Archive for the ‘Jesus Dynasty News’ Category

The Jesus Dynasty, four years after publication in April, 2006, continues to get picked up in the news. Here are the the three latest examples, with on-line links if available:

First, a fascinating article I had previously noted below by Adam Gopnik in the May 24, 2010 issue of The New Yorker titled “What Did Jesus Do? Reading and Unreading the Gospels.” Gopnik draws a number of insights from The Jesus Dynasty in his opening section and specifically mentions the tradition of Pantera as a little-known father of Jesus.

Second, Gopnik’s mention of the Pantera tradition, as if to give any credibility whatsoever to the tradition raised the ire of convervative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat who devoted an entire Op-Ed piece to blasting scholars who would give any view of Jesus’ birth other than the “no human father” option. It seemed to me sort of an odd piece to appear in the New York Times, and as several readers noted in the Comment section following the article. You can find my own comment, 5th from the top:

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/choose-your-own-jesus/

Finally, on newsstands now, is a special issue of USNews & World Report, titled Mysteries of History, that contains a three page interview with me on “Jesus Last Days Revealed.” I encourage readers to purchase the entire issue but I have attached a PDF version here of my own contribution.

Adam Gopnik has a long, fascinating, and witty, New Yorker-style essay on the search for the historical Jesus. As I began reading it I have to confess, modestly of course, that the opening few paragraphs seemed like a pretty accurate summary of my own book, The Jesus Dynasty (Simon & Schuster, 2006) as Gopnik ticked through his points about John the Baptizer, Sepphoris, and the meaning of tekton. I was pleased to see acknowledgment further along, with my treatment of the theories about Jesus’ paternity and the name Pantera briefly touched upon. All in all though it is really a good piece and I recommend it:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/05/24/100524crat_atlarge_gopnik

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.

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.

I am honored to report that I was given a full page interview with photo in the cover story (translated: “What Really Happened in Bethlehem?) of the December 15, 2008 issue of Profil magazine.  Profil is the #1 newsweekly of Austria, also read widely in Germany, equivalent to Time or Newsweek. An image of the cover and the full interview, in German reproduced here. You can click on the images to zoom in and enlarge or download the PDF file link at the bottom.

Download the PDF link here: Profiltabor

I wanted to highlight the extraordinary artistic work of Balage Baloge and his contributions to our visualization of the ancient Roman World of Jesus and early Christianity. I first encountered his work in the wonderful volume by John Crossan and Jonathan Reed, Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts. There one finds dozens of his striking color reconstructions of ancient scenes and cities such as Caesarea, Tiberius, Jerusalem, Capernaum, and Nazareth. I found his work meticulously accurate in terms of our historical texts and our archaeological sources, while at the same time breathtakingly beautiful in layout, composition, and imagination. You can see a nice collection of some of these works, relating to Jesus, on the Discovery Web site feature: The Land of Jesus. It is an interactive feature and truly one of the most fascinating things one can find on the Web in terms of putting you back in the time of Jesus.

When I was writing The Jesus Dynasty I contacted Balage and asked him if I could commission him to do seven special color paintings for me, specifically designed to illustrate aspects of the book that I wanted to include:

Drawing of Sepphoris as viewed from Nazareth

Aerial Shot of Herod’s Sepphoris

Herod’s Jerusalem looking East to the Mt of Olives showing the Herodian Palace Grounds

The “Jesus Hideout” in Jordan at Wadi el-Yabis

Jesus Before Caiaphus in the Priestly Mansion

Jesus Before Pilate’s Judgment Seat at the Praetorium

Jesus Crucified on the Mt of Olives

The results were amazing, really breathtaking, when one looks at the originals in full resolution. Unfortunately, due to printing costs, only two appeared in color in the hardcover edition, as part of the front and back inside covers, and the rest were B&W and rather small on the page, in the text of the book itself. In the paperback all of them appear, but in B&W, and also rather small. If we ever publish a “Deluxe Illustrated” edition of The Jesus Dynasty, they will surely be included in full color plates.

Balage Baloge was born in Budapest, Hungary where he attended art school. He immigrated to the United States in 1989 and lives in Baltimore. Although his artistic work is wide ranging, as one can see from browsing his Balage4Art Web site, he has become especially fascinated with ancient history, the Bible and archaeology. He lived in Israel for a number of years and began working with archaeologists and scholars to recreate the ancient past. In addition to The Jesus Dynasty and Excavating Jesus he has done illustrations for The World of the Old Testament, The World of the New Testament, and A Guide to Jerusalem.

Here is a nice color version of one of the paintings he did for me, showing Jesus and his little band of disciples hiding out in Wadi el-Yabis (Wadi Cherith in the Bible) in Jordan, the last winter of his life, based on the account in the gospel of John (chapter 12, “Last Days of Jesus” in The Jesus Dynasty).

The current special issue of USNews & World Report, titled “Secrets of Christianity,” now on newsstands, has profiled both my work and my book, The Jesus Dynasty in such an embarrassingly extravagant manner that it has left me, well, a bit stunned–but happily so of course. I guess I have begun to get used to a bit of media attention, but hardly anything like this. The lead article, written by Religion editor, Jay Tolson, is devoted almost exclusively to my work (eight full pages), and then there is a separate six page section of well selected excerpts taken directly from the book. I have interviewed with Tolson on a number of stories over the years and find him to be exceptionally perceptive, probing, and well prepared. This lavish 86 page issue is well crafted including a full bibliography at the end. It covers a variety of issues clustered around the following topics of interest:

Who was the real Jesus?

Why do scholars still debate the Resurrection?

What happened during the Crusades and Inquisition?

Are miracles real, or a figment of our imagination?

Why are scientists making the case for a Creator?

What do the Vatican’s Secret Archives reveal?

Will there be an Apocalypse, and when will it happen?
I invite readers to pick up a copy at their favorite bookstore or newsstand.

I wanted to mention three items of news related to the ongoing academic discussion and evaluation of the Talpiot “Jesus” family tomb.

The latest issue of Near Eastern Archaeology (Vol 69:3-4 September-December 2006) has a special Forum feature on the Tomb with the following essays:

Eric M Meyers, “The Jesus tomb controversy: an overview”
Shimon Gibson, “Is the Talpiot Tomb Really the family tomb of Jesus?”
Sandra Scham, “Trial by statistics”
Christopher A. Rollston, “Inscribed Ossuaries: Personal names, statistics, and laboratory tests”
Stephen J. Pfann, “Mary Magdalene has left the room: A suggested new reading of ossuary CJO 701″
James D. Tabor, “Testing a hypothesis”

This set of essays, fully illustrated with photos and drawings, is quite comprehensive, offering a nice summary of the various issues and approaches represented by this mix of scholars. For information on subscriptions or purchasing this particular issue see the ASOR Web site. Copies of this latest issue will be available at the upcoming annual meeting of ASOR in San Diego, November 14-17th, as well as at the ASOR booth at the annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion which meet in San Diego that weekend.

The Talpiot tomb is one featured topic at the 9th annual Batcheler Biblical Archaeology Conference at the University of Nebraska, November 8-10th, hosted by Rami Arav and Richard Freund. Prof. Dan Bahat and I will be discussing the pros and cons of identifying the Tomb with Jesus of Nazareth and I will deliver a plenary lecture on the “Jesus Family Tomb.” Sessions are open to the public. For details contact Rami Arav.

Prof. James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary has just announced that the third Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, to be held January 13-16, 2008 in Jerusalem, will consider the topic “Jewish Views of the After Life and Burial Practices in Second Temple Judaism Evaluating the Talpiot Tomb in Context.” The preliminary program lists an impressive international roster of scholars in the various fields related to the subject, including biblical and historical studies, archeology, DNA, statistics, prosopography and onomastics, and epigraphy. Charlesworth’s previous Jerusalem Symposia on “Jesus and Hillel” and “Jesus and Archaeology,” both resulted in the publication of impressive volumes collecting together the various papers. Apparently he has such a volume planned for this conference as well. It is good to learn that the Talpiot tomb will be evaluated in such an academic setting, moving things beyond sensational press reports and Internet discussion.

Prof. April DeConick who holds a Chair in Biblical Studies at Rice University, has taken the gloves off on her Blog Forbidden Gospels, in discussing further aspects of the “Gospel of Judas” story that broke on the news scene with such aplomb last April, 2006. In her most recent post she has raised the question as to whether the National Geographic Society violated the Society of Biblical Literature 1991 resolution on releasing new documents? This resolution came as a result of the delays in releasing complete photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was present at that SBL meeting and voted for the resolution, as one of those scholars who had worked on and published some of the unreleased materials. Earlier this week in a separate post Dr. DeConick asked why National Geographic has not released facsimile photos of the relevant manuscripts of the Judas Gospel as promised, while she questions the entire process of non-disclosure and secrecy surrounding the Judas Gospel story.

Things should be quite interesting at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego, November 17-20th. There is a Saturday afternoon session devoted to the Gospel of Judas at which DeConick will present a paper outlining her interpretation of the text and all the principal experts will surely be there, including formal responses from Elaine Pagels and Karen King. There is also a gargantuan Book Panel on Monday night in which no less than ten authors of books on the Gospel of Judas (including Ehrman, Meyer, Pagels, King, Wright, Robinson, and DeConick) will square off face to face in what promises to be quite a fascinating mix of views and approaches. Full details on the SBL annual meeting, membership, and registration are at the SBL Web site, and the program is on-line and can be searched.

Speaking of the SBL annual meeting, I will be giving a paper reviewing Prof. Jane Schaberg’s book, Resurrection of Mary Magdalene, that I have previously featured on this Blog under the title The Resurrection of Mary Madgalene.

Does the much publicized “Gospel of Judas,” released in April, 2006 by the National Geographic, truly portray a positive view of Judas, the betrayer of Jesus? Dr. April DeConick of Rice University has questioned this interpretation of the newly released text. Speaking at the Biblical Archeology Society Seminar held this past weekend in San Antonio, Texas, Dr. DeConick, who holds a chair in Biblical Studies at Rice University, summarized her conclusions based on her translation and analysis of the original Coptic text. According to Dr. DeConick the idea of a positive Judas, friend and confident of Jesus, who receives a high heavenly reward for his betrayal of Jesus, is based on a series of faulty misreadings and mistranslations of the original text. Dr. DeConick argues that the “Gospel of Judas,” turns out to portray a Judas that is far more demonic than in any other piece of early Christian literature, including the traditional accounts in the New Testament Gospels.

The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says. The book surveys the story of the Judas Gospel’s discovery and release and includes Dr. DeConick’s translation of the Coptic as well as her analysis of the translation issues upon which a positive or negative interpretation of Judas turn. It further relates the text to its historical setting, namely the thought world of an early Christian group of Gnostics known as the Sethians. Chapter 2, titled “A Gnostic Catechism,” is one of the clearest expositions on Gnosticism written for the non-specialist that I have ever seen. The book also contains three invaluable appendices: A marvelously clear and complete annotated survey of “Further Reading,” a synopsis of Sethian literature, and a Q&A with Dr. DeConick in which she relates her excitement at the initial publication of the text and how she reluctantly came to question its interpretation as represented in the books and documentary produced by the National Geographic Society.

Dr. DeConick recently summarized her findings on her Blog, Forbidden Gospels, so I will quote her here in her own words:

Why did I write this book? I wrote this book because when I read the Coptic transliteration of the manuscript in April 2006, I realized that Judas was much more a hero in the National Geographic translation than he was in my own translation. As I worked through the Coptic and then sat and studied the text as a whole, I quickly came to see that Judas is not a good guy in this gospel. He is not Jesus’ friend or the greatest disciple. I began to wonder why the NG team translated in reference to Judas “daimon” as “spirit” when its most accepted translation is “demon.” I wondered why the team chose to say that Judas is “set apart for” the holy generation, when the Coptic actually reads that he is “separated from” the holy generation. And so forth.

What does the Coptic really say? The Coptic says that Judas is a demon, that he will be instrumental in bringing about Jesus’ sacrifice, that this was the worst thing he could do. Jesus tells Judas that he will not go to the Kingdom, that he is working for the demiurge Ialdabaoth-Nebruel, that he will lament and grieve his terrible fate. Furthermore, the text says that Jesus will tell him the mysteries of the Kingdom not so that he will go there, but so that Judas will lament greatly his actions within the cosmic drama. Judas is separated from the holy generation. He is the thirteenth demon, which means he is to be associated with Ialdabaoth, the “thirteenth” archon or ruler in Sethian Gnosis.

Why is my translation different from National Geographic’s? What is troubling to me is that the provisional Coptic transliteration which NG put out in April 2006 was not finished, but scholars published translations and interpretations based on it. It contained reconstructions of the Coptic that were erroneous, including the statement that Judas will ascend to the holy generation and that he would be taught the mysteries of the Kingdom because it was possible for him to go there. The Coptic text does NOT say this. It says the opposite, and this has been corrected (thank goodness!) in The Critical Edition that NG put out this last summer. The problem is that now the world thinks that Judas is a Gnostic hero when in fact the Gospel of Judas says nothing of this. In fact, it says the opposite. My translation is of the actual Gospel of Judas.

One issue that goes beyond questions of translation and interpretation is why the idea of a “positive Judas” is so extraordinarily appealing to so many in the modern world? DeConick addresses this question in her Epilogue. She traces the many examples in film, art, and books that have attempted to reverse the traditional Judas story. I found her analysis to be insightful and compelling in this regard.

I highly recommend this new book and I look forward to the continued discussion of this fascinating ancient text.