Archive for the ‘Jesus Dynasty News’ Category

My thanks to Blogger Gertjan from the Netherlands for a refreshingly dispassionate review of my book with a nice academic and balanced tone. The book is out in Dutch and I will be traveling to Holland and Belgium in November, but I am not sure if Gertjan read it in English or in Dutch…I hope this kind of approach to the book will be typical of many Europeans who are less interested in Theological Tradition and Dogma and more interested in History as we can construct it…

He writes the following:
Dr. Singor –who is one of my teachers– advised us to read the book ‘The Jesus Dynasty’ by prof. dr. James D. Tabor. I bought it, read it and am incredibly impressed. The remaining part of this blogpost will be about this book.

The Jesus Dynasty by James D. Tabor.

First of all a negative, this book was published in the mediahype that surrounds Dan Brown’s ‘Davinci Code’ it yells the same silly screams on the cover like ‘Stunning New Evidence’ ‘The Story of Jesus: The Facts’ etc. Let’s blame the publisher for this since what you get is the thesis of Tabor, historian and archaeologist, who for over forty years has been part of archaeological teams in Israel and expert scientist in understanding the New Testament. What he does in ‘The Jesus Dynasty’ is to give us his scientific ideas on the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth. ‘Scientific’ means in this case – for all you ‘I-know-Christian-history-because-I read-Dan-Brown’ persons out there – theory based on the interpretation of facts compared to theory based on the interpretation of well, nothing. But to get it over with, and reduce the amount of Brown-bashing: Brown is a fantast, Tabor a scientist. Tabor creates a stunning picture of Jesus as a Jew who at first belonged to the messianic sect of his kinsman John the Baptist to grow out to become one of its leaders. Tabor works around the idea that Jewish religion was not waiting for one but for two messiahs – the priest and the king – who openly challenged the established authorities to bring the Kingdom of God on earth. References to the coming of the Son of Man are to be interpreted as the re-establishing of the people of Israel instead of directly linking to Jesus himself. Tabor continues to create a restive Palestine whose Israelite citizens are eager to see the coming of God in their days. Based on the prophecies of the Torah, and the interpretation of John the Baptist and Jesus all signs are pointing to the fulfilment and the end of the Age. I help you remember that we are still talking scientific theory here and not Brownite overinterpretation.

After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus and his family are continuing his work. Nobody can tell whether or not Jesus himself believed he would be rescued by God from the cross, it is very likely that he would have expected the apocalypse during the Passover festival. After his death his followers were lead by his brother James the Just. Up until the crucifixion Tabor reconstructs the messianic movement in its historic context. After Jesus’ death he tries to rebuild his true teachings through James. He basically works with the idea that Paul ‘hijacked’ the group’s messianic, apocalyptic, Jewish teachings. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God would be established on earth, he would be king but there was no need for armed rebellion, because God would come to free the oppressed and the righteous. Jesus saw himself as the teacher of a message. Paul made him, in order to be able to work among the Romans and convert non-Jews, into the message himself. Paul claimed Jesus to be the Son of Man and created the spiritual Kingdom of God in Heaven. In short Paul made Jesus God. Jesus never did and his brothers were appalled by these teachings. Through deduction and scientific textual analysis Tabor and others have managed to find parts of the New Testament, non-biblical gospels and texts that refer to the original ideas of Jesus and his family. Ideas that have been overgrown by Christian mysticism and theology which deified Jesus, his mother and disciples instead of realizing the value of their human ideas.

“Love God first, and your fellow human as yourself, and whatever you find hateful to yourself, do not do to another, but do others as you would have them do to you. This is the essence of the Torah and the prophets. Don’t think I came to destroy the Torah or the prophets; I came to fulfill. Whoever relaxes one of the least of the commandments will be considered “least” by those in the Kingdom of God. Be doers of the Torah and not hearers only, for faith without works is dead.”

Jesus was a Jew and never intended his teachings to become the foundation of a contending religion. Tabor ends his work with the notion that although controversial, his work is intended to build and not to tear down. He states that with new interest in the historic figure and ideas of Jesus of Nazareth the three world religions can actually grow towards each other. He quotes the Jewish philosopher Buber: “I do not believe in Jesus but I believe with him”. Tabor’s ideas make striking connections with the way the prophet Isa (Jesus) is depicted in the Qu’ran which clearly rejects all Pauline doctrine. Without ever degrading these doctrines Tabor managed to make his point in the ‘Jesus Dynasty’ brilliantly. As a bonus, he proves that history can be much more intriguing than any made-up story. He has written in a popular language so his work is easily accessible to any non-historians, non-theologians and non-whateverians. In short, I am going to lend this book to a lot of people!

Die Jesus Dynastie hits the bookstores all over Germany and Austria on Wednesday, October 4th, exactly six months to the day from its release in English. The publisher, Random House/Bertelsmann is expecting extraordinary interest in the book. This past Sunday, October 1st, the newspaper Welt am Sonntag ran a nice full page story on the book which was quite positive. This initial publicity pushed the book toward the top 200 range yesterday on Amazon in Germany. Today I did an interview with the current affairs magazine, Focus, which plans a four page full-color spread. The highly regarded TV program Aspekte, which ran a segment on Die Jesus Dynastie last July, will follow up with a second piece later this month. It will be quite interesting to follow the discussion of the book in Germany which has such an rich mix of “cultural” worlds, whether secular, Roman Catholic, or Protestant, not to mention the Bavarian Pope Benedict XVI. There is great intellectual ferment in Germany when it comes to theology and the history of Christianity. Books on early Christianity regularly appear there and often sell well. Rudolf Augstein, the late and long term editor of Der Spiegel, Germany’s preeminent news magazine, wrote a famous book called simply “J” which strongly emphasized a human portrait of Jesus. It became a runaway best-seller in Germany. The challenging works of censored Catholic Theologian Hans Kung, have become subjects of national discussion all over Europe but particularly in Germany. In terms of my own book, as one might expect, there is a special interest among the public in Germany regarding the Pantera story, since the tombstone of the Roman soldier that I discuss in my book is located in the museum in Bad Kreuznach. Stay tuned for more news. I will pass along things that come to me to all of you.

Spectrum Publishers in the Netherlands has announced that The Jesus Dynasty in Dutch will be released in early October. The publisher has invited me to come for interviews in both Holland and Belgium in early November. If you would like a peek at the cover it is featured on the home page of the publisher and at De Jezus Dynastie.

The Portuguese edition, A Dinastia de Jesus was released over the summer and is apparently causing some bit of stir. I have had just this past week inteviews with the two major newsmagazines in Portugal: Focus and Sabado.

I suspect this Blog will become more and more interesting as The Jesus Dynasty goes into more and more languages and draws responses from around the world, upon which I am sure I will want to comment.

I just heard this week from the editor of the Portuguese magazine SABATO, which I am told is the TIME magazine of Portugal. They want to do a feature story on the book. The Jesus Dynasty was actually published in Portuguese in April (in Europe, the Brazilian is yet to come) and I had helped the translator along with way with many difficult points of interpretation from one culture to another–quite a fascinating subject in itself.

I also was able to view on DVD the German program Aspekte that aired July 14th on nationwide TV all over Europe, in fact friends of mine in Vienna watched it live. Since German is probably my best spoken language I was able to follow it easily and I felt the editor did an absolutely superb job in presenting a fair and balanced treatment of the book. A second segment is due to air the same week the book is released in German in late September with a national ad campaign that will rival what we had here in the US. It is being published by Bertlesmann, a name almost unknown to Americans. Bertlesmann is a media giant and among other things owns Random House, the world’s largest general interest trade publisher. I received a copy of the Fall book catalogue and Die Jesus Dynastie is given a lovely two page spread and it comes up first on their Web site. If any of you want to order a copy of the German edition is you can easily get it via Amazon’s German site.
More to come…

My librarian friend Jill Prouty from Peach Tree City, Georgia tells me that abebooks.com is a great source for used books. I just checked and they have several copies of Hugh Schonfield, The Authentic New Testament, including the lovely 1st edition hardcover, which I would highly recommend. They also have the 1955 Holy Scriptures/JPS translation I recommended as does Amazon and quite a few other places. On that one though things can get a bit confusing, in that the new JPS Holy Scriptures/Tanakh (1985) often comes up as well on searches. I recommend both but in terms of a more “literal” translation, which I had recommended, the 1955 (based on the original 1917 edition) is preferrable.

Speaking of Jill Prouty and Peach Tree City Library, this past weekend they flew me to Atlanta to do a lecture and book signing and the turnout was wonderful, with hundreds of people streaming in. Jill had worked hard and managed to generate an amazing amount of publicity and buzz, including a full page story in the local paper, The Citizen by veteran reporter Michael Boylan:

We had to move from the original room scheduled to the City Hall next door. The audience was warm, intelligent, enthusiastic, and respectful and it was really gratifying to me to see the way in which my book has positively sparked lots of good enlightened discussion among Jews, Christians, and secularists about the historical Jesus. Although I have completed my “official tour” East, West, as well as abroad to the UK in connection with the book, Jill Prouty, who had reviewed the book for her local paper, contacted me and set this event up herself. I was reluctant at first to do any more traveling but I am so glad I did. It was truly a wonderful experience to visit this south of Atlanta community and I hope to return sometime.

So “have book, will travel,” but only if someone with the enthusiasm and skills of Jill Prouty “prepares the way” in the wilderness…

I have mentioned before that The Jesus Dynasty has now sold in over 20 languages worldwide. The first to come out is the Japanese edition, just released from Sofbank Creative, Inc. It is a truly lovely edition, hardcover and fully illustrated. I anticipate a lot of interest from the Japanese who have a great fascination with Christianity, Jesus, and particularly historical studies of Jesus. I thought readers might be interested in the cover design and perhaps some of you read Japanese or know those who do and would want to obtain a copy of the Japanese edition:

Recently when I was in Israel I filmed a TV segment with ZDF Public Television in Germany for the prime-time show called Aspekte. Although the German edition of The Jesus Dynasty will not be released until October, 2006, the first segment of the ZDF production: ‘New on the Family of Jesus” will run tomorrow night, July 14th, on German television at 10:30p.m. local time in Germany (EST in the US is six hours earlier or 4:30 p.m.), which will be followed up by a second show timed to coincide with the book’s release in October. The program Aspekte can also be viewed via Livestream on the Internet, though it is of course in German with my interview voiced over.

The Program Schedule: Aspekte

New on the Family of Jesus: A Profile

Beginning the Jesus Dynasty Blog

I am in Jerusalem this week and I thought it an appropriate time and place to begin my Jesus Dynasty Blog. My purpose is to write things day-to-day and week-to-week related to the research I presented in The Jesus Dynasty. I will comment on a wide variety of topics and areas related to the book including reviews, questions, reader reactions, and other miscellaneous items of interest. Some of the key topics that I cover in the book are ongoing areas of investigation and research so this Blog will be a good place for me to update readers on the latest news as well. In both the areas of textual research and archaeological findings it seems that the quest for the historical Jesus is continually advancing and changing. Check back often and feel free to offer any feedback (jesusdynasty@earthlink.net).

James Tabor

When authors go on book tours one thing they do is visit local bookstores and sign stock so that interested customers can by a copy of their book with the author’s signature. Bookstores put a sticker on the front but the cost of the book remains the same. Often while signing stacks of books a customer will walk up and ask the obvious–Are you the author? Yesterday I was in Powell’s Bookstore in downtown Portland, in town for the annual book fair called Wordstock. If you are ever in Portland you have to visit Powell’s, it is truly one of the great independent bookstores in the United States. Anyway, this customer began to talk to me while I was signing stock and her first question was one I get often–Dr. Tabor, what is your faith?

I am a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, chair of the Department of Religious Studies with over 30 faculty in which we cover the diversity of world religions taught from an academic perspective. Our students often ask us what we “believe” and most of us tell them that such matters are irrelevant to the academic study of religion. Whatever we are teaching, whether Christian Origins, Islam, Hinduism, or even a new religious movement, our goal is to be evenhanded and objective, taking an historical and descriptive approach, not one that involves the confession of any faith. This is different from what goes on in a seminary or theological setting and even some parochial schools that are founded to support education in the context of a specific faith.

Sometimes I have half jokingly replied to my students who ask, “Dr. Tabor what are you?” (they usually mean–are you a Christian?), “I am a human being.” The rabbis have a term for this in Hebrew: Bnai Noach, it means “children of Noah.” According to the Bible all human beings are “children of Adam,” and then later, “children of Noah,” with basic ethical obligations to one another and to animals. I am not sure I would want a label beyond that, even though, like most people, I have my own spiritual perspective. I do, however, say a bit more than this in The Jesus Dynasty. In the Preface I begin with a story of a Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land when I was 14 years old. And in the Conclusion I try to set forth my vision of what a recovery of the mission and message of the historical Jesus might mean for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. In the Conclusion in particular one can hear a bit of my inner self in terms of what I believe, even beyond what I generally am comfortable doing with my students, given my Jeffersonian commitment to the free and academic atmosphere in a secular university. This is essentially what I told my inquirer in Powell’s yesterday, and what I generally tell audiences when asked this question while on tour. I autographed a book for her and assured her that she would pick up an overall sense of my own spiritual journey in the way I convey the Jesus story in The Jesus Dynasty.

Now that the dust has settled a tiny bit from the publication of my book The Jesus Dynasty (Simon & Schuster) last week, with heavily edited sensational treatments on ABC-TV (Good Morning America, 20/20, and Nightline), a really decent cover story on this week’s USNews&WorldReport, dozens of newspaper articles, and a mailbox full of many hundreds of messages of every persuasion, I thought I might say something more directly about the book myself, as the author. Frankly, I have no reason to complain about the “press” and I am grateful for the massive attention the book has gotten in just over a week.

Despite the title, The Jesus Dynasty, and the fact that Michael Baigent had a book out the same week, and Dan Brown was released in paperback all over the universe, my work is a serious academic study of Jesus along the lines of what we scholars (à la Albert Schweitzer) call the “Quest for the historical Jesus. The book is wholly an historical investigation, not a theological or dogmatic one, and it rests upon my 35 years as a historian of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. Its presuppositions and methods are those common in the field among historical investigators. I deliberately chose to write it for a broad non-specialist audience, not for my colleagues in the field, so I present my evidence of Jesus, from birth to death, in what I hope will prove to be an engaging unfolding narrative style. The focus of the book is singular: What do we know about Jesus and how do we know it? Although I consider all the surviving evidence of which I am aware, including a strong emphasis on the material side of the story revealed by archaeology, much of my results come right out of the New Testament texts themselves—though read in an historical-critical fashion based on the methods in our field.

I turned 60 this year, and like many of my colleagues before me (Vermes, Crossan, Chilton, Ehrman, Friedrikson, Wright, et al.) I felt it was my time to “step up to the plate” and present my “Jesus book” before the world. I put into this book all that I have learned about Jesus in my long teaching and research career at Notre Dame, William&Mary, and UNC Charlotte). I wanted the book to be in every sense, for me at least, a “summing up.”

I interpret Jesus as a Jewish apocalyptic messianic inaugurator of the Kingdom of God set in the context of the wider movement sparked by his kinsman John the Baptizer, with all the radical social, political, and religious implications thereof. After the death of John and Jesus I trace the movement through James, the brother of Jesus, and subsequently into the second century led by Simon, another bother (or perhaps cousin)—hence the “Jesus Dynasty” idea. I set the entire story in the context of the broader messianic movement in Palestine before the catastrophe of 70 A.D. I am not convinced there is any strong evidence that Jesus was married with children. My emphasis in this regard is upon Jesus’ own immediate family—the seven children of Mary his very Jewish mother. I understand Paul as diverging sharply from these founders, John, Jesus, and James, and presenting for the world a dualistic otherworldly vision of Christ and salvation that ultimately becomes “Christianity.”

The book has many surprises, some of which have been sensationalized by the press, as one would expect—particularly what I discovered about the Pantera tradition, the notion of “two Messiahs,” the surprising identity of the “beloved disciple,” and my speculations about the empty tomb. But there is much more than these elements, important as they are, and all that I say is given a wider context and laid out in a sensible academic way. I do speculate and imagine in the book, but like any historian I seek to do that responsibly, in the “direction of the evidence,” and nothing of that nature do I present dogmatically. I have expected some readers of a more evangelical Christian perspective to react negatively to the book, or I should say, to “reports” of the book, as in truth most who read it go away with a positive evaluation, even while not accepting all its conclusions.

For reviews and more information about the book see the menu at the Home Page of JesusDynasty.com, but better still—there is always the book itself! I also have archived a wealth of interesting materials related to my work on Christian Origins at my University Web site. There is also a perceptive review of my work, contrasting it (a bit too harshly I think) with Baigent’s latest on Salon.com