Author | James Tabor |
---|---|
Language | English |
Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | April 4, 2006 |
Pages | 378 |
ISBN | 978-0-7432-8723-4 |
OCLC | 64487282 |
232.9 22 | |
LC Class | BT270 .T33 2006 |
The Jesus Dynasty is a 2006 book written by James Tabor in which he develops the hypothesis that the original Jesus movement was a dynastic one, with the intention of overthrowing the rule of Herod Antipas; that Jesus of Nazareth was a royal messiah, while his cousin John the Baptist planned to be a priestly messiah. [1]
The book explores speculative ideas, like the Talpiot Tomb possibly being Jesus' family tomb and the theory that Roman soldier Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera might have been Jesus' father, though no definitive conclusions are reached.
The book received mixed reviews. Arthur J. Droge praised its bold reconstruction, while Richard Wightman Fox found it left readers unsure about the historical basis of the Jesus dynasty. Critics like Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte accused it of generating controversy rather than disseminating knowledge, whereas Jeffrey Bütz appreciated it as a valuable contribution to historical Jesus studies.
By his parents' marriage, Jesus was better placed to be King of Israel than Herod Antipas was. The two contradictory blood lines in the gospels are seen as compatible if one belongs to Mary and the other to Joseph. In such a case, Jesus would have united a formidable list of families into his ancestors.
Jesus joined John the Baptist's movement, as John was a close relative of Jesus as well as his teacher. (John's mother being Mary's aunt which makes Jesus his first cousin once removed.) With Jesus as Johns disciple, Jesus is quoted in the New Testament by saying:" Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.”
Both John and Jesus were involved in a Jewish grassroots movement called "The Way" which was a movement to give the Jewish people back their personal and religious and political power. It was a spiritual movement based on fighting oppression against the Romans and the Pharisees who were working with the Roman rulers in Judaea. Both men were prepared to bring about an uprising in Judaea, but John's arrest and execution caused Jesus to go underground to avoid the same fate. Eventually he resurfaced to carry on the Baptist's work alone.
Jesus was a charismatic teacher and possibly a faith healer. James, Simon and Jude were his half-brothers (since Jesus is not Joseph's son, in Tabor's view) and inherited the leadership after Jesus' death. His claim that the brothers of Jesus were members of his Disciples, has been called a misleading and fallacious reading of the biblical text. [2] Tabor argues that the later, spiritualist, writings of Paul the Apostle polluted and effectively hijacked the movement, with the later Gospels following the Pauline point of view.
Tabor produces many supporting statements from the Bible and New Testament apocrypha, which escaped excision by the later Church fathers, intent on selling the Pauline message at the expense of Jesus' dynastic one. The argument produces a portrait of a real man in a tumultuous time, who really believed that his actions would accomplish the end of the Roman occupation and a return of the Jewish kingdom.
The book also speculates about whether the Talpiot Tomb in Jerusalem was the tomb of Jesus or his relatives, and whether Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, a Roman soldier, was Jesus' father, although it reaches no definitive conclusions about either hypothesis.
In a back-jacket endorsement Arthur J. Droge, professor of New Testament and early Christian literature and director at the University of California at San Diego, writes "James Tabor presents what may be the boldest reconstruction yet of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. Working with the surviving evidence like a CSI detective -- especially the testimonies concerning Jesus' family and the Jerusalem Nazarenes -- Tabor succeeds in reinscribing what has been lost (and in some cases erased) from the historical record. At once scholarly and accessible, Tabor's book may very well inaugurate a new phase in the quest for the historical Jesus." [3] [4]
Richard Wightman Fox, professor of history, the University of Southern California, writing in Slate (April 2006) said, "Ultimately Tabor leaves the reader confused about whether he thinks the Jesus dynasty is a historical fact or merely an intriguing conjecture" and that "Tabor seems stuck in an endless loop, squinting across the sands of time as much as the terrain of Galilee and Judea, holding out for some imagined "real" contact with the historical Jesus". [5]
An extensive popular review by Jay Tolson appeared in the April 9, 2006 issue of U.S. News & World Report . [6]
Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte from the Theological University of Kampen writing in the Society of Biblical Literature Review of Biblical Literature (June 2007) was highly critical of the book saying, "Some books are written to spread knowledge, others to generate controversy. This book falls into the latter category. In his Jesus Dynasty James Tabor presents a reconstruction of the Jesus movement from a perspective that purports to be a neutral view at the facts. Unfortunately, Tabor’s view is not neutral and his “facts” are not facts." [7]
Jeffrey Bütz in The Secret Legacy of Jesus (2010), says that The Jesus Dynasty is "a long overdue and most welcome addition to our knowledge of the historical Jesus, which has, not surprisingly, been widely denigrated by conservative scholars." [8]
Herodias was a princess of the Herodian dynasty of Judaea during the time of the Roman Empire. Christian writings connect her with the execution of John the Baptist.
Herod Antipas was a 1st-century ruler of Galilee and Perea. He bore the title of tetrarch and is referred to as both "Herod the Tetrarch" and "King Herod" in the New Testament He was a son of Herod the Great and a grandson of Antipater the Idumaean. He is widely known today for accounts in the New Testament of his role in events that led to the executions of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. His father, Herod the Great, was described in the account as ordering the Massacre of the Innocents, marking the earliest Biblical account of the concerns of the government in Jerusalem regarding Jesus's existence.
The term "historical Jesus" refers to the life and teachings of Jesus as interpreted through critical historical methods, in contrast to what are traditionally religious interpretations. It also considers the historical and cultural contexts in which Jesus lived. Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and the idea that Jesus was a mythical figure has been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory. Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, with only two events being supported by nearly universal scholarly consensus: Jesus was baptized and Jesus was crucified.
A chronology of Jesus aims to establish a timeline for the events of the life of Jesus. Scholars have correlated Jewish and Greco-Roman documents and astronomical calendars with the New Testament accounts to estimate dates for the major events in Jesus's life.
Judaea was a Roman province from 6 to 132 AD, which incorporated the Levantine regions of Judea, Samaria and Idumea, extending over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Judea. The name Judaea was derived from the Iron Age Kingdom of Judah.
In religion, a false prophet or pseudoprophet is a person who falsely claims the gift of prophecy or divine inspiration, or to speak for God, or who makes such claims for evil ends. Often, someone who is considered a "true prophet" by some people is simultaneously considered a "false prophet" by others, even within the same religion as the "prophet" in question. In a wider sense, it is anyone who, without having it, claims a special connection to the deity and sets themself up as a source of spirituality, as an authority, preacher, or teacher. Analogously, the term is sometimes applied outside religion to describe someone who fervently promotes a theory that the speaker thinks is false.
The intertestamental period (Protestant) or deuterocanonical period is the period of time between the events of the protocanonical books and the New Testament. Traditionally, it is considered to cover roughly four hundred years, spanning the ministry of Malachi to the appearance of John the Baptist in the early 1st century AD. It is roughly contiguous with the Second Temple period and encompasses the age of Hellenistic Judaism.
Mark 6 is the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. In this chapter, Jesus goes to Nazareth and experiences rejection by his own family. He then sends his Apostles in pairs to various cities in the region, where they might also face rejection. Finally, Jesus goes back to the Sea of Galilee and performs some of his most famous miracles, including the feeding of the 5000 and walking on water. This chapter also gives an account of the murder of John the Baptist.
Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera was a Roman-Phoenician soldier born in Sidon, whose tombstone was found in Bingerbrück, Germany, in 1859.
The Census of Quirinius was a census of the Roman province of Judaea taken in 6 CE, upon its formation, by the governor of Roman Syria, Publius Sulpicius Quirinius. The census triggered a revolt of Jewish extremists led by Judas of Galilee.
James Daniel Tabor is an American Biblical scholar and retired Professor of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he taught from 1989 until 2022 and served as chair from 2004 to 2014. He previously held positions at Ambassador College, the University of Notre Dame (1979–85), and the College of William and Mary (1985–89). Tabor is the founder and director of the Original Bible Project, a non-profit organisation aimed to produce a re-ordered new translation of the Bible in English.
The Herodian dynasty was a royal dynasty of Idumaean (Edomite) descent, ruling the Herodian Kingdom of Judea and later the Herodian Tetrarchy as a vassal state of the Roman Empire. The Herodian dynasty began with Herod the Great, who assumed the throne of Judea, with Roman support, bringing down the century-old Hasmonean Kingdom. His kingdom lasted until his death in 4 BCE, when it was divided among his sons and daughter as a tetrarchy, which lasted for about 10 years. Most of those tetrarchies, including Judea proper, were incorporated into Judaea Province from 6 CE, though limited Herodian de facto kingship continued until Agrippa I's death in 44 CE and nominal title of kingship continued until 92 CE, when the last Herodian monarch, Agrippa II, died and Rome assumed full power over his de jure domain.
The Talpiot Tomb is a rock-cut tomb discovered in 1980 in the East Talpiot neighborhood, five kilometers south of the Old City in East Jerusalem. It contained ten ossuaries, six inscribed with epigraphs, including one interpreted as "Yeshua bar Yehosef", though the inscription is partially illegible, and its translation and interpretation is widely disputed. The tomb also yielded various human remains and several carvings.
The Lost Tomb of Jesus is a pseudoarchaeological docudrama co-produced and first broadcast on the Discovery Channel and Vision TV in Canada on March 4, 2007, covering the discovery of the Talpiot Tomb. It was directed by Canadian documentary and film maker Simcha Jacobovici and produced by Felix Golubev and Ric Esther Bienstock, while James Cameron served as executive producer. The film was released in conjunction with a book about the same subject, The Jesus Family Tomb, issued in late February 2007 and co-authored by Jacobovici and Charles R. Pellegrino. The documentary and the book's claims have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of leading experts within the archaeological and theological fields, as well as among linguistic and biblical scholars.
Judaea Capta coins were a series of commemorative coins originally issued by the Roman Emperor Vespasian to celebrate the capture of Judaea and the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple by his son Titus in 70 CE during the First Jewish Revolt. There are several variants of the coinage. The reverse of the coins may show a female seated right in an attitude of mourning at the base of a palm tree, with either a captive bearded male standing left, with his hands bound behind his back, or the standing figure of the victorious emperor, or the goddess Victoria, with a trophy of weapons, shields, and helmets to the left.
Herodian coinage were coins minted and issued by the Herodian Dynasty, Jews of Idumean descent who ruled the province of Judaea between 37 BC–92 AD. The dynasty was founded by Herod the Great who was the son of Antipater, a powerful official under the Hasmonean King Hyrcanus II.
Cross Bones is the eighth novel by Kathy Reichs starring forensic anthropologist, Temperance Brennan.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Christianity:
Killing Jesus: A History is a 2013 book by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard about the life and crucifixion of Jesus, referred to in the book as Jesus of Nazareth. It is the follow-up to Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln. Killing Jesus was released September 24, 2013, through Henry Holt and Company.