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…
Some of you had trouble accessing the Denver radio station KGNU interview I did by telephone with Metro hostess Liz Lane when I was in Jerusalem last month. Ms. Lane was exceptionally well prepared as an interviewer and in the full hour we were able to survey many of the main ideas in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, as well as their potential significance for both the Christian and the secular reader.
A sympathetic reader with some technical ability got permission to convert the program to a file readily accessible in mp3 format and post it on the Web.
To listen to or download the Liz Lane interview click here.
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
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Dr. James Tabor, author of The Jesus Dynasty with Guest Host, Dr. Scout Lee
Long time student of the Bible, CEO and CBS Survivor Dr. Scout Lee talks with Dr. James Tabor about his newest and most ambitious book, The Jesus Dynasty: A New Historical Investigation of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. Based on a careful analysis of the earliest Christian documents and recent archeological discoveries, The Jesus Dynasty offers a bold new interpretation of the life of Jesus and the origins of Christianity. MORE
While I was in Jerusalem last week I did a very in-depth full hour radio interview long distance with the Denver/Boulder station KGNU and hostess Liz Lane on her show called Metro. I have seldom encountered any media person with the skill and savy that Liz showed in having read and absorbed my book, The Jesus Dynasty. The program is archived on the KGNU Web site. If you click on the link below, then choose today’s date, July 5th, as the show aired live today at noon in Colorado, you can listen to the interview in its entirely. You can play it directly or download it for later listening. The opening lead in takes a few minutes but shortly you will hear Ms. Lane introducing me and her topic, then the news, then the show…
Of all the interviews I have done I think this one might be one of the most comprehensive and fair in really setting forth the main impact and significance of my book. If you have the time and inclination I invite you to listen.
Best wishes to all,
James D. Tabor
http://kgnu.org/ht/listings.html?show=Metro
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.