended family of “sons of God” based on a new spiritual “birth” for those who united with Jesus (1:12-13).

Given this complexity and diversity what one might mean by calling Jesus the “Son of God” could range from an affirmation of Jesus as God’s favored choice as Israel’s anointed king, to ideas of a preexistent Divine being who is born of a woman with no human father, and thus “becomes flesh” (Incarnation), with ranges of views in between.

Congratulations to my friend and colleague, Dr. April DeConick, whose work on the Gospel of Judas I have profiled on this Blog. Yesterday the New York Times published her Op-Ed contribution on the same topic. It offers a succinct overview of the issues involved:

December 1, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Gospel Truth
By APRIL D. DECONICK
Houston

AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.

It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.

Several of the translation choices made by the society’s scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field. For example, in one instance the National Geographic transcription refers to Judas as a “daimon,” which the society’s experts have translated as “spirit.” Actually, the universally accepted word for “spirit” is “pneuma ” - in Gnostic literature “daimon” is always taken to mean “demon.”

Likewise, Judas is not set apart “for” the holy generation, as the National Geographic translation says, he is separated “from” it. He does not receive the mysteries of the kingdom because “it is possible for him to go there.” He receives them because Jesus tells him that he can’t go there, and Jesus doesn’t want Judas to betray him out of ignorance. Jesus wants him informed, so that the demonic Judas can suffer all that he deserves.

Perhaps the most egregious mistake I found was a single alteration made to the original Coptic. According to the National Geographic translation, Judas’s ascent to the holy generation would be cursed. But it’s clear from the transcription that the scholars altered the Coptic original, which eliminated a negative from the original sentence. In fact, the original states that Judas will “not ascend to the holy generation.” To its credit, National Geographic has acknowledged this mistake, albeit far too late to change the public misconception.

So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a specific demon called the “Thirteenth.” In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of demons - an entity known as Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth. Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world. These Gnostics equated Ialdabaoth with the Hebrew Yahweh, whom they saw as a jealous and wrathful deity and an opponent of the supreme God whom Jesus came to earth to reveal.

Whoever wrote the Gospel of Judas was a harsh critic of mainstream Christianity and its rituals. Because Judas is a demon working for Ialdabaoth, the author believed, when Judas sacrifices Jesus he does so to the demons, not to the supreme God. This mocks mainstream Christians’ belief in the atoning value of Jesus’ death and in the effectiveness of the Eucharist.

How could these serious mistakes have been made? Were they genuine errors or was something more deliberate going on? This is the question of the hour, and I do not have a satisfactory answer.

Admittedly, the society had a tough task: restoring an old gospel that was lying in a box of its own crumbs. It had been looted from an Egyptian tomb in the 1970s and languished on the underground antiquities market for decades, even spending time in someone’s freezer. So it is truly incredible that the society could resurrect any part of it, let alone piece together about 85 percent of it.

That said, I think the big problem is that National Geographic wanted an exclusive. So it required its scholars to sign nondisclosure statements, to not discuss the text with other experts before publication. The best scholarship is done when life-sized photos of each page of a new manuscript are published before a translation, allowing experts worldwide to share information as they independently work through the text.

Another difficulty is that when National Geographic published its transcription, the facsimiles of the original manuscript it made public were reduced by 56 percent, making them fairly useless for academic work. Without life-size copies, we are the blind leading the blind. The situation reminds me of the deadlock that held scholarship back on the Dead Sea Scrolls decades ago. When manuscripts are hoarded by a few, it results in errors and monopoly interpretations that are very hard to overturn even after they are proved wrong.

To avoid this, the Society of Biblical Literature passed a resolution in 1991 holding that, if the condition of the written manuscript requires that access be restricted, a facsimile reproduction should be the first order of business. It’s a shame that National Geographic, and its group of scholars, did not follow this sensible injunction.

I have wondered why so many scholars and writers have been inspired by the National Geographic version of the Gospel of Judas. I think it may stem from an understandable desire to reform the relationship between Jews and Christians. Judas is a frightening character. For Christians, he is the one who had it all and yet betrayed God to his death for a few coins. For Jews, he is the man whose story was used by Christians to persecute them for centuries. Although we should continue to work toward a reconciliation of this ancient schism, manufacturing a hero Judas is not the answer.

April D. DeConick, a professor of Biblical studies at Rice University, is the author of “The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

I just returned from the thickly packed cluster of academic conferences held in San Diego, November 16th-20th–this included the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Schools of Oriental Research (ancient Near Eastern/Mediterranean archaeology), and the Biblical Archeology Society. Besides seeing many friends, hearing some interesting papers, and browsing the massive displays of new books by hundreds of publishers, I read a paper on Mary Magdalene in a joint meeting of the Early Jewish & Christian Mysticism section with the Religious Experience in Early Judaism & Christianity consultation. My assigned task was to offer a reflective review of Jane Schaberg’s important and provocative book, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament (Continuum, 2004). As my readers know, I have quite a positive evaluation of this book and its importance and I had posted a blurb at this site back in March. I thought some might be interested in what I said, so I will paste in my remarks here:

My brief review is organized around three main points: The Women, the Problem, and the Ending. By “the Women,” I mean not only Mary Magdalene, but the author, Jane Schaberg as well, and a third, Virginia Woolf, who is brought along by Jane as a kind of meditative conversation partner throughout the book. Although this book is a thoroughly academic and scholarly historical investigation of Mary Magdalene, it is at the same time a sharply challenging and engaging personal narrative of Jane’s own journey in her search for the historical Mary Magdalene. She departs from the formal and structured categories common among us and bares her soul along the way. The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene is a thickly multifaceted work that resists easy characterization. It is at once carefully documented historical scholarship, meditative personal memoir, and cutting feminist critique. As such, one is hard pressed to review it with any sort of standard academic detachment. I was deeply drawn into the book at each of its many levels. I have to confess, my “heart burned within me” as I worked my way though the structured stages of her presentation. Jane has devoted a good bit of her career to the exposure of the multiple strategies of suppression of the memory of the two most important Marys in Jesus’ life—that of his mother and his companion Mary Magdalene. If you have read her courageous and important work, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives, published twenty years ago, I recommend a revisiting. It is now out (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006) in an expanded paperback version that includes her personal reflections on the hostile reactions that work elicited from the small and the great in our field. As an illustration of this personal side of this book on Mary Magdalene I offer here two extended quotations, one on Woolf, the other about Schaberg herself:

“Woolf’s influence has been felt in many disciplines; but to my knowledge not yet much in Religious studies. In my own case, she functions something like the mentor I never had. ‘Consulting’ her, reading her avidly in the course of writing this book, is part of the feminist methodology I use here, infusing and refreshing the conventional methodologies of my discipline, oxygenating the masculinist atmosphere. Woolf puts me in the mood to think and write; she somehow keeps me going. She teaches the writer’s life of concentration and commitment, and makes it happier by repudiating the sacrifice of friendship, love, and simple social pleasures, for the needs of others. Scorning ‘adultery of the brain’ or ‘intellectual harlotry’ (writing what one does not want to write, for the sake of money rather than in the interests of culture and intellectual liberation), she urges connected thinking, and political savvy” (p. 32).

In this second quotation Jane reflects on the hostile reaction she received from the publication of her book, The Illegitimacy of Jesus and how her teaching in Detroit, and her surviving cancer have all had their part in the way her writing on Mary Magdalene unfolded:

“Yes I was ‘victimized’ a bit, and yes it set me back. But backlash also had the unintended effect of making me more personally and intensely interested in the process of censorship and silencing. It gave me reserves of anger and energy to draw on. I know in my bones how serious the opposition is to women’s insight, women’s revisioning. I know a little more about strategies of suppression . . . Reading from Detroit in this time is reading embedded in experiences of the deep and tangled structures of racism, sexism, poverty, classism, colonialism, and of the despair and courage displayed by those whom these structures have enmeshed. Despite my early efforts to get a ‘better’ job, I am lucky to teach in a non-elite, richly diverse classroom Virginia Woolf would approve of, where some—many—of our students are the poor (or the nearly poor, the recently poor) with whom I try to be a co-learner in the effort to demystify strategies of oppression like ‘whiteness,’ and to recognize powers of resistance . . . I belong to a group of survivors ‘privileged’ to experience my mortality: first as a young child with a heart valve problem, then in my forties with Stage 3 breast cancer. But all I remember about the latter experience is the terror of death, the striving to beat death, the will to live, the love of life. Having had to face the fear brought me no closer to an articulated faith, but only sometimes to the grasping of mantra-like phrases (‘now and at the hour of our death’ and ‘Shema’ Yisrael’) and to the presence and support of good friends. Nothing more. Nothing less” (pp. 14-16).

The essential historical problem the book addresses is captured in the subtitle: “Legends, Apocrypha, and the Christian Testament.” How does one move from, or otherwise account for or connect, the sparse accounts of Mary Magdalene in our canonical gospels with the plethora of later Mary Magdalene traditions and materials? Let’s begin with the beginning.

“And they all forsook him and fled.” This shortest line in the gospel of Mark (14:50) is as poignant as it is tragic. In five Greek words Mark dismisses the male apostles, the Twelve. Judas hands Jesus over to his enemies with a kiss, while the remaining “Eleven,” as Matthew later labels them; flee in fear, forsaking all, not to loose but to save their lives. In Mark Jesus is left utterly alone, abandoned and forsaken by all, and at the end, even by God—but not quite.

And there were also women, looking from afar; among whom were both Maria the Magdalene, and Maria, the mother of Jacob the less and Joses, and Salome; who when he was in Galilee, followed him, and served (dihko/noun) him; and many other women that came up with him to Jerusalem (Mk 15:40-41)

And so Mary Magdalene enters our history, in this earliest and most significant reference to her and the many other women who stood by the cross. These two Marys witness the burial of Jesus, according to Mark, and they, along with Salome, show up at the tomb very early Sunday morning to anoint the body with spices, only to find it missing. They are commissioned by a mysterious young man wearing a white robe to tell the male disciples and Peter that Jesus has been raised up and will meet them in Galilee. “And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mk 16:8). Thus Mark closes his account, with the exit of these three women as mysterious as their entrance. In Mark these women fail to fulfill their mission of proclamation, presumably that will be left to Peter and the other male disciples, who will see him in Galilee.

Nonetheless, this Markan tradition that Mary Magdalene and her Galilean women companions stood at the cross and were first witnesses that Jesus was raised is incorporated in modified ways in both Matthew and Luke. This sparse Markan tradition regarding Mary Magdalene is as limited as it is mysterious. Was it another Mary, or perhaps the same, who had anointed the head of Jesus with an expensive oil of nard two days earlier at Bethany—her deed celebrated as her perpetual memorial but her name lost or left out? Luke has an earlier scene of an unnamed woman, “a sinner,” anointing Jesus in Galilee (Luke 7:36-50). Immediately following that story he inserts Mark’s reference to the women followers of Jesus in Galilee, but he adds these women had been healed of evil spirits and disabilities, naming Mary Magdalene as one of them “from whom seven demons had gone out.” Such juxtaposition can hardly be without intention. Luke also includes these women; though he seems reluctant to even name them, as first witnesses to Jesus being raised. He makes it clear, however, that their testimony, delivered to the male Eleven, is judged as the idle talk of hysterical females. Even Celsus, a hundred and fifty years later, knows that a deluded “hysterical female,” aka Mary Magdalene, first delivered the story of Jesus’ resurrection. Mark insists on muting the first witness status of Mary Magdalene and her female companions, but that he includes it at all is quite telling. Luke lays the foundation for portraying Mary Magdalene as a sinner, hysterical and sexually threatening, the madwoman in Christianity’s attic.

Finally, I turn to the Ending. Schaberg’s final chapter, “Mary Magdalene as Successor to Jesus” is in my judgment one of the most impressive pieces of textual reading I have ever encountered. What she attempts to show is that the singular account in John 20:1-18, where Mary Magdalene encounters and speaks to Jesus in the garden tomb, preserves fragments of a tradition of Mary Magdalene as successor to Jesus—and thus, “first founder” of Christianity, in the sense of authoritative witness to resurrection faith. Whether this early tradition can be connected or not to later Christian texts that present Mary as a leading intellectual and spiritual guide, a beloved companion of Jesus and transmitter of his teachings, is a separate issue. What Schaberg shows, successfully in my view, is that the narrative structure of John 20 reflects an imaginative reuse of 2 Kings 2:1-18 where Elijah the prophet ascends to heaven, leaving his disciple Elisha as his designated witness and successor. This intimate personal appearance to Mary Magdalene, which focuses on ascent to heaven rather than resurrection of the dead per se, is parallel to, but sharply distinguished from, the more generic Synoptic accounts of angelic proclamations to the group of women.

Upon this foundation Schaberg offers a preliminary sketch of what she rather boldly labels “Magdalene Christianity,” both suppressed and lost in the Synoptic tradition, and particularly in Acts, much like the history of James and the Jerusalem community from 30-50 CE, Crossan’s “dark ages.” For some , such as Crossan, Schaberg’s reconstruction of John 20, as well as that of Schüssler Fiorenza and others, is “too optimistic” in terms of reconstructing what happened after Jesus’ death. His own reconstruction erases not only the empty tomb, but the memory of the women as first witnesses, and Mary Magdalene as his possible successor. Crossan once told Schaberg, as she recounts in her book, “Jane, if I could give you the empty tomb I would” (p. 252). Her response captures a characteristic of her wonderfully self-reflective style throughout her work: “I was stunned into silence by Crossan’s wish to ‘give’ me the narrative of the tomb; by the fact that it even occurred to him that he might. I wondered if I had to ‘take’ it. No, I knew I did.” And by that she meant she was obligated to offer her own reconstruction, attempting to be as clear about method as Crossan demands, and in particular to examine the assumptions behind his own reconstruction.

Schaberg’s academic contribution is much more than this ending. She applies her considerable analytical skills in taking the reader through the thick mass of archaeological and textual evidence related to Mary Magdalene. Her extended “profile” of Mary Magdalene in chapter four, drawn from a careful combing through all the apocryphal Magdalene materials (Nag Hammadi texts as well as the Gospel of Mary, Pistis Sophia, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Peter, and fragmented sources), is one of the most sustained and thorough treatments available.

My main suggestion is that Schaberg, in considering the notion of Mary Magdalene as “companion” of Jesus, might find less dichotomy between the “intimate/erotic” and the “sexual/romantic.” Despite the desire to make Mary Magdalene the “wife” of Jesus in popular circles, as witnessed by the extraordinarily positive reception of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code among the masses, I do not think the possibility should be precluded or dismissed. Indeed, I think there are some compelling arguments that Jesus may well have been married, and if such were the case, then Mary Magdalene does indeed seem to be our best candidate. I think the recent discussion of the Talpiot “Jesus Family tomb” has opened a new set of issues in this regard, at least for me.

Schaberg has caused me to seriously rethink and supplement my own reconstruction of Jesus and his earliest followers, but most particularly, the place of the empty tomb and Mary Magdalene’s role as visionary successor of Jesus. I have begun to explore how this might relate to my reconstruction of the prominence of James and the brothers of Jesus in the early movement, and what role such a mystical/visionary understanding of Jesus earlier and separate from that of Paul and his communities, might have played in the whole.

In my book, The Jesus Dynasty, the center and focus of my understanding of the historical Jesus is that he thought himself to be heir to the royal throne of David, the Messiah, and from a Roman viewpoint the “King of the Jews.” The latter was a title Herod and his son Antipas coveted, valued, and feared, since the family had married into “royal” Hashmonean connections but could make no claim for Davidic ancestry. Josephus and Eusebius (following his source Hegisippus), tell us that the emperors Vespasian, Domitian, and Trajan, following the Revolt in Judea, were on the hunt for descendants of David. They were considered threats to Roman stability, given their potential for Messianic claims.

Ironically, Paul is our earliest literary source to Jesus’ Davidic bloodline. He epitomizes his message about Jesus in his letter to followers at Rome with the formula:

“. . . the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:3-4).

For Paul, there was indeed, a “Jesus Dynasty,” but its significance ended with the death of Jesus. It was never passed on to James or other members of the royal family, and Jesus himself, as a “flesh and blood” human being, was transformed into a life-giving spirit as glorified Son of God by his resurrection from the dead (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:45). The physical or “earthly” line of David was made completely obsolete and irrelevant, and the kingdom of God no longer had to do with realizing the “will of God, on earth as in heaven” in this present political and social world. Indeed, the “form of this world” was passing away, and even marriage and sexual identity was fast becoming obsolete, and all dealings with this world, whether social or economic, were fading away (1 Corinthians 7:31)

Paul was, however, quite interested in another Dynasty, and a different kind of “kingdom of God,” one totally outside the realm of “flesh and blood.” He believed that followers of Jesus were infused or “begotten” as “sons of God” through the Holy Spirit, and thus became brothers of Jesus, part of the heavenly “royal family,” and destined to reign as kings, sit on thrones, and wear crowns, in the future Kingdom of God. In fact, Paul even tells his socially disenfranchised followers at Corinth that they were destined to “judge the world” and rule over angels” (1 Corinthians 6:2-3, cf. 4:8).

In Paul’s view the union between the Lord and the group, i.e., the “many children of God,” was one as definitive as the sexual union of a man and a woman, resulting in a child. He quotes the book of Genesis to illustrate how one joined to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him, just as the case of a male and female: “as it is written, the two become one flesh” (1 Corinthians 6:16-17).

For Paul none of this is metaphorical or symbolic. It is absolutely real and literal. According to Paul, being “saved,” is becoming part of a new genus within a new creation–siblings of the glorified Christ and part of God’s heavenly family. When Jesus appears in the clouds the children of this new family, and them alone, including those who might have died, will raise up into the air, through the clouds, and into the heavens. They will experience an instantaneous transformation and enthronement mirroring the heavenly glory that Jesus himself received. They will no longer be “flesh and blood,” or “dust of the earth,” but glorified spirit beings, exalted above all creation, ruling over the entire cosmos under God and their “older brother” Christ, the “firstborn” of many brothers/children.

I call this the Paul Dynasty, not because it literally has to do with Paul’s lineage–though he does metaphorically tell his followers that he has “become their father” through inducting them into this cosmic process. Rather, it is Paul’s idea of an alternative “Jesus Dynasty” in which everything “physical,” “earthly,” and historical is transferred to the heavenly realms above and beyond. The same language originally used in a Jewish Messianic context, such as “king” “son of God,” “throne” “rule” or “kingdom,” is appropriated and transformed. It is removed from its historical, social, political, and economic contexts and implications. There is no “fixing of the world,” but a resignation that the “Creation,” is hopelessly flawed and doomed, happily to soon pass away. It is a view almost wholly dependent on an imminent apocalyptic “end” to history, since people are asked to buy out of, or otherwise postpone, their stake in life itself on planet earth. Slaves can stay slaves, single folk need not marry or reproduce, evil doers can be tolerated for the short time they have left, and creative production of all kind is a vain effort (1 Corinthians 7:29-31).

The “Paul Dynasty” casts off the original messianic vision of the Hebrew prophets, that God’s will would be realized “on earth as it is in heaven,” and that peace, justice, and righteousness would spread to all nations through the example of a Servant people. But in leaving that biblical Project behind it only offers “faith” in a sudden heavenly rescue from the clouds as an alternative.

NB: There is a somewhat technical but fairly thorough review of Paul’s views on the subject, set in the wider contexts of his understanding of his apostolic mission on my University Web site: The Message and Mission of Paul.