Archive for the ‘Tabor's Blog’ Category

Thanks to Mark Elliot and the editors of the newly revived Web site Bible Interpretation for carrying a featured article on the latest report on our very exciting Mt Zion excavation in Jerusalem. You can read the report with pictures here. Bible Interpretation was, in my view, one of the finest sites on-line and it is great to see it back, up and running.

For more general information on the upcoming 2009 Dig Season at Mt Zion, as well as full reports, videos, pictures, and a history of this important excavation see our main Web site:

digmountzion.com

We accept volunteers of all ages and walks of life and students from any accredited college or university in the United States can enroll for academic credit. Please write me directly with any questions or comments: jdtabor@uncc.edu

I wanted to announce a new “landing page,” at the domain jamestabor.com, that integrates four web sites that I maintain related to my academic work, including a new one, TaborBlog, that begins today.

This Jesus Dynasty blog will continue, including its rich archive of materials posted since its inception in April, 2006. However, its focus will be more narrow than in the past–namely news and topics related directly to the book, The Jesus Dynasty.

There are two traditional sites in Jerusalem that tourists and pilgrims revere as the likely location of Golgotha–the place where Jesus was crucified. The oldest and most revered is of course the 4th century Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest site in Christendom. It is located in the Christian Quarter, inside the present Old City walls and was built by queen Helena, the devout mother of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, and Coptic Christians share the veneration and operation of the site. Many Protestants prefer an alternative site, outside the Old City walls, just north of the Damascus Gate near the bus depot. It is commonly referred to as the “Gordon’s Calvary” or the Garden Tomb, after its “discoverer,” the British general Charles “Khartoum” Gordon. Gordon suggested the location on a visit to Jerusalem in 1882, impressed by the elevated craggy rock outcropping that he thought resembled a skull, and a nearby ancient tomb with an entrance sealed with a rolling stone.

There are photos of both sites in my book, The Jesus Dynasty (chapter 14) as well as a brief discussion of some of the problems with each site. Some years ago I encountered the view that the crucifixion took place on the Mount of Olives, as expressed in a little book published by the late Ernest Martin titled The Place of Christ’s Crucifixion: Its Discovery and Significance (Foundation for Biblical Research, 1984). This book is long ago out of print though used copies can still be found at Amazon and other sources. Martin later expanded his views in a subsequent volume, Secrets of Golgotha: The Forgotten History of Christ’s Crucifixion (ASK Publications, 1988), which I reviewed in Critical Review of Books in Religion 1991, pp. 213-214. Personally, I always preferred his first, much shorter work, as it focused on the location of the site itself, whereas the subsequent expanded volume contained a lot of theological ideas that Martin held about the atoning death of Jesus per se.

Although Martin independently came to his view that the crucifixion of Jesus took place on the Mount of Olives, after publishing his first work he discovered the views of Nikos Kokkinos (1980) who had developed a somewhat different argument related to the notion that the crucifixion would have taken place at the scene of Jesus’ arrest, based on Roman law, thus near the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mt of Olives. Later Martin also noted the views published by W. J. Hutchinson in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly (1873, 115; also 1870, 379-381), that Jesus’ crucifixion must have taken place somewhere east of the Temple Mount. Since Martin’s work was published and his views regarding the Mt. of Olives have become better known, quite a few others have taken up various aspects of his arguments as a simple Web search will reveal.

The basic case for the Mt. of Olives being the site of Jesus’ crucifixion rests on several interrelated arguments of varying evidential strength.

1) The first, and in my view, the strongest, is a passage in the New Testament book of Hebrews (13:10-13) that speaks of “going outside the city gate,” to a specific altar that was not inside the Temple, but “outside the camp.” This is a clear and unmistakable reference to the Eastern Gate, leading to the Mt of Olives, and the Miphqad altar located on its slopes. It was at this spot that the Red Heifer (parah ‘adamah) was burnt to provide the essential ashes for cleansing all things related to Temple worship (Numbers 19). The Talmud and Mishnah are clear that this altar was located 2000 cubits, outside the Eastern Gate, on the slopes of the Mt. of Olives (bYoma 68a, mSanhedrin 6:1). The author of the book of Hebrews makes use of this essential sacrificial practice, “outside the camp,” to establish the legitimacy of Jesus being crucified “outside the gate.” Rather than a gate on the north of the city, the Eastern Gate is really the only one that would make sense in this passage. This image of the Red Heifer, that had to be “without spot or blemish” was picked up by the early Christians as the most fitting allegorical image of Jesus’ own cleansing sacrifice, with the “sprinkling” of his blood likened to that of the water prepared with the ashes of the Red Heifer. The writer of Hebrews, preserving pre-70 AD traditions, subsequently lost after the destruction of two Jewish Revolts and the establishment of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina by Hadrian, clearly knows the geography of Jerusalem and is able to make a very effective point to his readers based on Jesus being crucified east of the city, outside the gate, on the Mt. of Olives.

2) The Acts of Pilate (aka Gospel of Nicodemus IX.5) preserves a tradition that Jesus was sent away by Pilate with two malefactors named Dysmas and Gestas, to be crucified in the garden where he was arrested–Gethsemane, which all our gospel sources agree was across the Kidron on the slopes of the Mt of Olives. As Prof. Kokkinos demonstrated, this was in keeping with Roman law.

3) The Hebrew Gospel of Matthew (preserved by Ibn Shaprut in his work Even Bohan), published by George Howard, refers to the site of the crucifixion, in Hebrew, as Har Golgotha, which means a “mountain” or “hill,” and certainly not the little outcropping of rock preserved at the stone quarry where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands.

4) Josephus says that during the Jewish revolt (66-70 AD) thousands of Jewish victims were crucified “before the wall of the city,” in order to terrorize the population. This description fits perfectly with the Mt. of Olives, before the main city gate, with the Romans camped just to the north on Mt Scopus. This was the only location that could be seen by anyone in the city of Jerusalem, thus providing a visible warning to those who might be tempted to sympathize with rebels.

5) In the time of Jesus, Jewish tombs, other than the tomb of David, had been moved at least 2000 cubits “outside the city,” (Tosephta Baba Bathra 1:2), to avoid ritual contamination. This indicates that the tomb in which Jesus was temporarily placed by Joseph of Arimathea, was, of necessity, far outside the area where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands today–just a few yards from the city wall. That is why we find the tombs of Helena, the high priests Annas and Caiaphus, and the Sanhedrin tombs, well beyond this 2000 cubit parameter. No one was carving a “newly hewn tomb” that close to the city wall in the 1st century, and the tomb area there today most likely dates back to Hellenistic times.

The traditional site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre fits none of this evidence. By the time Constantine’s mother, queen Helena came to Jerusalem, in the early 4th century, there was no memory of the original tomb of Jesus or the site of the crucifixion, as that oral tradition, that would have belonged to the Jerusalem Church, led by James and Simon, brothers of Jesus, had long ago perished. The tomb and monument area she was shown, by a stone quarry, most likely was the tomb of John Hyrcanus, that is often mentioned by Josephus as precisely in that area.

Back in 2005 when I was working on The Jesus Dynasty I commissioned the artist Balage Balogh, highlighted in my previous post on this blog, to paint a crucifixion scene on the Mt. of Olives based on my own exploration of the site. I had located a bedrock area, flat and just above the site of the miphqad altar, that resembles a “skull” with natural pockets of indentations, that seemed to me to be a very likely possibility for the actual site. It is directly in front of the Eastern Gate, looking into the courtyard of the Temple. Nearby are lots of 1st century tombs, as well as an oil-press (Gethsemane/Gat Shemen means “press of oil), and lots of Olive Orchards. None of these features fit the quarry area just north of the 1st century city wall, where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands today. Balogh was most exacting in his work on this scene, as he is with all his work. He made the victims nude, he placed the nails as they should be, in the wrists and ankle bones, and he positioned the soldiers, the family gathered in front of the scene, and the bystanders, in their proper garb. The results are so breathtaking and startling, that I asked Simon & Schuster, my publisher, to print the painting in color in the inside back cover of the hardback edition–making that edition, now out of print but with a few copies available on Amazon as a “bargain” book, a collectors item.

Frankly, the image of Jesus dying, overlooking the city of Jerusalem, on the very slopes of the mountain he had ridden down a week earlier, is surely one of the most touching scenes of human history. To this day there is a north path that goes up to the area of crucifixion I have proposed and a southern path that goes down, from Bethany, both worn deep into the bedrock.

One of the most fascinating names inscribed on the ossuaries in the Talpiot “Jesus Family” tomb is the unusual and rare form of the Greek inscription for a “Mary,” as first published by the learned L. Y. Rahmani in 1994:

MARIAMNENOU (HE) MARA: of Mariamene, who is (also called) Mara

[IAA 80.500, CJO 701: L. Y. Rahmani (A Catalog of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel, Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities and Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994)]

Rahmani understood the name as a neuter genitive of the name MARIAMNENON, which is in turn a diminutive form of MARIAMENE.

Although this reading has been only lately questioned and disputed by various scholars, (Pfann, Price, Puech, et al.), who have proposed it be read as MARIAME KAI MARA or MARIAM HE KAI MARA (Mariame AND Mara OR Mariam also known as Mara), whether referring to two women or one by two names, what I find really interesting about Rahmani’s reading is the presence of the Greek letter “Nu” or “N,” in other words: MariameNe.

I for one have not been so quick to dispute the skilled and sharp eye of Rahmani, supported now after further reexamination by Prof. Leah Di Segni and incorporated into Amos Kloner’s official report on the tomb. Mary in English takes various forms in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Coptic: Miriam, Mariam, Mariame, Mariamme, and Maria, but the name spelled with an “N,” as Rahmani read this ossuary, is virtually unknown in antiquity (see E. Stanley Jones, ed., Which Mary: The Marys of Early Christian Tradition, Atlanta: SBL, 2002).

I say “virtually” unknown, for a reason, so bear with me here. Now here is where things get really interesting.

If you do a search for Mariamne, spelled with an “N,” on Wikipedia, you will read that it is a name frequently used in the Herodian Royal house for Mariame or Mariamme. If you search further on Google, again for “Mariamne” spelled with an “N,” even excluding references to the inscription in the Talpiot tomb, you will find dozens of “hits.” If you read many English or French editions of Josephus’s works you will find dozens of references to Mariamne, spelled with the “N.” And finally, even Voltaire wrote a play called “Herode et Mariamne,” yes, you guessed it, spelled with an “N.” And yet the fact remains, so far as I have been able to discover, all these sources, from Wikipeida, to Josephus in translation, and even Voltaire, have no basis in any Greek texts from Antiquity. My guess is that the root of this widespread misunderstanding comes from translations in English and French of Josephus that incorrectly put “Mariamene” for the name “Mariame.” But the original Greek has no “Nu” or “N.”

I had a colleague run a search on Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the University of California at Irvine data base that has collected and digitized all of Greek literature from Homer to the fall of Byzantium in 1453. Currently this is a collection contains 3800 authors, 12,000 texts, and about 99 million words–and it is updated quarterly. UNC Charlotte and most major universities are subscribers to the TLG Library and search engine. Non-subscribers can access a trial version, see the TLG Web site for information. We asked for all examples in extant Greek literature of the name Mariam spelled with an “Nu,” or “N.”

Our results were rather amazing. As it turns out this very unusual form of the name Mariam in Greek, namely any form containing the “N,” popped up in only two works–the Acts of Philip and Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, and in both works the reference was to the woman named Mary Magdalene in our Gospels. There are multiple references in the Acts of Philip to Mary Magdalene and her apostolic mission and travels. However, the reference in Hippolytus is of particular interest in that he mentions a Jewish-Christian group of “Naassenes” who taught that James the brother of Jesus handed on the secret tradition of Jesus to “Mariamene.” Hippolytus flourished in the late 2nd century CE and he was linked to Irenaeus, who in turn was linked to Papias. If there are other instances of any form of the name “Mariam” spelled with an “N” we missed them and would be glad to have them pointed out. But assuming this data result is correct, what if one asks the question differently? If we begin with the Talpiot tomb inscription, read as Mariamene, spelled with an “N,” that surely Rahmani and Di Segni would vehemently deny has anything to do with Mary Magadalene, and just ask two related questions:

• Where in all of Greek literature do we know this unusual form of the name?

• Is/are there any identifiable woman/women in all of antiquity who was/were known by this form of the name Mary?

So far as I can discover the answer is clear. Our only references, outside the Talpiot tomb, are to a single woman, Mary Magdalene. It seems to me that this result has great force. Rather than one having to “jump” to the 2nd century or the 4th century, to desperately find a parallel to “Mariamene” in the Jesus Tomb, is not quite the opposite the case? When one searches the linguistic evidence for this form of the name no one other than Mary Magdalene turns up. I think this fact should give us a bit of pause. Whether the Talpiot tomb can ultimately be identified with that of Jesus and his family or not, what an odd turn of events that the odd and completely rare occurrence of “Mariamne” spelled with an “N” would turn up in a 1st century tomb containing these other names–including Jesus son of Joseph. That Rahmani and Di Segni read the name in that way, and still do, without the least inclination to connect it to Jesus of Nazareth, seems to be all the more telling in terms of an honest linguistic reading. However, given this result, perhaps all the criticism that Jacobovici received for “jumping” from a 1st century tomb with the name Mariamene to a 4th century “gnostic” text like the Acts of Philip, should be reconsidered.

I just received a copy of The Jesus Dynasty in Chinese produced by Locus Publishing Co. in Taiwan. This marks the 12th of an eventual 25 foreign languages in which the book has sold. It will circulate in all markets except the Mainland and is produced in Chinese Complex Characters. I am working with some very high level contacts in the Mainland now who are quite interested in seeing a version come out there, which would be in Simplified Chinese. There is a tremendous interest among Chinese populations in the historical Jesus, Biblical archeology, and associated subjects.

I am in the airport at Newark International ready to fly over to Israel for the Mt. Zion dig. I expect to send reports from the field through next week as well as continue posting on a number of topics, including new material on the form of the name Mariamene as related to Mary Magdalene.

I am working steadily on the sequel to the The Jesus Dynasty, a book mainly dealing with Paul and the development of early Christianity during the first 20 years (30-50 CE), the period Crossan called the “dark ages” of the movement in terms of our dearth of sources. The working title is The Paul Dynasty, but what I mean by that title has a surprising twist that I don’t want to reveal until the book is published. It is one of the major discoveries I have made on Paul over the past 25 years since I published my dissertation, Things Unutterable.

One question I get via e-mail several times a week is: What is the best and most accurate translation of the Bible? That is a tough one, in that there are so many good translations that serve well various purposes. Much depends on what one is looking for, whether for close scholarly study, devotional reading, or a literary overview. Since I have been working for over a decade on a new translation, the Transparent English Bible in connection with the Original Bible Project, I wish I could refer readers to that finished work, but alas, it is only now being released in preliminary samples on the Web.

My leanings are toward more “literal” translations, but unfortunately, most of those are done by evangelical Christians and they tend to reflect a Christian slant within the Hebrew Bible or so-called “Old Testament.” As Bibles go, meaning those that contain both Hebrew Bible and New Testament, I think the Revised Standard Version (that I rate in some ways above New RSV) might be one of the better scholarly translations, though I prefer one that would stay closer to the Masoretic text for the Hebrew Bible. If you can stand the archaic language, the older American Standard Version (1901) might be better in that regard. There is also the English Standard Version (2003) that tries to improve on the old RSV and in some ways does a good job–but again its Christian theological bias comes through all too often.

All in all I think it might be best to split off the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. For the latter I would highly recommend Hugh Schonfield’s The Authentic New Testament, that is unfortunately out of print. It is well worth searching out through the used book dealers or via e-Bay. I would recommend the hardback edition if you can find it, as it is beautifully designed. For the Hebrew Bible, even though it is out of date in many ways, I would say that the original Jewish Publication Society Holy Scriptures or Tanakh, is a good choice. This is the one first published in 1917 but revised in 1955. It too, unfortunately, is out of print, though there are still used copies around. There is also the Koren Holy Scriptures, also called The Jerusalem Bible, published in Israel in 1992 and still in print. The newer JPS Tanakh (1985) does not take a “literal” approach, but something closer to what the scholars call “dynamic equivalence.”

Through this summer I have listened to the new CD by Sinead O’Conner titled Theology many dozens of times–every chance I get. It is the most amazing collection of songs, put together with a skill, a unity of vision, and a power that one seldom encounters. I have not been moved so deeply on a spiritual level by a CD since Ten New Songs by Leonard Cohen (2005), whom I consider to be the high priest of a prophetic musical genre of this type. The power of O’Conner’s work is based on the raw power of her soul, as with all her work, but shaped, often word-for-word, by the words of the Hebrew Bible–namely Jeremiah, Isaiah, Job, and several of the Psalms, cast at times with a Jamaican flavor (Yah for Yahweh, etc.). For me at least the effect was to leave me speechless, sort of “slain in the spirit,” I think the term is, and I have no “charismatic” background or experience.

My own understanding of the message of the Jesus movement (John the Baptizer, Jesus, and James the Just) is that the group was powerfully shaped by the visionary perspective of the Hebrew Prophets (particularly Isaiah and Jeremiah) and certain of the Psalms. That vision centered on the notion of the Kingdom of God, with the will of God being realized on earth as in heaven, through a new world characterized by peace, justice, and righteousness. In my book, The Jesus Dynasty, I try to bring to the public a perspective that many scholars share–namely that there is a vast difference between the message Jesus preached and “Jesus as the message,” as touted by later “orthodox” Christians shaped by the visions of Paul. Sinead seems to have tapped into that in an extraordinary way, but without any reference whatsoever to the “person” of Jesus per se, or anything one could recognizably call distinctively “Christian,” in the later dogmatic sense of the term. I noticed that Christianity Today eagerly latched onto Sinead for an interview when the album came out, but I sensed in reading it that the content must have been quite disappointing to those who might have hoped for something more along Christian evangelical lines. Sinead clearly values her Catholic upbringing on a cultural level, and she “loves Jesus,” as a “spiritual energy,” but she is sharply critical of orthodox Christianity and clearly rejects any kind of exclusive views of Jesus.

There are two discs with eleven songs each, with mostly the same songs recorded in different settings. The first, “The Dublin Sessions” is more acoustic and simple; the second, “The London Sessions,” has a full instrumental arrangement. I much prefer the former for its vocal intimacy and expression. Each disc ends with an interview with Sinead where she talks freely about how she came to do this particular album and what it means to her. You can listen to samples at Amazon.com.

One of the more extraordinary results of the release and translation of the entire Dead Sea Scrolls corpus is our ability to sketch out a rather full and reliable portrait of the community that produced the scrolls, as well as a “life and times” of their otherwise unidentified leader or Prophet: the Teacher of Righteousness. Both Michael Wise, in his book, The First Messiah, and Israel Knohl, in his study titled The Messiah Before Jesus, independently pick up on this subject, but particularly the ways in which the career of the Teacher serves as a precursor for that of Jesus of Nazareth. I highly recommend both books. Of particular interest in this regard is the question of what happens to the community at the death of its leader and how the prophetic vision of the future is maintained despite the failure of apocalyptic expectations–the phenomenon sociologists of religions have come to call “When Prophecy Fails.”

The complicated complex of terminology related to understanding the apocalypticism in the Scrolls–in particular the expectation, appearance, function, and outcome of various “Redemptive Figures” mentioned–has received careful attention by scholars. Among the best studies is that of John J. Collins, The Star and the Scepter. These designations arise, for the most part, directly from the Hebrew Scriptures–Prophet, Priest, Messiahs, Stone, Branch, Prince, Messenger, Servant, Star, Scepter, and so forth. I am using “Messiah” in my title above in the most generic sense–not merely to refer to an ideal Davidic King, but to one who is understood to function as a central figure or chief agent in ushering in and mediating the expected arrival of the Kingdom of God (Dan 2:44). In other words, the Scrolls, as a corpus, do not refer to just one figure but reflect a developing and shifting, even speculative application of the complexity of the Hebrew Scriptures themselves.

In one of the earlier and most foundational texts at Qumran, The Community Rule (1QS), we find no indication that any such messianic figures have appeared on the scene. Rather, the community itself expresses its self-understanding as the new covenant community of the Last Days.

Col VIII: And when these become members of the Community in Israel according to all these rules, they shall separate from the habitation of ungodly men and shall go into the wilderness to prepare the way of Him, as it is written, “Prepare in the wilderness the way … make straight in the desert a path for our God…”

Col IX: This is the time for the preparation of the way in the wilderness…

Col IX.10ff: They shall depart from one of the counsels of the Torah to walk in all the stubbornness of their hearts, but shall be ruled by the primitive precepts in which the men of the Community were first instructed until there shall come the Prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel.

Here we very possibly have three figures in mind. The Prophet is clearly the “Prophet like Moses” (Deut 18), elsewhere identified as the Star (Num 24:17) or Interpreter (Doresh HaTorah) or Teacher of Righteousness. “Messiahs”, if taken as two, most likely refers to the coming of both a Davidic “Prince of the Congregation” (elsewhere called “the Scepter”; Num 24:17 again), and a Priestly/Aaronic Messiah or anointed one. These are referred to in Zech 4:14 as the two “sons of fresh oil” (b’nai HaYitzhar) “who stand before the “Lord” (Adon) of the whole earth” (Rev 11).

Within the Qumran corpus we can document the appearance of the Prophet or Teacher of Righteousness; however, I find no evidence anywhere in the entire collection of the appearance of his two messiahs. The Damascus Document (CD) is absolutely crucial in this regard. Two manuscripts (A & B) found in the Cairo Geniza by S. Schechter in 1897 were also found in extensive fragments in Caves 4, 5, and 6 at Qumran, inside the very parameters of the settlement. The introductory lines of Col I refer to the appearance of the Teacher 390 years after the Babylonian Exile (586 BCE) and twenty years after the origin of the New Covenant movement:

He visited them and He caused a plant root to spring from Israel and Aaron to inherit His Land and to prosper on the good things of His earth. And they perceived their iniquity and recognized that they were guilty men, yet for twenty years they were like blind men groping for the way. And God observed their deeds, that they sought Him with a whole heart, and He raised up for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart.

What I find rather striking is that in CD manuscript A, other than in this introduction, there is no direct reference to the arrival and career of this Teacher. Indeed, in Col VII we find reference to the “Star and Scepter” promise of Number 24 with a decidedly “future” cast to it–as if neither figure had appeared. And in Col VI we read: “He raised up from Aaron men of discernment and from Israel men of wisdom…until he comes who shall teach righteousness at the end of days.”

But in the important fragment we call manuscript B we have two additional references to the community holding fast to its mission “until the coming of the Messiah of Aaron and Israel” And, in contrast to manuscript A, we find direct references to the “gathering in” (i.e., death) of the Teacher of the Community:

Col B19: From the day of the gathering in of the Teacher of the Community until the end of all the men of war who deserted to the Liar, there shall pass about forty years.

Col B 20: None of the men who enter the New Covenant in the land of Damascus and who again betray it and depart from the fountain of living waters, shall be reckoned with the Council of the people or inscribed in its Book, from the day of gathering in of the Teacher of the Community until the comings of the Messiah out of Aaron and Israel.

What is even more striking is that CD manuscript B recasts manuscript A (Col VII) and quotes Zech 13:7: “Awake O Sword against my Shepherd, against the man who is my fellow, says God–smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered, and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.” This “smiting” of the Shepherd, whom I take here to be the Teacher, appears parallel in this fragment to his “gathering in.” At this very point in the text, fragment B edits out the reference in A to the Numbers 24 “Star and Scepter” prophecy–obviously seeing it as in the past.

Here we find a period of “about 40 years” tied to the demise of the Teacher. There is a fragment from Cave 4 (4Q171) that refers to the same period:

“A little while and the wicked shall be no more; I will look towards his place but he shall not be there” (Psa 37:10). Interpreted, this concerns all the wicked. At the end of the forty years they shall be blotted out and not an man shall be found on earth.”

Here things get a bit prophetically complicated, unless one is steeped in the chronological schemes of the book of Daniel (and Ezekiel)– particularly the “70 weeks” prophecy of Daniel 9. The text assumes understanding of a final 490 year period, which the DSS community understood neatly as Ten Jubilees, 49 years each. We then find references in various fragments (11QMelch; 4Q390) that attempt to fit the history of the community within this time scheme. The Teacher himself is to arise, as one would expect, “in the first week of the Jubilee that follows the nine Jubilees” (11QMelch), or just over 40 years from the End. This sort of “pinpointed” chronological placement is rather extraordinary and captures for us a moment in time, not without parallel in the 40 years from the death of Jesus in 30 CE to the “end of the age” associated with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE.

In the DSS commentary on Habakkuk (1QpHab) we find that the community has obviously lived through and beyond this 40 years “countdown” period with the Teacher long gone and the apocalyptic expectations of the arrival of the Kingdom of God anything but fulfilled. The Romans have by now invaded the country and propped up the puppet priests that the community despised as utterly corrupt (perhaps Hyrcanus II). Col I interprets the cry of the prophet Habakkuk of “How long?” as referring to the “beginning of the final generation.”
This extraordinarily precious text offers a line-by-line interpretation of the prophet Habakkuk, applying his message to the present life of the community. I have put the quotations from Habakkuk in italics, with the interpretation following each line:

…Write down the vision and make it plain upon the tablets, that he who reads may read it, and I will take my stand to watch, and I will station myself upon my fortress speedily [Hab 2:1-2]. [VII] And God told Habakkuk to write down that which would happen to the final generation, but He did not make known to him when time would come to an end. As for that which He said, That he who reads may read it speedily: interpreted, this concerns the Teacher of Righteousness, to whom God made known all the mysteries of the words of His servants the Prophets. For there shall be yet another vision concerning the appointed time. It shall tell of the end and shall not lie. If it tarries, wait for it, for it shall surely come and shall not be late. Interpreted, this concerns the men of truth who keep the Torah, whose hands shall not be slacked in the service of truth when the final age is prolonged. For all the ages of God reach their appointed end as he determines for them in the mysteries of His wisdom. Behold, his soul is puffed up and is not upright. Interpreted, this means that the wicked shall double their guilt upon themselves and it shall not be forgiven when they are judged…But the righteous shall live by his faith. Interpreted, this concerns all those who observe the Torah in the House of Judah, whom God will deliver from the House of Judgment because of their suffering and because of their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness. Interpreted, this means that the final age shall be prolonged, and shall exceed all that the Prophets have said; for the mysteries of God are astounding.

I think the evidence is strong, both internally and externally (dating of the texts–paleography/C-14), that the crisis of belief that this text reflects had come to a climax in the mid-first century BCE. In other words, by the time of the Roman invasion of Palestine (63 BCE) and the reign of Herod the Great (37 BCE), such hopes and expectations had been severely tried and found wanting. And yet, the movement as a whole, more broadly speaking, what Eisenman calls “the messianic movement in Palestine,” from the Maccabees to Masada, continues on. Indeed, it seems to find its final expression in the hopes and dreams of the followers of John the Baptist, Jesus, and James. It is against this background that I try to set my own interpretation of the life and times of Jesus the Messiah in my book, The Jesus Dynasty. With the Dead Sea Scrolls we literally have a “trial run” on the Apocalypse, with all the resulting dynamics from “delay of the End of the Age” to the brutal deaths of various leaders and Messiahs.

There is a very intriguing story, unique to the gospel of John, about a wedding attended by Jesus and his disciples at the Galilean village of Cana (John 2:1-11). Within the gospel of John the story functions in a theological and even allegorical manner–it is the “first” of seven signs, the “water into wine” story, but that is not to say it lacks any historical foundation. The story is part of an earlier written narrative that scholars call the “Signs Source,” now embedded in the gospel of John much like the Q source is embedded in Matthew and Luke. Many scholars consider the Signs Source to be our most primitive gospel narrative, earlier than, and independent from, the gospel of Mark. Most readers of John’s gospel concentrate on the long “red letter” speeches and dialogues of Jesus with the lofty language about him as the “Son” sent from heaven, in cosmic struggle with “the Jews” who are cast in a pejorative light. Such elements are apparently a much later theological overlay, as they are absent from this primitive narrative source. The work was written to promote the simple affirmation that Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed King of the line of David, and to explain how his death was part of the plan of God. This narrative source is written in a completely different style from the later material now in John’s gospel. It moves along from scene to scene with vivid details and in gripping narrative flow.

The elements of the Cana story are fascinating. Jesus and his disciples, who have been down in the Jordan valley with John the Baptizer, return to the area to join the wedding celebration. Jesus’ mother Mary (though unnamed in John) and his brothers are already there (2:12), so it seems to be some kind of “family affair.” Indeed, Mary seems to be at some level officially involved in the celebration as a kind of co-hostess since she takes charge of things when the wine planned for the occasion, unexpectedly runs out, indicating either that the crowd was larger than expected or that things became quite festive, or both. Mary turns to Jesus and the rest of the story is well known to everyone–he miraculously turns six stone vessels, filled initially with water, into the finest wine. But beyond the “miracle” or the “sign,” a number of other quite interesting questions arise.

First, one has to ask why the lack of wine would be a concern of Mary, Jesus’ mother? And what do we know about Cana? And most important, whose wedding was this and why was Jesus and his family present in the first place?

Let’s begin with Cana itself. What do we know about it? Most tourists are taken to the traditional site of Cana (Kefr Kenna) near Nazareth on the road to Tiberius that the Franciscans maintain. The problem is this location has no Roman period ruins and most certainly is not the place mentioned in the New Testament. Its veneration began sometime in the Middle Ages. An alternative site, Khirbet Qana, is 8 miles northwest of Nazareth and 12 miles west of the Sea of Galilee. It is high on a hill overlooking the Bet Netofa valley. This location has much more evidence in its favor. Professor Doug Edwards, of the University of Puget Sound, has been excavating there since 1998 and what he has found seems fairly decisive, including 2nd Temple period tombs, houses, and possibly a beth midrash or synagogue. Evidence of Christian veneration at this site dates back to the 6th century CE.

Right after the wedding, according to John 2:12, Jesus goes to Capernaum and with him are his disciples, but also his mother and his brothers. I think that implies the whole family, including the brothers (and thus the sisters) were not only at the wedding but are now traveling with him. They go to Capernaum, where he sets up a kind “residence” or operational HQ, according to the tradition that Mark has received (see Mark 2:1; 3:19; 9:33 and the references to the house and being ‘at home.”). Mark knows nothing of Cana but John mentions it again when Jesus returns from a trip to Judea where he stirred up a considerable amount of trouble and needs someplace to “lay low.” He and his disciples go back to Cana (John 4:46). Why go back there if the first visit was just for a wedding and had no connection to him? I think this is important in that it seems to become for Jesus a kind of “safe house” or place of operations when he needs to retreat to Galilee, much like Capernaum.

There is definitely a “Jesus connection” to Cana, parallel to the one that Mark reports regarding Capernaum. Peter Richardson, of the University of Toronto, has written a significant academic article on this point titled “What Has Cana to Do with Capernaum?” (New Testament Studies 2002:48: 314-331) that I highly recommend. He argues that the significant differences on geographical matters between the Synoptics with their sources and John with its sources–especially the question of Jesus’ “place”–should not be resolved simply in favor of Mark. Cana as a place in John is as significant as Capernaum in Mark. In fact, Richardson argues that Cana served as an operational base for Jesus according to the tradition that John reflects. It is interesting to note that during the Jewish Revolt Josephus, commander of the Jewish forces in Galilee, made Cana his strategic headquarters for a time (Life 86). Its prime location, overlooking Sepphoris and the cities of the Bet Netofa valley made it an ideal location.

John indicates the connection in the last chapter of his gospel, where he says that the disciple Nathanael, mentioned only in the gospel of John (see previous post on names in Mark and John), is from Cana in Galilee (21:2). Nathanael is mentioned earlier in the gospel of John as an early follower or disciple, associated with Andrew of Bethsaida (1:45). He is most often identified as one of the Twelve, under his father’s name, Bar-Tholomew or “Bar Tolmai” in Aramaic, in Mark’s list of the disciples (Mark 3:18). I find this identification likely.

Given this background all we can do is speculate. I think we can assume that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is somehow involved in the wedding and since we know Jesus and his disciples, as well as his brothers are there, it is not a passing event but some kind of family affair. And since he returns to the place when things get heated for him and his disciples in Judea, it is a safe place for him, and one to which he is connected. So whose was the wedding? Or can we even make a wild guess?

Many have suggested that the wedding at Cana was that of Jesus. I find this unlikely. Even though the account is very “allegorical” as it comes to us in John, and it is accordingly hard to derive historical material therefrom, the way in which Jesus shows up with his disciples, when his mother and brothers are already there, indicates to me that the wedding is of someone else. My own guess would be that it is the wedding of either one of his brothers or sisters. Since Mary is involved, but not, as I read it, the hostess, and the wedding is held in Cana, my guess is that it is most likely the wedding of Jesus’ brother James to a sister or daughter of Nathanael, thus accounting for it being held in that village. Cana then becomes a place to which Jesus can return, and as with Capernaum, it served as a kind of “home” for him.

I have of late become persuaded that Jesus well might have been married, and this represents a change of mind for me that I have detailed elsewhere on this Blog. If such be the case it seems impossible to tell whether he would have been married long before this point in his life, perhaps in his 20s, or whether he chose not to be married into his adult life, and only subsequently did so closer to the end.

I am reading with the greatest benefit, pleasure, and admiration, Richard Bauckham’s massive new study, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Eerdmans, 2006).

For those who know my own work, and that of Bauckham, this high praise might come as a surprise, since it seems Richard and I are on opposite poles of the earth when it comes to theological perspectives and outlooks. Bauckham is such a thorough and careful researcher and a clear writer, I have benefited greatly from all his works, particularly, what I consider to be his masterpiece, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church.

This latest work is truly monumental and the data that Bauckham collects, as well as his methods and arguments in the work, merit careful consideration by historians of early Christianity. On Bauckham’s central thesis, namely that our N.T. gospels are based on eyewitness testimony of those who personally encountered Jesus, and what he concludes therefrom, I have serious reservations. On the other hand, I do indeed think that our two main narrative sources (Mark and John), and our primary teaching source (Q), are far from theological creations of anonymous communities, significantly removed from the historical Jesus. I also agree that within these sources are embedded something very close to what one might call “eyewitness” material, that is, material that is not simply created out of whole cloth as some type of theological fiction. What I think has to be factored in, however, are the sharp and diametrically opposing theological “camps” that were part and parcel of the first forty years of the movement, namely the views of Paul and those of James and Jesus’ original followers. In other words, the “products” we finally get in our gospels are wholly influenced by the triumph of Paul’s theology and perspective, his “Christ faith,” as Bousset, Reitzenstein, Baur, Bultmann, Schweitzer, Klausner, and others have called it. And the master narrative, really the “only” narrative, in the ears of most of us, is that of Luke’s account in Acts, that I take to be almost wholly contrary to what was actually going on in the Jerusalem based Jesus movement of the Nazarenes before Paul came along. Those issues I will argue more fully in my forthcoming book on Paul, but in this post I wanted to pick up on an aspect of Bauckham’s latest work, namely the carefully work he has done on the proper names mentioned in our gospel sources, that I think is as fascinating as it is valuable for historical purposes.

If we take the names mentioned in Mark and John, excluding public persons such as Herod or Pilate, and the names of the Twelve, we get the following very interesting lists for comparison:

Levi of Alphaeus (2:14)*

Jairus (5:22)

Mary mother of Jesus (6:3)

Jesus’ brothers: James, Joses, Judas, and Simon (6:3)

Bartimaeus son of Timaeus (10:46)

Simon the leper of Bethany (14:3)

Simon of Cyrene and his sons Alexander and Rufus (15:21)

Joseph of Arimathea (15:21)

Mary Magdalene (15:40, 47; 16:1)

Mary, mother of James and Joses (15:40, 47; 16:1)*

Salome (15:40)

Nathanael (1:45)*

Nicodemus (3:1)

Joseph, father of Jesus (1:45; 6:42)

Lazarus, Mary & Martha (11:1)

Malchus (18:10)

Mary Magdalene (19:25; 20:1, 18)

Mary of Clopas (19:25)

Joseph of Arimathea (19:38)

I have put a * by the italicized names of Levi of Alphaeus in Mark, and Nathanael in John, as some traditions identify Levi as the apostle Matthew and Nathanael as Bartholomew, both of the Twelve.

I want to draw out a number of observations about these two lists. First, In terms of the names themselves, notice the following four sharp contrasts:

* Mark mentions Jesus’ mother Mary and the names of his four brothers but never mentions his father Joseph.
* John in contrast, never mentions the names of any of Jesus’ brothers nor that of his mother.

* Mark knows nothing of the family of Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary, and he has the anointing of Jesus at Bethany done by an anonymous woman in the house of Simon the Leper.
* John knows nothing of Simon the Leper and states that Mary of Bethany was the one who anointed Jesus.

* Mark knows nothing of Nicodemus, involved in burial of Jesus, whom John gives a prominent role.
* John knows nothing of Simon, father of Alexander and Rufus, carrying Jesus cross.

* Mark has a blind begger, Bartimus, healed by Jesus at Jericho and John knows no such person or story.
* John says the man’s whose ear was cut off by Peter at the arrest of Jesus was named Malchus, something Mark does not know.

What stands out here I think is that Mark and John together have precious few names, and the names they have, other than the ones in bold, do not in any way correspond to one another. Mark and John seem to clearly be drawing upon different traditions, given the unique names that each knows, unknown or unmentioned by the other. Also, the named individuals suddenly seem to cluster at the end of each gospel, in contrast to the opening chapters (Mark 1-9 and John 1-10).

In contrast, in terms of who was at the crucifixion scene, and involved in the burial, they suddenly agree on three names: Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, and a mysterious “Mary” that Matthew calls “the other Mary,” whom Mark says was the mother of James and Joses, and John says was “of Clophas” (probably, but not certainly meaning “wife of”). I have argued elsewhere, on this Blog and in my book, The Jesus Dynasty, that this “other Mary” is actually the mother of Jesus, married to Joseph’s brother Clophas, but for my purposes here I will not go into this. My point is that in terms of named individuals Mark and John have an impressive agreement about this particular scene in the life of Jesus, and that the roles of the two Marys, and of Joseph of Arimathea are crucial to each of them. This is all the more impressive in the light of the fact, as seen here, that they never share any other of these unique names in common.

I think this supports further the idea I have been discussing in this series of posts comparing Mark and John, that they reflect independent traditions, each drawing upon their separate sources, and here I agree with Bauckham, that eyewitness materials play a part in this process. Both the gospel of Mark and the gospel of John are wholly shaped by theological concerns, there is no doubting that. However, when it comes to these names, various core stories, certain narrative frameworks, places and locations, chronological indications (especially in John), and a basic story flow, I am not convinced we are dealing with materials that are simply “constructed,” as if one is writing theological fiction. The trick is to identify the theologically embellished material and separate it out from its underlying core. I think this can often be done, not perfectly, but with some degree of assurance. For example, we can be quite sure Jesus ate a last meal with his disciples, as both John and Mark report, but whether the words associated with the “bread” and the “wine” that Mark records are historical is quite questionable on many grounds. In the same way, I think we can be quite sure that Jesus was put in a temporary tomb after his crucifixion and that Joseph of Arimathea was involved in that burial, attended minimally by Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses. In the same way I lean strongly toward accepting the “historicity” of the empty tomb narratives, at their core, with Jesus’ corpse moved to another location for permanent burial, while the accounts of the various “appearances,” first in Matthew, then greatly expanded by Luke and John, are closer to theological/apologetic testimony than history per se. The task of sorting through this material is perhaps more “art” than “science,” but it is not “unscientific,” in that it relies upon the critical methods historians use to evaluate any textual materials.

I find the unique names in Mark and John, with minimal exceptions of Joseph and the two Marys at the cross and burial, to be quite important in support of the position I hold that Mark and John offer us independent traditions and I am grateful to Bauckham for working all this out in the fashion he does in his book with some very detailed charts that include names in all four gospels.