Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

I am in Portland, Oregon this week to give a lecture titled “Who Was Jesus?” as part of the Illahee Lecture Series. This fascinating and prestigious lecture series is in its ninth year and draws a local audience close to a thousand folks. I wanted to mention this since we have readers who live in the Portland area, but also to give some attention to this most interesting endeavor. Each year a different theme is chosen and there is a fascinating archive of past themes, speakers, and topics with full summaries on the content of their talks. The overall theme this year is “Why We Believe What We Believe.” My lecture is the fifth in a series of six covering topics such as “Born to Believe,” “Why We Buy,” “Why We Fight?” “Why We Die for It,” and “Letting Go of God.” My lecture is tonight, Tuesday, at 7:30 at the historic First Congregational Church downtown Portland. A summary will be posted thereafter. I plan to give a comprehensive overview of the Quest for the Historical Jesus and its current state of progress as I understand it.

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.

The Jesus Dynasty has been published recently in three additional languages, Czech, Slovakian and Spanish. The Czech publisher is Knizni Klub, while the Slovakian publisher is Ikar. The Spanish version is published by Editorial Planeta, the largest Spanish publisher in the world. These latest three make a total of eleven foreign language editions: previously, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Portuguese (separate editions in Portugal and Brazil) and Indonesian, with another dozen or so still to go. There is also a separate UK edition published by HarperCollins. I have offered details on most of these editions in previous entries on this Blog.

I have been quite pleased with my foreign publishers. The foreign editions have been done by highly qualified translators and marketed with intelligence and skill. Several of the translators have communicated with me directly as they were doing their work, asking questions, requesting clarifications, and offering input and suggestions. Translating concepts and even subjects that many of us find common in English, at least in the field of the academic study of religions (terms like “apocalypticism,” or the “Dead Sea Scrolls” or “Gnosticism”) can prove quite the challenge in another language. Also, the basic premise of the book, that Jesus had brothers and sisters, and that James, the eldest, took over leadership of his followers after his death, is an unknown and radical thesis in some of these cultures that are dominated by standard forms of Roman Catholicism.

The Jesus Dynasty is doing quite well in all the foreign editions and has been on several of the national Best Seller lists (Germany, Italy, France). It has raised a surprising level of interest in Indonesia, which apparently has a very active evangelical Christian population. I continue to receive hundreds of e-mails from readers all over the world and the traffic on this Web site indicates a worldwide interest in the topics that are discussed. It is quite informative to hear all the varied perspectives. Most readers are positive, a very few are more negative for expressively theological reasons, but many from all sides of the issues offer insightful observations from which I continue to learn. I have been so impressed with the degree to which so many hundreds of my readers have delved into resources on the historical Jesus, voraciously reading all the major scholarly works and forming well considered views and opinions. There is, of course, much more available in English, but it is clear to me that the “Quest for the historical Jesus” has no language, geographical, or cultural boundaries. It is truly a global phenomenon.

I am getting very excited about the Biblical Archaeology Seminar I am doing with Professor Diane Lipsett of Wake Forest University this coming July 22-28 at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. It is a full week with each of us giving ten lectures, plus chances to interact both formally and informally with the participants and the lecturers. If you have never been to one of these week long vacation seminars I think you will find they are truly a bonding experience. They usually draw about 25 or so participants with lots of opportunities for conversation. The first one I ever did was at Guilford College in 1990 with Professor Tom McCollough. I still see and correspond with participants of that seminar through all these years. Also, you could not choose a better setting than Asheville, NC, both in terms of nature and culture. It is absolutely one of the most wonderful areas in our country. The chance of spending a week there in July, even without the seminar, would be well worth it.

I just had an e-mail from Jeffrey Butz, author of The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity (2005) informing me that he would be attending the seminar. It will be really good to meet and talk with him. His book on James came to my attention right after I had completed my own manuscript for The Jesus Dynasty and I remember being absolutely and pleasingly surprised at how close our ideas were even though we had worked independently and had never met or heard of one another. I highly recommend his book to all my readers.

Professor Lipsett and I worked hard to design a seminar that would really get at some topics and issues that are seldom covered in courses or lectures on early Christianity. We called it: The Stuff of Life! The idea was to tap into the everyday social world of the earliest Christians, based on both textual and material evidence. As you can see below from the topics, it promises to be quite a fascinating time together. We will try to cover everything you always wanted to ask about the early Christians on the down to earth level of how they actually lived (and died!).

Here are a few details on the Program and full expanded version is available at the BAS Web site with cost and registration information. The topics are quite fascinating as you will see, and yes, we promise to answer all these questions fully :-), or at least do our best trying.

The Stuff of Life: What Texts and Archaeology Tell Us about the Everyday World of the Earliest Christians

University of North Carolina at Asheville
July 22–28, 2007

Subject Areas and Lecture Titles:

BEGINNING FROM THE END
Dead Men (and Women) Do Tell Tales: Jewish Burial in the Late 2nd Temple Period (TABOR)
Letting Stones Speak: Greco-Roman Burial Inscriptions and Social Relations (LIPSETT)
Is the Talpiot Tomb Related to Jesus of Nazareth? (TABOR)
Burial Tales and Ghost Stories: Popular Ancient Narratives about How Life Meets Death (LIPSETT)

AT TABLE AND AT HOME
Eating and Drinking with the Divine (TABOR)
Meals and Status in Homes and in House Churches (LIPSETT)
Sex and the City: Jews, Christians and Romans (TABOR)
The Problem of Desire (LIPSETT)

JESUS AND HIS FOLLOWERS IN A STRATIFIED WORLD
Was Jesus a Poor, Illiterate, Itinerant Peasant? (TABOR)
Was Celsus Right? (Were Early Christians Mostly Slaves, Women and Ignorant?) (LIPSETT)
Following the God of Abraham: How Gentiles Viewed Judaism in Roman Times (TABOR)
Making Room for the Wealthy in Early Christian Groups (LIPSETT)

PIETY AND PRACTICE
When You All Come Together in One Place: How the Earliest Christians Worshiped (TABOR)
Healers, Healing and Cure (LIPSETT)
An Early Christian “Prayer Hall” at Megiddo? (TABOR)
Texts as Sacred Objects: Scrolls, Codices and Piety (LIPSETT)

ENDS AND RETURNS
Renouncing the Stuff of Life: Asceticism in the Greco-Roman World (LIPSETT)
Living at the End of History: Practicalities, Problems and Possibilities (TABOR)
Manly Martyrs: Peter, Paul, Polycarp, Perpetua (LIPSETT)
Life Beyond this World: Death among Romans, Jews and Christians (TABOR)
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Lecturers

B. Diane Lipsett is Assistant Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Divinity School at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Lipsett (formerly Wudel) teaches courses in New Testament and Christian origins, bringing a background in literary criticism and an ongoing interest in literary and rhetorical theory to her study of early Christian texts. She undertook her doctoral work at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), completing a dissertation titled Seductions of Self-Control: Narrative Transformation in Hermas, Thecla, and Aseneth. Lipsett has also published on the rhetoric of perfection in the Sermon on the Mount, and on motifs of desire and self-restraint in early non-canonical texts. She was selected one of four Regional Scholars recognized in 2002 by the Society for Biblical Literature. Born in Canada, Lipsett spent parts of her youth in Australia, Texas, and Alaska, participating in a variety of Protestant congregations. She has been actively involved in the teaching and youth ministries of many churches. She is married to Richard Vinson and has two sons, James and Christopher Wudel.

James Tabor is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and is professor of Christian Origins and Ancient Judaism. Since earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1981, Tabor has combined his work on ancient texts with extensive field work in archaeology in Israel and Jordan, including work at Qumran, Sepphoris, Mt. Zion in Jerusalem, Masada, Wadi el-Yabis and, with Shimon Gibson, the “John the Baptist” cave at Suba and the recently discovered “Tomb of the Shroud” in Jerusalem. Tabor has also been heavily involved in the recent “Jesus Family Tomb” controversy. He is chief editor of the Original Bible Project that is producing a new scholarly translation of the Bible. Among his publications are Things Unutterable (1985), A Noble Death (1992) and Why Waco: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (1995). His latest book, now out in paperback, is The Jesus Dynasty: A New Historical Investigation of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (Simon & Schuster).

Location

The University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNCA) is surrounded by the majesty and charm of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The scenic, compact 265-acre mountain campus serves 3,300 students and is located one mile north of downtown Asheville, a city of 75,000 people. South Ridge Residence Hall and the new Highsmith University Center (with meeting space and adjacent dining hall) will provide for easy accessibility and maximum convenience. Downtown Asheville hums with life as people enjoy a unique mix of culture that has led this city to be dubbed the “Paris of the South.” Enjoy the Botanical Gardens, the Biltmore Estate & Winery, and the Asheville Art Museum.

I fly to Jerusalem tomorrow for some preliminary excavation work on Mt. Zion (see http:digmountzion.com) with Dr. Shimon Gibson and a team of our students and staff. I will be posting some things next week about our work in that area and what it tells us about Herodian Jerualem and the last days of Jesus.

I am working on what I hope will become some significant new insights on the accounts of the “empty tomb” in our four New Testament Gospels, as well as the Gospel of Peter. In thinking through these materials in the light of the Talpiot tomb several “lights” have gone on in my thinking. I have studied and pondered the “resurrection” accounts for several decades but what I am going to suggest, as far as I know, has not been proposed before.

The French version of my book, just released and titled, La véritable histoire de Jésus is drawing quite a bit of attention in France, as is the subject of the Talpiot tomb. Despite the “modest” title, which I as an author have no say in, the French translation was done by the imcomparable Bernard Cohen and probably reads better than the original English now that it is in French. He did such a masterful job. I am reading the book in French with great pleasure and it is strange to encounter it in a way that puts distance between me as the author and the expression of my basic ideas in such a lovely language.

More later, from Jerusalem…

One year ago this weekend I completed one of the most difficult tasks I have ever undertaken. I am not talking about writing my book, The Jesus Dynasty, but rather reading it aloud for the Jesus Dynasty CD version.

CD Audio versions of books have become more and more popular, but only a small number of books are actually produced in this manner. By far the majority that do make it to CD contain an opening reading by the author but few authors agree to read aloud their entire book. When Simon & Schuster first approached me with the idea of reading my book they explained to me the extreme demand such a task put on the reader, the fatigue involved, the endless editing, and the dedicated commitment involved. I learned that CD versions are always abridged, but when the oral manuscript arrived, cut down by many thousands of words, I have to admit I was amazed at the skillful job of the abridgement. I made the decision to spend three to four days in NY in the recording studios at Simon & Schuster and to give it my best.

About three hours into the process that first day I began to feel I had made the worst mistake of my life. If you take any book, much less one you have written, and try to read one single page flawlessly you will immediately experience the problem that hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. If you try another page, and another, then several dozen, for an hour or more, not only does ones voice tire (as we parents know who have read endless hours to our children!), but rather quickly one looses much of the normal ability to focus and concentrate. It also becomes almost impossible maintain proper inflection and expression.

The key to it all is a good production person. This is someone who has done this with hundreds of authors and is willing to play the role of an encouraging “slave driver” to keep one going. I was blessed with one of the best in the business. I will never forget collapsing after the first day, with maybe six or so hours of raw reading behind me, and thinking there was no way on earth I could make it back to the studio again the next morning as planned, to do it all over.

But somehow I did it. It took three days in all and the end product is six hours of recording on five CDs. And now one year later all that pain and fatigue and frustration are long forgotten and the CD version of The Jesus Dynasty is one of the things in my life of which I am most proud. The miracle of course is the producer and sound editor, who can turn all your stumbling, mispronunciations, stops and starts, and fatigue into this smooth and flawless production. When you put on the CDs you get the impression that Dr. James D. Tabor just dropped by a studio one day, sat down, and read his book aloud!

Anyway, I write this Blog mostly for my readers so I wanted to remember that time one year ago and also to recommend and commend to you the CD version of the book. It is a very different experience from reading the book itself. It is available on CDs, but also on iTunes as a download. Now a year later when I listen I have the strangest feeling about the voice and the content. I am able to listen as a listener and forget the words and voice are mine, being carried into the incredible unfolding story that I relate. I have listened to it twice now and each time I find myself so strangely moved. Not by my account per se, but by the way in which the incredible life of Jesus of Nazareth captures our hopes and dreams through the ages.

So you bought the book, now listen to the story! And yes, the film is still to come…

I begin The Jesus Dynasty, with a purposely riveting Introduction titled “A Tale of two Tombs,” I discuss the possible provenance of the controversial ossuary (bone box) that surfaced in 2002 inscribed “James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” I remain convinced that the ossuary inscription is authentic and ancient, and that it most likely held the bones of James or Yaaqov, brother of Jesus, and leader of the early Nazarene movement following Jesus’ death. The owner of the James ossuary, Oded Golan, is being tried for forgery in Israel with the charge that he or someone he commissioned added the phrase “brother of Jesus” to an existing “James son of Joseph” ossuary to make it more valuable. He stoutly maintains his innocence and has recently produced a photo of the complete inscription that dates back to 1980 that has been certified as authentic by Kodak. There is other evidence supporting authenticity as well, but the pros and cons are nicely archived at the Biblical Archaeology Society Web site.

The question upon which I focus in that Introduction is whether we can determine which tomb this ossuary came from, and if so, what more can we learn if such a tomb turns out to be the “Jesus Family tomb.” I consider two sites, the Tomb of the Shroud, which Shimon Gibson and I examined in the summer of 2000, and the Talpiot tomb, uncovered in March, 1980 by a bulldozer clearing space for some apartments just south of Jerusalem. As it turns out, there is circumstantial evidence that might link the James ossuary to either tomb, so I discuss both.

I am pleased to report that ABCNews has put my Introduction, “A Tale of Two Tombs,” up on their Web site, so whether you have my book or not you can easily read it. It provides all the essential background on the Talpiot Tomb discovery as well as the Tomb of the Shroud, but purposely stops short in drawing any conclusions. As more evidence is developed the story will change and 2007 looks to be the year when some of these issues might be definitively resolved.