Joan E. Taylor (born 13 September 1958) is a New Zealand writer and historian of Jesus, the Bible, early Christianity, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Second Temple Judaism, with special expertise in archaeology, and women's and gender studies. Taylor is Professor Emerita of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King's College, London and Honorary Professor at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Australia. She identifies as a Quaker. [1]
Joan Elizabeth Taylor was born in Horsell, Surrey, England, on 13 September 1958. [2] Her ancestry is English and Danish. In 1967, her family emigrated to New Zealand, where she grew up, attending school in Newlands and Lower Hutt.
After a BA degree at Auckland University, New Zealand. Joan completed a three-year postgraduate degree in Divinity at the University of Otago, and then went to the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (Kenyon Institute) as Annual Scholar in 1986. She undertook a PhD in early Christian archaeology and Jewish-Christianity at New College, Edinburgh University, as a Commonwealth Scholar.
In 1990, she accompanied her husband, human rights expert Paul Hunt, to Geneva and then to Gambia, returning to Aotearoa New Zealand in 1992. She was lecturer, subsequently senior lecturer, at the University of Waikato, in the departments of both Religious Studies and History. In 1995 she won an Irene Levi-Sala prize in archaeology for the book version of her PhD thesis, Christians and the Holy Places (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, rev. 2003). In 1996-7 she was Visiting Lecturer and Research Associate in Women's Studies in New Testament at Harvard Divinity School, a position she held in association with a Fulbright Award. She joined the staff of King's College London, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, in 2009, and in 2012 became Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism. [3] , retiring at the end of 2024 to become Emerita. She is also (from 2022) Honorary Professor at the Centre of Religion and Critical Enquiry, Australian Catholic University in Melbourne.
Taylor travelled to Egypt in 1999 to research the area surrounding Lake Mareotis where the Therapeutae lived according to Philo of Alexandria. [4] Later, she published her archaeological findings beside her textual analysis of Philo's De Vita Contemplativa in her book Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo's 'Therapeutae' Reconsidered. Taylor challenged the belief that the Therapeutae were an Essenic community [5] and showed that the Mareotic community belonged to the Alexandrian milieu with its Jewish Diaspora community. She argued that the best historical context to Philo's Contemp. is the bitter hostilities between the Jews and the Greeks of Alexandria. [6] She also managed to discover the location of the community at a low hill, in the ridge which was called "the Strip." [7] Her findings were welcomed in scholarship. [8] Pieter W. van der Horst found her discovery and analysis thorough and convincing, which makes a shift in our understanding of the context of this group. [9] The prominent Second Temple scholar John J. Collins also accepted the "richly documented" conclusions of Taylor. [10] Yet, he shared van der Horst's reluctance to agree with Taylor's suggestion that the Therapeutae were associated with the extreme allegorizers in Philo's (Migr.Ab. 89-93) due to Philo's sympathy toward the Therapeutae. Her study also proposed a new view of first century Jewish women since the Therapeutrides (Θεραπευτρίδες) were highly educated philosophers. This view further supported the contribution of feminist observations to historical investigation, according to Annewies van den Hoek of Harvard Divinity School. [11]
Taylor has gone on to write a substantial commentary on the De Vita Contemplativa, continuing the work of the late David Hay. This is highly commended as 'without doubt the best commentary ever written on this text'. [12]
Taylor's ground-breaking work on John the Baptist situated John within the context of Second Temple Judaism and argued that his baptism should be understood in line with forms of immersion for ritual purity known at the time. [13] [14] John's baptism rid the body of ritual impurity after the inner being had been cleansed by repentance, action and forgiveness, preparing people for the eschatological arrival of a coming figure. In her careful analysis of issues surrounding the traditions of the Baptist like purification, she showed that John's baptism should not be understood through the duality of outer symbolism and inner repentance, as John Dominic Crossan stated earlier, but outer and inner purity. [15] The significance of the book, as Bruce Chilton puts it, is in treating the tradition of the Baptist in its own historical context, not under the shadow of New Testament Christology. [16] Her analysis instilled scholarly debates of the relationship between Qumran and John the Baptist as well as formative Christianity with a spectrum of opinions over her findings. [17]
Since her PhD and early work on the archaeology of Christian holy sites, Taylor has ranged from studying the archaeology of the goddess Asherah to questions of archaeology and historical geography (in Eusebius' Onomasticon and the Gospels, and to the excavations of Qumran and the Qumran Caves, particularly contributing to discussion of the relationship between literary and archaeological evidence for understanding the past (in On Pliny, the Essene Location and Kh. Qumran).
Taylor organised an international conference focusing on the new hermeneutic of reception exegesis, by considering the historical Jesus through the lens of Monty Python’s Life of Brian in June 2014, [18] involving the participation of John Cleese and Terry Jones, who were interviewed as part of the event. [19] The papers are published in a book edited by Taylor, Jesus and Brian: Exploring the Historical Jesus and his Times via Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Taylor’s book What Did Jesus Look Like? (Bloomsbury PublishingT&T Clark, 2018) received considerable media interest on its release. [20] In seeking to understand the appearance of Jesus, Taylor scoured western art and relics, memories and traditions, and ultimately relied on early texts and archaeology to create a visualisation of Jesus that she considered more authentic. In this reconstruction, she stresses that Jesus was not only a Jewish man of Middle Eastern appearance, with ‘olive-brown skin', [21] but probably quite short-haired. He wore very basic clothing and was ‘scruffy’, and his appearance mattered in terms of his message.
With Helen Bond, Taylor initiated a project that culminated in the 2018 documentary ‘Jesus Female Disciples: The New Evidence’, made by Minerva Productions (Jean-Claude Bragard), commissioned by UK's Channel 4, directed and produced by Anna Cox. After receiving high viewing figures and acclaim from reviewers, as a 'healthy corrective to the myths we take for gospel' [22] this has been screened globally in multiple languages. Taylor and Bond then went on to write a popular book: Women Remembered: Jesus' Female Disciples (2022), expanding on their studies, with associated interview podcasts, including for the Spectator.
Taylor is also a writer of narrative history, novels and poetry (sometimes using her mother's maiden name of Norlev). Her first novel, Conversations with Mr. Prain , was published by Melville House Publishing in Brooklyn, New York, and Hardie Grant in Melbourne, in 2006, and republished by Melville House. Her second novel, kissing Bowie , was published by Seventh Rainbow, London, in 2013. In 2016 her historical novel Napoleon's Willow appeared. [23] A review in the New Zealand Herald called it 'a feverishly colourful story' and noted her historian's eye: 'The reader can be impressed by the perfect chronology of the events, but layering on a cast of factual and fictitious characters relies on impeccable social research and imagination.'
The Essenes or Essenians were a mystic Jewish sect during the Second Temple period that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE.
The Gospel of James is a second-century infancy gospel telling of the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary, her upbringing and marriage to Joseph, the journey of the couple to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, and events immediately following. It is the earliest surviving assertion of the perpetual virginity of Mary, meaning her virginity not just prior to the birth of Jesus, but during and afterwards, and despite being condemned by Pope Innocent I in 405 and classified as apocryphal by the Gelasian Decree around AD 500, became a widely influential source for Mariology.
The Septuagint, sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy, and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Most scholars who study the historical Jesus and early Christianity believe that the canonical gospels and the life of Jesus must be viewed within their historical and cultural context, rather than purely in terms of Christian orthodoxy. They look at Second Temple Judaism, the tensions, trends, and changes in the region under the influence of Hellenism and the Roman occupation, and the Jewish factions of the time, seeing Jesus as a Jew in this environment; and the written New Testament as arising from a period of oral gospel traditions after his death.
The Therapeutae were a religious sect which existed in Alexandria and other parts of the ancient Greek world. The primary source concerning the Therapeutae is the De vita contemplativa, traditionally ascribed to the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. The author appears to have been personally acquainted with them. The author describes the Therapeutae as "philosophers" and mentions a group that lived on a low hill by the Lake Mareotis close to Alexandria in circumstances resembling lavrite life. They were "the best" of a kind given to "perfect goodness" that "exists in many places in the inhabited world". The author was unsure of the origin of the name and derives the name Therapeutae/Therapeutides from Greek θεραπεύω in the sense of "cure" or "worship".
Géza Vermes, was a British academic, Biblical scholar, and Judaist of Jewish–Hungarian descent—one who also served as a Roman Catholic priest in his youth—and scholar specialized in the field of the history of religion, particularly ancient Judaism and early Christianity. He is best known for his complete translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls into English; his research focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Ancient Hebrew writings in Aramaic such as the Targumim, and on the life and religion of Jesus. Vermes was one of the most important voices in contemporary Jesus research, and he has been described as the greatest Jesus scholar of his time. Vermes' written work on Jesus focuses principally on the Jewishness of the historical Jesus, as seen in the broader context of the narrative scope of Jewish history and theology, while questioning and challenging the basis of the Christian doctrine on Jesus.
Barbara Elizabeth Thiering was an Australian historian, theologian, and biblical exegete specialising in the origins of the early Christian Church. In books and journal articles, she challenged Christian orthodoxy, espousing the view that new findings present alternative answers to its supernaturalistic beliefs. Her analysis has been widely rejected by New Testament scholars and scholars in Judaism.
James Hamilton Charlesworth is an American academic who served as the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature until January 17, 2019, and Director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the Princeton Theological Seminary. His research interests include the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, the Historical Jesus, the Gospel of John, and the Book of Revelation.
Proto-Gnosticism or pre-Gnosticism refers to movements similar to Gnosticism during the first few centuries of Christianity. Proto-Gnostics did not have the same full-fledged theology of the later Gnostics, but did prefigure some of their views. There is, however, some debate regarding the existence of proto-Gnosticism in the first century.
The pentecontad calendar is an agricultural calendar system thought to be of Amorite origin in which the year is broken down into seven periods of fifty days, with an annual supplement of fifteen or sixteen days. Identified and reconstructed by Julius and Hildegaard Lewy in the 1940s, the calendar's use dates back to at least the 3rd millennium BCE in western Mesopotamia and surrounding areas. Used well into the modern age, forms of it have been found in Nestorianism and among the Fellahin of modern Palestine.
Gabriel's Revelation, also called Hazon Gabriel or the Jeselsohn Stone, is a stone tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew text written in ink, containing a collection of short prophecies written in the first person. It is dated to the late 1st century BCE or early 1st century CE and is important for understanding Jewish messianic expectations in the Second Temple period.
The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and ended with the First Jewish–Roman War and the Roman siege of Jerusalem.
Angelic tongues are the languages believed by some religious traditions to be used by angels. It usually refers to sung praise in Second Temple period Jewish materials.
Second Temple Judaism is the Jewish religion as it developed during the Second Temple period, which began with the construction of the Second Temple around 516 BCE and ended with the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
Jewish magical papyri are a subclass of papyri with specific Jewish magical uses, and which shed light on popular belief during the late Second Temple Period and after in Late Antiquity. A related category of contemporary evidence are Jewish magical inscriptions, typically on amulets, ostraca, and incantation bowls.
The personification of wisdom, typically as a righteous woman, is a motif found in religious and philosophical texts, most notably in the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish and Christian texts.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian myth is a 1979 book about the Dead Sea Scrolls, Essenes and early Christianity that proposes the non-existence of Jesus Christ. It was written by John Marco Allegro (1922–1988).
Eileen Marie Schuller is a professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Schuller is an official editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls. She teaches undergraduate and graduate studies in the Biblical field. Over a span of 30 years, her involvement in the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls has led to numerous contributions in authenticating the discoveries found in the caves near the Ancient Qumran settlement.
Sarah J. K. Pearce is Ian Karten Professor of History and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton. She is known in particular for her work on Jews in the Hellenistic world and the Roman Empire, especially the life and work of Philo of Alexandria.
The Book of Longings is a 2020 Christian novel by American author Sue Monk Kidd, written as a feminist reimagining of the New Testament, published by Viking. It follows a fictionalized Galilean scribe named Ana who becomes the wife of Jesus during the lost years, commenting on the silencing of women across history and literature. It received positive reviews for its respect towards the Biblical material and the characterization of its protagonists. The novel has been translated into 17 languages and a six-part miniseries adaptation was announced in 2023.
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