Archive for the ‘Tabor's Blog’ Category

I am most pleased to have in hand a copy of Jesus-Dynastin: Den dolda historien om Jesus, hans kungliga familj och kristendoms foedelse, namely The Jesus Dynasty in Swedish, published by Schibsted Foerlagan in Stockholm. It is a most handsome edition, hard cover, nicely printed, with the the illustrations and photos produced in high quality. I love the artistic design of the cover, which I reproduce here.

This particular translation brings me special pleasure because of the memory of my closest male friend of my life, Olof James Ribb. Olof died January 16, 2006 at a much too young age 59, of a very aggressive form of bone cancer, just as my book was being published. I mention Olof in my Acknowledgments, as some readers might recall. Olof was of Swedish background and heritage and as an adult taught himself Swedish quite fluently. He traveled to Sweden several times to locate and meet relatives of his immigrant family who had moved to the Dakotas in the 19th century. Olof was a high school teacher of German and Latin in Burlington, NC, much beloved of students, family, and friends. Olof was one of the truest people I have ever known, and one of the most brillant as well. I miss him immensely and think of him every day. There is a Web site, olofribb.com with photos and tributes. German was Olof’s main academic expertise, though he had learned Italian and Spanish quite well, and was a master of Latin. His great loves were history, philosophy,religion, and literature, though he maintained a curiosity about almost everything, including the latest in science.

Because of his “roots” he plunged into Swedish with a special passion. I remember asking him once, since I knew his Germany was so fluent, if his Swedish would compare, and he answered simply “Yes.”  He had become over 20 years as comfortable in Swedish as in English or German. I don’t know of anyone from outside my academic field who had followed my work and research on the historical Jesus more avidly than Olof. But he was much more a dialog partner and a critic than a fan. I benefited immensely from his input and he read every word of my manuscript along the way and gave me helpful feedback on nearly every page. He traveled with me to Germany when I was doing the Pantera research in October, 2005, just a few months before he died. I can’t begin to imagine the pleasure it would have given him to see, hold, and read The Jesus Dynasty in Swedish.

I wanted to update readers on the various foreign editions of The Jesus Dynasty. Just yesterday I received a copy of the new paperback of the Italian edition. The book has done very well in Italy and has been on bestseller lists, so having it out in a handsome paper edition is most welcome indeed. A few days ago I heard from a reader in Moscow who had just joined the new Facebook group, and who had picked up a copy in Russian–also just out.

Besides the hardcover and revised paperback U.S./Canadian editions (Simon & Schuster), The Jesus Dynasty has been published in hardcover and paperback in the UK (HarperCollins), and on CD, read by the author. The book is also now available in 14 languages:

Chinese (Complex/Taiwan); Czech; Dutch; French; German (hardcover and revised paperback); Hungarian; Indonesian; Italian (hardcover and revised paperback); Japanese; Portuguese (Portugal & Brazil); Russian; Slovak; Spanish and Swedish

It is soon to appear in: Bulgarian, Chinese (simplified/Mainland), Danish, Greek, Korean, Norwegian, Romanian.

The cover art and design is quite interesting in the various editions. As an author I have no say in such matters and it is always a surprise to see how a certain publisher has chosen to market my book. I have put scans of most of the covers on the Facebook Jesus Dynasty photo album and will add more over the next week or so.

Please go to my new TaborBlog for latest regular posts.

I am pleased and humbly surprised to report that this new Blog, only a month old this week, made the latest listing of “Top 50 Biblioblogs,” coming in modestly at number 24. Since most of my regular readers were habitually wedded to this Jesus Dynasty site, I had not expected the migration of traffic to my new TaborBlog to be as successful as it has been in such a short time.

A “Biblioblog” is one that deals in some way with Biblical Studies and it turns out that in the Blogging World this area of discussion is very much alive and kicking. I can hardly keep up with things myself and I recommend readers who are not familar with all that is available to do a bit of browsing on some of these major sites. I am as impressed as I am amazed at how much fascinating material is available, day by day. week by week.

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.