The following is a book review written by my son Caleb for his public high school World Religions class. I trust you will be as encouraged by it as much as I was.

Where is the crown in ‘The Jesus Dynasty’?
A Review by C.D. Upton

When one reads the title of Dr. James D. Tabor’s book The Jesus Dynasty one may be tempted to think that it is another conspiracy theory about how Jesus was married and had children, but such is not the case. Dr. Tabor is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and is an expert on such matters as archaeology, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian origins. His book is a historical treatise of Christian origins. His thesis contains several parts but can be summarized as follows: Jesus had a human father who was not Joseph and had four brothers and two sisters that were born from a father after Joseph died; Jesus joined a Messianic Movement started by John the baptizer his relative who he considered to be a great prophet and his teacher; they considered themselves to be the two messiahs who were to usher in the Kingdom of God and fulfill the Hebrew prophets; then suddenly when John the baptizer was killed Jesus appointed his ‘council of twelve’ who were to rule over the twelve tribes of Israel when the kingdom of God came, which included four of Jesus’ brothers and finally, once Jesus was crucified James took leadership over the movement, but this form of Jewish Christianity was all but lost when Paul came into the story and ‘hijacked’ Christianity. While Dr. Tabor is much more of a sober historian than others who have attempted to present a view of Christian origins that differs from Christian orthodoxy, his case is still flawed in many crucial points.

Before I get to the criticisms of Dr. Tabor’s work there is much to commend about the work. Tabor is right to reject swoon theories (The Jesus Dynasty, 229-30), to accept the differences in Jesus’ birth accounts in the Gospels compared to those of Greco-Roman mythology (The Jesus Dynasty, 45), and reject the legendary material about Jesus’ childhood (The Jesus Dynasty, 86). Tabor also accepts the James ossuary as authentic while many assert that it is a forgery, the historicity of the four gospels including John, the Jewishness of Jesus, and the idea that the Suba cave perhaps could have been a place where John the Baptizer did his baptizing and much else that could be agreed upon. What is also so refreshing about Tabor’s work is that it is not filled with wild unsupported theories such as notions that the Gnostic gospels predate the New Testament Gospels (eg. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown) or Egyptian origins for Christianity (eg. The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur).

The best place to start in critiquing the book is to ask ‘What kind of biases does the author have?’ and ‘How do those biases affect the work?’ Tabor clearly has an anti-supernatural bias as expressed in this quote:

Historians are bound by their discipline to work within the parameters of a scientific view of reality. Women do not get pregnant without a male — ever. So Jesus had a human father… Dead bodies don’t rise… So if the tomb was empty the historical conclusion is simple — Jesus’ body was moved by someone… Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty 233-234

Clearly Tabor’s philosophical view of the nature of reality affects his conclusions about historical matters to some degree. Is Tabor unaware that there are plenty of good historians and scientists that do believe in miracles? This bias is simply an unwarranted faith assumption or rather a dogma (It is rather ironic that Tabor has such a unwavering faith assumption, when he himself is so critical of people who hold dogmas).

Tabor, while an expert on archaeology, seems not to be concerned that there is some criticism of some of his archaeological speculations, not the least of which is the Talpiot tomb. While Tabor’s thesis does not rely very heavily on archaeology it is noteworthy to examine the claims. Tabor I am sure is very aware that he is most likely one of the very few archeologists in the world today who believes that the Talpiot tomb has any connection to Jesus and his family. While I will not go exhaustively through all the problems with the family tomb hypothesis there are some brief things that should be noted: Why is the tomb in Talpiot. If it is the family tomb should it not be in Nazareth?; There is no historical record of any kind that says Jesus was married or had children and Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents, maintained that the possibility of the tomb having any relation to Jesus is close to zero (The Jesus Dynasty 25-26). Another radical archaeological claim is that Tabor believes that we may possibly have the tombstone of Jesus’ father Pantera. New Testament scholar Dr. Ben Witherington III, who has been very critical of Tabor’s work, has this to say in regards to the inscription on the tombstone:

German theologian Adolph Deissmann concludes from this inscription that Pantera died in the middle of the first century. If this is correct, it follows that (1) Pantera was not a Roman soldier in 2-6 B.C., the period in which Jesus was born (as Tabor acknowledges); and (2) if indeed this cohort of archers went to Dalmatia in A.D. 6 and then on to the Rhine in A.D. 9, as Tabor avers (p.69), then our man Pantera was not even yet with them, or if he was he had only just become a soldier in the first\decade of the current era, not in the period 2-6 B.C. In other words, the calculations are off by a least a decade. Witherington, What have they done with Jesus 297

Aside from the archaeology and presumptions, most of Tabor’s criticism has been received from Tabor’s history and exegesis of the New Testament texts. While much can be argued in terms of history and exegesis of Tabor’s work we will only examine the issues that are more important in terms of Tabor’s thesis. One of the crucial parts of Tabor’s thesis is that Jesus considered John the Baptizer a second messiah and a co-partner in the messianic movement, but this is highly suspect. Scholar Dr. Darrell Bock a professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary had this to say:

Tabor claims that John is the one who initiated the messianic movement, though it might be more accurate to say he announced the arrival of the promised time of renewal… The evidence for twin Messiahs comes from a text from Qumran, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls, even though we can’t be sure John was part of that Dead Sea movement…There is no evidence for it in any Christian materials (or even in sources that some argue go back to John the Baptist’s circles). Bock and Wallace, Dethroning Jesus 180-181

It is also important to note that in John 3:27-30 and its parallel in Mark 2:19-20 says that Jesus is called the ‘bridegroom’ while John the baptizer is called the ‘friend of the bridegroom.’ These texts make it clear that John and Jesus are not on the same level. While much more time could be spent on Tabor’s view of John the Baptizer, another crucial part of Tabor’s thesis, which he calls ‘the greatest secret of the New Testament’ is also suspect. Tabor believes that Jesus’ four brothers were part of the twelve apostles. Beside the fact that in the epistle of James and the epistle of Jude there is no evidence of this, are there any other problems with this idea? Some scholars believe Tabor’s exegesis of Luke 6:14-16 is flawed. This is what Witherington has to say about this issue:

Tabor says that the phrase “James of Alphaeus” means James son of Alphaeus, and this is likely correct… But Tabor then wants to turn around and read the adjacent phrase “Judas of James” as meaning Jude brother of James. This will not do. The Greek construction is the same in both cases… when Luke wanted to say someone was the brother of another disciple, he inserted the word adelphos… But neither was Simon the Zealot or Jacob listed as one of Jesus’ brothers… In a desperate move Tabor suggests that Matthew/Levi son of Alphaeus is actually Joseph (p.164), even though no gospel text or later source even remotely suggests this. But then no source suggests that Mary was married to Clopas who is really Alphaeus either, as Tabor argues. Witherington, What Have they Done with Jesus 304-305

It appears that a closer look at the list of twelve shows that Jesus’ brothers were not part of the twelve. This is a crucial part of Tabor’s thesis because if Jesus’ brothers are not part of the twelve then you don’t have a Jesus dynasty.

What most astounds me though about Tabor’s thesis is his explanation of where he believes Jesus is buried. Tabor suggests that Jesus was finally buried in Tsfat and he bases this on the testimony of a sixteenth century rabbi who had no independent knowledge of the early evidence of Jesus’ death and burial! (The Jesus Dynasty 238) This in my mind smacks of bad history, taking so-called evidence from the sixteenth century is not very helpful for the understanding of the historical Jesus. Tabor also wants to explain the resurrection appearances by saying that they were some kind of powerful religious experiences (Ibid.). Well this simply won’t do. N.T. Wright, whom Tabor acknowledges (Ibid. 345) has shown in his book The Resurrection of the Son of God that resurrection only had one meaning in that time and that was of a physical body coming back to life.

One last controversial part of Tabor’s thesis must be addressed and that is Tabor’s idea that James and Paul had irreconcilable Christianities. It is important to acknowledge two things concerning this issue, one that this part of Tabor’s theory is not new and two that practically no New Testament scholar thinks that there wasn’t any conflict between Paul and the other apostles, the question is how far reaching was this conflict and is it really as big of a conflict as some think. All of the conflicts presented in the New Testament (Acts 10-11, 15, 20; Rom.13-15; Gal.1-2) are about the Jew-Gentile conflict, they are not arguing about the deity of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, the death of Jesus or anything major, they are for the most part arguing about the relationship of Jews and Gentiles, and observance of the law. What is also crucial to recognize is that in one of Paul’s epistles, 1 Corinthians, he speaks very positively of his apostolic colleagues (3:5-9, 21-23; 4:1; 9:5). So I think this argument about conflict in the early church is exaggerated.

Much more could be said about Dr. Tabor’s work. As stated earlier, this is a refreshing criticism to the Christian faith because it’s grounds are more scholarly than most. It definitely got me thinking about a lot of things and it at least kept me on my toes in wrestling with his ideas. Tabor’s book I believe does offer us a contribution to the study of world religions because it very much stresses that Jesus was a Jew, the apostles were Jews and they lived in a Jewish culture, something that Christianity has long needed to be reminded of. I like what Darrell Bock says about the issue:

Perhaps the solution is to reject both the approach of Marcion, who shut out the Jewishness of early Christianity, and the approach of Tabor, who in seeking to maintain the Jewishness actually excludes the contribution of the most Jewish-instructed of all the apostles, Paul. Bock and Wallace, Dethroning Jesus 191

Bibliography

Bock, Wallace. Dethroning Jesus. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc, 2007

Witherington. What have they done with Jesus. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006

Tabor. The Jesus Dynasty. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.