Archive for the ‘General’ Category

My main university Web page that has been used by many thousands of folks over the years (the counter reset to zero at 1 million some years ago) has been moved. If you have linked it anywhere please note the change and update your records. I am working with our Web people at the university to see if there can be a “redirect” message:

The old URL was: http://religiousstudies.uncc.edu/JDTABOR/indexb.html

The new one is: http://religiousstudies.uncc.edu/people/jtabor/

This site contains a wealth of materials related to Jesus, Christian Origins, 2nd Temple Judaism, and the religion and culture of the ancient Mediterranean world. I use it in all my classes and welcome any of you who teach to make use of these materials so long as credit is given.

My special thanks to Prof. Dennis Duling for allowing me to make his masterful essays on the Jewish and Roman World of Jesus available, originally published in his co-written The New Testament: An Introduction, with the late Norman Perrin.Jewi

I am reposting a link here to Thomas Verenna’s Blog, just up this morning, regarding the late breaking news of the decision of the Supreme Court of Germany regarding the case of Professor Gerd Luedemann, historian, theologian, and New Testament scholar. I have known professor Luedemann for many years and most recently have enjoyed contact with him at the initial gatherings of The Jesus Project at UC Davis (2007) and in Amherst, NY (2008). This ruling says a lot about the long arms and tight hands of Church Influence even in “secular” Europe, not only in cases such as Hans Kueng, on the Roman Catholic side of things, but now equally so in the Protestant arena.

As one non-Catholic among half a dozen others who left the University of Notre Dame back in the mid-1980s under the pressure of one of Father Hesburg’s “recatholicising” moves in the Dept. of Theology back in those dark ages, as well as having scheduled lectures on my book, The Jesus Dynasty, forbidden in the spring of 2006 at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, because I had dared to suggest that Jesus had a human father, not likely Joseph, I can identify in just a tiny way with Prof. Luedemann.

Surely the structures of European theological education are of great concern to those of us on the other side of the Great Deep, in that we who work in Biblical Studies are inextricably linked in both methods and research agendas to our European colleagues.

Please help spread the world on this significant development so its issues and consequences can be more widely considered and discussed in our 21st century “post-Enlightenment” global culture.

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 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.

Today is the Jewish Festival popularly known as Rosh HaShanah, literally “head of the year.” I am in Chicago this weekend, looking out this morning over Lake Michigan from the 30th floor of a hotel and I have been thinking of the significance of this day. Around the world Jews are gathering in Synagogues, as this day begins the coundown of the Ten Days of Awe, leading to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement or literally “Covering.” Yet, Rosh HaShannah is the 1st day of the SEVENTH month, not the first day of the first month. Judaism really has two “years.” The biblical New Year is of course the first day of the first month, in the Spring, as Exodus 12: 1 plainly says: This Moon/month shall be to you the beginning of months.” That day is very significant in biblical and Jewish history and many things have taken place on Nisan 1st–the biblical New Year. It signals “new beginnings.”

But the 7th month/moon is also the first of a kind of “civil year,” that had to do in ancient times with certain calculations regarding the Jubilee, the redemption of bond-servants, and so forth. It is more of a societal New Year, much like our July and Oct “fiscal years” in our world today. And within later Jewish tradition the 1st day of the 7th month came to be remembered as a kind of “birthday of the world,” in that the Rabbis passed on the tradition that Adam was created on the 1st day of the 7th month, in the Fall, on this very day (September 22nd)–the Autumnal Equinox (though a minority view still held to Nisan 1st in the Spring).

In the Torah itself, this holy day is never called Rosh HaShanah. Rather it gets a different name–Yom Teru’ah, that is “day of the blast.” Teru’ah in Hebrew refers to raising up a loud noise, whether a shout or the blast of the trumpet or Shofar. The meaning of the day is never specified in the Bible but the blowing of the Shofar seems to function as a kind of herald or clarion call, announcing the end of one period and the beginning of another.

What is all the more interesting about this day is that by some calculations (see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology) Jesus was born on or very near the 1st day of the 7th month–based on the chronology given in the book of Luke. The calculations are complex but have to do with the time in which Zechariah, father of John the Baptizer, served in the Temple (Luke 1:8), as the “section” of priests in which he was part went on duty at a specific time of year. From that window calculations can be made as to the birth of John, followed by the birth of Jesus six months later. My own calculations based on a computer program I use puts the birth of Jesus in 5 B.C. very close to Rosh HaShanah, or September 22nd on the Gregorian Calendar, corresponding to the Autumnal Equinox. It just so happens that today, in 2006, the 1st day of the 7th month, Rosh HaShanah, also corresponds to the Equinox–that is today, September 22nd/23rd (Rosh HaShanah began at sunet last night, Sept 22nd).

There is a fascinating Roman civic inscription dating to the year 9 B.C. that was passed by the cities of Asia to celebrate the birthday of the Emperor Augustus. It reads in part: “Whereas, finally, that the birthday of the god (i.e. Augustus) has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel (euangelion) concerning him, therefore, let all reckon a new era beginning from the date of his birth, and let his birthday mark the beginning of the new year.”

It is surely more than ironic that the birth of Jesus, an insignificant Galilean peasant, living under the brutal boot of Roman occupation, just a few years later, did indeed lead to a new era, a kind of “birthday of the world,” that has paled into insignificance the birth of the celebrated Emperor Augustus.

So today in particular it seems has a double meaning, as the “birthday of the world” within Rabbinic Judaism, but for Christians, and really our entire society, the birthday of a new era, in that Jesus himself was born on or very near this day.