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The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity
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Average Rating:  out of 133 Reviews
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Price: $27.00
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Sale: $6.48
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Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: James D. Tabor
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Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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Dewey Decimal Number: 232.9
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Publication Date: 2006-04-04
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Reading Level: 384
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Description: The Jesus Dynasty offers a startling new interpretation of the life of Jesus and the origins of Christianity that is grounded in careful analysis of the earliest Christian documents and recent archaeological discoveries, including the much-discussed "Jesus family tomb." In The Jesus Dynasty, biblical scholar James Tabor brings us closer than ever to the historical Jesus. He explains the crucial relationship between Jesus, a royal descendant of David, and his relative John the Baptizer, a priestly descendant of Aaron and Jesus' teacher. When John was killed, several of his followers -- including Jesus' four brothers -- joined with Jesus, who continued John's mission, preaching the same apocalyptic message. After Jesus confronted the Roman authorities in Jerusalem and was crucified, his brother James succeeded him as the leader of the Jesus dynasty. James Tabor has studied the earliest surviving documents of Christianity for more than thirty years and has participated in important archaeological excavations in Israel. His reconstruction of the life of Jesus and his followers, and of the early years of Christianity, will change our understanding of one of the most crucial moments in history.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Challenging |
Date: 2009-01-06 |
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Details: The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity by James D. Tabor is a book that starts with the premise that Jesus was Himself a father.The book also claims that Jesus' father was not Joseph or God but a Roman soldier named Pantera. There are more startling claims that Jesus' real father died leaving Jesus the head of a household of six siblings. Tobor challenges many Christian dogmas in this book. It's challenging to say the least.
There is a beautiful new book about Jesus, God , faith and what you will do after death entitled "The Enlightenment, What God Told Me After One Million Prayers: A Message for Everyone," by John H. Eagan. I just finished it. It's really great and deals with God, the creator, Jesus' teachings, and His Passion. It brought me to tears. I think the readers of Tabor's book will really enjoy The Enlightenment.
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Review Summary: Little compelling evidence |
Date: 2008-12-17 |
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Details: Although Tabor's enthusiasm for archeology and first century Jewish history is clearly evident in his writings, his data and speculations are not well supported. Tabor goes to great lengths to carefully layout the chronology of historical events surrounding Jesus' birth, life and death. He readily uses biblical and extra biblical sources to make speculations about alternative theories to Jesus' life. The problem comes with his choice of sources. For example Tabor points to an ossuary found believed to be James the brother of Jesus. This ossuary gives credence to Tabor's conclusion that Jesus' family had a tomb and was in fact buried. The problem is that Tabor uses this relic as possible evidence and the man responsible for its discovery sits in jail on forgery charges. Tabor continues to hold out hope that this ossuary is the genuine article but discount the fact that a forger sits in jail because of it. One of the reasons Tabor seems to think there is little evidence to support his claims are the interest of Jewish authorities to protect Christian tourism. I would assume better support for charges like this would be offered by Tabor. Tabor seems to cling tightly to suspect and flawed evidence yet reject solid and well supported date affirming the more miraculous accounts communicated in scripture.
Tabor also attempts to change the historical accounts of Jesus' conception by claiming Mary became pregnant from some unknown man, possibly a Roman soldier. There is no evidence to support Tabor's claim but he surmises this to be the case because of his refusal to believe the biblical accounts. Tabor goes on to claim that Mary' perpetual virginity (taught by the Catholic Church) was not even taught until the fourth century and was therefore not the view of first century Christians. Tabor is right that perpetual virginity wasn't the view but the accounts clearly shares that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus, not afterwards. Just because this miraculous account is not normative doesn't mean it didn't happen. Tabor instead leans on the veracity of much older documents to rewrite the accounts of Jesus' life instead of believing the events recorded by those who were much closer to the actual events.
Tabor also takes biblical texts and has them stand on their heads to say what he wants them to say. Tabor concludes that John the Baptist was another messiah in the story of Jesus and the authors of the Gospels overtly downplayed his role to emphasize Jesus' role. Shouldn't we take the most obvious and plain explanation for the texts rather than twist them to support alternative theories? The fact that Mark was written first and Matthew to a Jewish audience and Luke to a predominately gentile audience and lastly the gospel of John communicating a different perspective to the gospel accounts all come together to compliment the story of Jesus. They are not trying to deemphasize or change the actual recorded events. Furthermore, all the gospel accounts were written and shared too close to the actual events to warrant some alternative developed explanation.
Another interesting observation of Tabor is his view toward the miracles of Jesus. Tabor suggest that Jesus understood the many prophesies recorded in scripture and was plotting to bring about God's plan to liberate his people. In the course of Jesus doing this, he performs many miracles substantiated by the hordes of eyewitnesses. How can Jesus be aware of prophesy, perform miracles, fake a resurrection and create radical transformations in the lives of millions? All this and Jesus wasn't who he said he was and certainly wasn't capable of miraculous powers?
Lastly, throughout the book Tabor uses bad evidence or no evidence to support contentions he proposes. The problem lies in his unwillingness to assume the possibility that the story of Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection may have happened as the sources closest to the events recorded them. Tabor clearly shared his thoughts that the resurrection was impossible and therefore he gives no credence its possibility. This a priori assumption limits Tabor's ability to perceive the possibility that the accounts recorded in the bible may be accurate. He holds on to the assumption that any miracle recorded in the pages of scripture and backed up by eyewitness testimony and extra biblical sources must be considered false. Tabor takes naturalistic philosophical assumptions, then contorts and twists the evidence to support his creative yet unsupported findings. Tabor's stories are entertaining and interesting but better cataloged under fiction.
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Review Summary: A Xmas Story that even the Religious Devout can believe in |
Date: 2008-12-05 |
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Details: Dr. James D. Tabor, in the "Jesus Dynasty," has used his considerable Archaeological, historical, and religious skills to weave together from many disparate parts, a coherent story of Jesus Christ's life. Chapter-by-chapter this story reaches many crescendos, as it is turned into a virtual symphony of believable theories and mini theories about the historical meaning of the life of Jesus. Each chapter is packed with new, exciting and ultimately convincing revelations that not only re-humanize and place the life of Jesus into a more believable alternative and much more coherent context, but also brings cross-confirming evidence to bear on biblical stories, at every turn.
That many of the loose ends remain un-tied at the end, did not affect this reader in the least, as the most important aspect of this story is that the author maintained his intellectual integrity and even a healthy respect for religious beliefs throughout his investigations; and more importantly his analyses stayed well within the boundaries of his hypotheses. He did not make the mistake others studying similar biblical materials have made in getting ahead of their data and then getting caught up in trying to "stretch" their findings, by seeking to "disprove" existing religious dogma: "The Jesus Dynasty" does not set out to disprove anything. It is just an exquisitely well-put-together simple presentation of the historical facts, as we know them to date.
Compared with the alternatives (The fictional Da Vinci Code, the Passover Plot, Holy Grail Holy Blood, Bloodlines and the Holy Bible itself --all but two of which I have reviewed on Amazon.com), this is religious history at its academic best, and religious history that even Christians can believe in. One of the strengths of this presentation is that since it is made clear from the outset that the issue of faith exists on an entirely separate plane, questions of faith never really comes into play. Tabor's investigations, even though they challenge religious-based historical accounts, cannot be seen as a threat to religious orthodoxy or beliefs. As he makes clear, there is a difference between "historical truths," and "truths based on religious faith, insights or religious dogma and ideology. "
But more importantly -- and this is the second strength of the book -- is that alternative theoretical approaches (historical, archaeological, epigraphical, and philosophical) were used to pursue the same facts, and then their significance and validity tested against existing and alternative (for instance, The Dead Sea Scrolls, Roman and Jewish) historical biblical texts. While this is far from a canonical concordance, it is very good historical investigation, and equally sound science.
Here Jesus emerges as a counter-revolutionary member of a royal family, who throughout his adult life was on a life-or-death mission to return the throne to the House of David. This illegitimate son of a 14-year old mother (whose own pedigree most likely included some royal blood), was born during the turbulent times of the rule of the "mad dog" Roman designated overseer and self-proclaimed "King of the Jews," Herod. The backdrop of the original Christmas was the destruction of a nearby city called Sepphoris. The city of Sepphoris, as well as excavated ossuaries, played an important role in revealing Jesus in a new historical, instead of in just a fictional and a wholly "faith-based" light.
Tantalizing, (but ultimately unproven) evidence strongly suggests among others that: Jesus' real father may have been a Roman soldier named Pantera; that instead of being a carpenter (since the region lacked much in the way of wood products) Jesus was more likely a poor stone mason and most assuredly spent most of his missing years helping to rebuild the city of Sapphires; that Jesus had six half brothers and sisters, probably from multiple fathers; that it was Jesus himself who challenged the Romans and set into motion the suicidal wheels that led inexorably to his death; and finally that he paved the way for his brother James to continue his failed quest after his expected death.
The beauty of the book is that it treats the reader like an adult and does not insult his intelligence with easy "cock-and-bull stories " and facile religious "fairy tales." It allows the historical chips to fall where they may. The reader can decide for himself on the strengths and weaknesses of the author's arguments, data and narratives. The hidden bonus of the book, whether or not the author's theories "pan out" and many of them do not, is that the coherence of the story alone re-humanizes Jesus and fills in many of the blanks left open like gapping sores in orthodox biblical accounts, or worse, are artfully covered up with religious ambiguities, nonsense, purposeful excisions and alterations, and ideological slights of hand.
This book sets a new standard for religious research.
Fifty stars |
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Review Summary: A Slanted Perspective? |
Date: 2008-11-18 |
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Details: In The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity, historian James Tabor weaves through a smattering of selective biblical narratives and archeological evidence an exceedingly speculative tale about a Messianic Movement John the Baptist and Jesus launched to overthrow the religious and political establishments of their day. According to Tabor, after their deaths, their revolutionary movement was continued on by Jesus' brother James, other members of Jesus' royal family and the twelve disciples.
Tabor claims that because Jesus came from the royal bloodline of King David, He believed He not only had an earthly dynasty, but also a calling from God to preach repentance of sins and the "imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God" on earth to topple the injustice of His day. Thus, in an attempt to fulfill His earthly mission, Tabor says Jesus orchestrated His life around the Hebrew Scriptures so that His life was a fulfillment of them.
However, Tabor argues that Jesus' true message and mission was purposely suppressed by the biblical writer Luke, and was eclipsed by the Apostle Paul who, Tabor says, redefined Jesus' message because of a mystical experience he had on the road to Damascus. Thus, Tabor contends that there are two Gospel messages imbedded in the New Testament text. And sadly, Tabor says, the Christian church failed to recognize Jesus' true message because it embraced Paul's erroneous Gospel message of a divinized Jesus, born of a Virgin Mary, who resurrected from the dead and came to offer eternal life by grace through faith in Jesus, thus making the resurrection of Jesus the lynchpin of the Christian faith.
But Tabor says that Jesus' apostles never claimed to have seen Jesus resurrected from the dead after He died by crucifixion because they never believed Him to be anything other than a man who had an illegitimate birth who came from a royal bloodline and therefore was the rightful heir to an earthly throne. Tabor points out that while they deeply grieved and mourned His death, they in no way ever claimed to have seen Him in a resurrected body after His death. In addition, Tabor denies that explaining Jesus' empty tomb was ever an issue. He says in all likelihood, Jesus' mother and sisters came very early in the morning and removed Jesus' body from the tomb in which it was temporarily placed, and placed it in a permanent tomb which is why Mary Magdalene found the temporary tomb empty. Moreover, Tabor hypothesizes that it was most likely placed in the royal family's tomb which he believes might very well be the Talpiot tomb recently discovered. If the Talpiot tomb is the tomb of Jesus' royal family, and the ossuary box inscribed "Jesus son of Joseph" contains the bone particles of Jesus, then Tabor says, Jesus' body and final resting place has finally been found, and the greatest mystery on earth has been solved.
It is clear that Dr. Tabor accepts and conducts his research with the a priori assumption of naturalism, the metaphysical doctrine that states that all that is real is what one finds in nature, because Tabor offers only natural explanations for the events of Jesus' life when he reads the evidence. As a naturalist, Tabor excludes a priori the supernatural (the existence of God and miracles) as being viable explanations for the claims that Jesus had a supernatural birth and resurrected from the dead, and in doing so, conducts his research through a limited framework for mining the truths of history. Since naturalism has to date not been proven to be the true metaphysical reality, but rather is one that also must be taken on faith, the naturalistic explanations Tabor offers is only one possible explanation. I wonder how Dr. Tabor would explain how Jesus orchestrated Caesar Augustus issuing a decree that a census be taken of the Roman world getting Mary and Joseph to move from Nazareth to Bethlehem so that He could fulfill the prophecy about the Messiah's birth taking place in Bethlehem as stated in Micah 5:2 while He was still in his mother's womb. Is it possible that the ordered universe in which we live filled with highly sophisticated creatures called humans who have the extraordinary ability to reason might better be explained by the metaphysical reality of Theism? Tabor refuses to even explore the idea.
If Jesus' only mission was to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, and if His Apostles really believed that Jesus did not rise from the dead, is it really reasonable to believe that eleven of the twelve disciples willingly submitted themselves to grisly deaths for a dead man who had an earthly mission? One might expect that at least one of them might have renounced Jesus' earthly mission out of a very real and human fear of being barbarously tortured to death. What about their radical character transformations? After Jesus' death, they initially scattered out of fear. However, something happened to them later that made them proclaim Jesus' message fearlessly and boldly until their heinous deaths. What was it? And how does Tabor explain Paul's extraordinary conversion from Christian persecutor to that of the greatest evangelist of the Christian faith? While Tabor affirms that Paul had a "mystical experience," does he ever pause to determine what that experience was? Perhaps a more viable explanation is that both Jesus' disciples and Paul really believed that Jesus rose from the dead because they actually saw Him in His resurrected, immortal body after his death as did 500 other people.
Tabor says, "When you get closer to the truth, everything begins to fit." I agree. However, when one looks at the undeniable facts of Jesus' death, empty tomb, the conversions of persecutor Paul and skeptic James, and the disciples beliefs of a resurrected Jesus, one begins to understand the truth of Jesus Christ, and the resurrection proving Him to be the Son of God and Savior of the world begins to fit!
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Review Summary: Mixture of scholarship and fantasy |
Date: 2008-10-21 |
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Details: James D. Tabor's book on the birth of Christianity is one of the better and more scholarly books of late that tries to redefine Jesus by trying to piece together lost or difficult to understand materials. At times his expertise in archeology and early sources is on display, but at others he is admittedly stretching to get his theories to work. These theories must "work within the parameters of a scientific view of reality." So obviously we must look somewhere else to understand why Christianity got its' start than what the bible, and its' early proclaimers preached. The traditional reason is the bodily resurrection of Jesus himself. This of course is brushed off by Tabor with "Dead bodies don't rise..." Books and theories of how Christianity began without a resurrection have been around for many centuries, yet none seem to get traction, and this one seems no different.
His primary explanation for the resurrection is that probably Mary, Jesus' mother, and his half brother James moved the body to another tomb and tricked the apostles. Jesus, being such a charismatic leader, bequeathed his new religious dynasty to his half brother James, who did not, according to Tabor, preach resurrection. He posits that the apostles and Paul created the myth of a resurrection and appearances by Jesus, and that these only gained acceptance later in the church after James was martyred.
Tabor's evidence to support the idea that the resurrection and the appearances by Jesus weren't accepted right away is the fact that Mark's gospel originally ended at 16:8 without any resurrection appearances, and the unproven Q document. Q supposedly did not have these elements either, but since we don't have any copies of it, that is difficult to prove. Mark's gospel has strong implications that there were resurrection appearances several times where Jesus predicts his resurrection. Otherwise why would Mark include them? Mark is usually very brief, and expects the reader to unpack things for themselves. If the resurrection appearances were common knowledge at the time Mark was written, then there really isn't that big of a mystery here, since he did tell us that Jesus had risen. Later authors probably added an ending for Mark to make it seem more fitting with the other 3 gospels. Tabor implies the other gospels and Paul invented or incorporated later mythical resurrection and appearances. This point is strongly negated by recent scholarship that the creed stated in 1 Corinthians 15 dates very early, and is most likely from before Paul's conversion just 2 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. 1 Corinthians dates to about 55 AD and in it Paul is reminding them of the saying he passed on to them when we was with the Corinthians a few years before. More importantly, in Galatians 1 and 2 Paul at least twice went to Jerusalem to confer with the other apostles. The first time about 3 years after Paul's conversion and about 5 years after the crucifixion, Paul meets with Peter and James, Jesus' brother to verify the gospel he had been preaching. It is here where the creed in 1 Corinthians 15 was most likely received by Paul. The creed must have been formulated and circulating before then, likely within months to at most 3 years after the crucifixion. The fact that many skeptical scholars are now agreeing with this point seriously undermines the idea that James was somehow spreading a very different strand of Christianity than Paul and the other apostles. The creed is fundamentally important in that it affirms the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances so close to the events they tell of. This is not much later as Tabor tries to imply.
Tabor also claims that the second century Gospel of Peter should be accepted along with the first century canonical gospels, and then states that the resurrection appearances cannot be reconciled. Very few scholars think the Gospel of Peter is reliable enough to be on the same footing. Tabor commits the fallacy that differing reports are wrong reports. As anyone knows eyewitness accounts do vary, and details will be different, otherwise collusion is charged. Scholars for nearly two thousand years have been able to see the core of the eyewitness accounts of the resurrection appearances as reliable, and how to correlate the seemingly differing details into a coherent whole. Another example of this is when he states that in Acts 1:4 that Jesus told the apostles not to leave Jerusalem, and then Tabor claims the sightings of Jesus in Galilee contradict this. This is easy to explain, some of the apostles went to Galilee after the crucifixion, but returned to Jerusalem, and that is when Jesus told them this. Tabor's biggest gaffe is where he uses a 16th century vision to claim that Jesus is buried in a grave in Galilee. This seriously handicaps his other very scholarly contributions in this book.
Tabor's volume is worthwhile for its insights about archeology, but not for its explaining away of the beginning of Christianity. There has yet to emerge a good enough reason why the eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection appearances died for their testimony. If Tabor is right, they died in vain for a lie that they themselves would have to have known. Many die for a belief which may be false, but not a group of individuals for eyewitness testimony they know is false. We know from this that the apostles truly believed they encountered Jesus resurrected in a physical body. This is still the best explanation why these witnesses boldly proclaimed Jesus' message to the world, and began what we call Christianity.
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