The Jesus Dynasty

Notes on the book about the historical figure of Jesus

Based on the book by Dr. James Tabor (2006)

As an outsider looking in, I found this quite a riveting read.
From his website:

Based on a careful analysis of the earliest Christian documents and recent archeological discoveries, The Jesus Dynasty offers a bold new interpretation of the life of Jesus and the origins of Christianity.

In The Jesus Dynasty biblical scholar James Tabor brings us closer than ever to the historical Jesus. Jesus, as we know, was the son of Mary, a young woman who became pregnant before her marriage to a man named Joseph. The gospels tell us that Jesus had four brothers and two sisters, all of whom probably had a different father from him. He joined a messianic movement begun by his relative John the Baptizer, whom he regarded as his teacher and as a great prophet. John and Jesus together filled the roles of the Two Messiahs who were expected at the time, John as a priestly descendant of Aaron and Jesus as a royal descendant of David. Together they preached the coming of the Kingdom of God. Theirs was an apocalyptic movement that expected God to establish his kingdom on earth, as described by the prophets. The two messiahs lived in a time of turmoil as the historical land of Israel was dominated by the powerful Roman empire. Fierce Jewish rebellions against Rome occurred during Jesus's lifetime.

John and Jesus preached adherence to the Torah, or the Jewish Law. But their mission was changed dramatically when John was arrested and then killed. After a period of uncertainty, Jesus began preaching anew in Galilee and challenged the Roman authorities and their Jewish collaborators in Jerusalem. He appointed a Council of Twelve to rule over the twelve tribes of Israel, among whom he included his four brothers. After he was crucified by the Romans, his brother James – the “Beloved Disciple” – took over leadership of the Jesus Dynasty.

James, like John and Jesus before him, saw himself as a faithful Jew. None of them believed that their movement was a new religion. It was Paul who transformed Jesus and his message through his ministry to the gentiles, breaking with James and the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, preaching a message based on his own revelations that would become Christianity. Jesus became a figure whose humanity was obscured; John became merely a forerunner of Jesus; and James and the others were all but forgotten.

James Tabor has studied the earliest surviving documents of Christianity for more than thirty years and has participated in important archeological excavations in Israel. Drawing on this background, Tabor reconstructs for us the movement that sought the spiritual, social, and political redemption of the Jews, a movement led by one family. The Jesus Dynasty offers an alternative version of Christian origins, one that takes us closer than ever to Jesus and his family and followers. The story is surprising and controversial, but exciting as only a long-lost history can be when it is at last recovered.

This is a book that will change our understanding of one of the most crucial moments in history.

James D. Tabor is chair of the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He holds a Ph.D. in biblical studies from the University of Chicago and is an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian origins. The author of several previous books, he is frequently consulted by the media on these topics and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs.

Nazareth means "branch town." There is a double play here, since the Messiah(s) described by the older Jewish prophets were two be descendant(s) of ("the branch of") King David. References in the Dead Sea Scrolls are made to the Branch of David.

Jeremiah wrote that King David was "stripped" of any legitimacy to rule Israel, as if Jeremiah was declaring the Covenant between God and the Jewish people null and void.

John the baptizer and Jesus were probably co-equals. Jesus was shocked when John was arrested and then beheaded by the Jewish King Herrod. He went into hiding himself until he reappeared and was arrested and crucified.

According to the author, subsequent Christian writers who wanted to establish a unique role for Jesus as the sole messiah, downplayed the contribution of John.

Jesus had 4 brothers and 2 sisters according to Mark. The siblings of Jesus were downplayed by those who wished to promote and asexual Mary, yet this flies in the face of common sense and the New Testament itself.

James, Judas, and Simon were three of the brothers.

Mary and Solome were the names of the sisters.

Revolution

Sephrus revolted against Roman rule shortly before Jesus was born. The Romans responded with overwhelming force and cruelty, as was their standard practice.[1] 2,000 men were crucified. Many were sold into slavery. The city was burned. The part of the Christmas story never told is that the newborn Jesus would have returned to a smoldering city with decomposing crosses hanging from crosses along the way. Interestingly, the names of many of the rebels, including Judas, were shared by Jesus' siblings.

Luke wrote that Mary went to Bethlehem with child when she was still "betrothed" (engaged) to Joseph. It must have been a huge scandal in the small village of Nazareth.

Virgin Birth Versus Immaculate Conception

These two ideas, although confused, are distinct. The Virgin Birth refers to the belief that Mary bore Jesus without having sex, at least not with Joseph. Immaculate Conception, on the other hand, refers to the idea that Mary was born without original sin. These ideas, although not contemporary to the time of Jesus (they were developed later, particularly by the Western (Catholic) Church), had their seed in the Manichean dichotomy prevalent in Mediterranean culture between the profane and the sacred, the things of the world and of the spirit, and sexuality, particularly female sexuality, including its vestiges such as menstruation (a woman is commanded in the Torah not to approach the alter during her "period of uncleanliness") is denigrated. The idea of an asexual Mary and an asexual Jesus seemed important to those attempting to establish his other-ness, even though Immanuel means God-in-man or God-in-flesh with all the implications of flesh, pleasure as well as pain.

No one in the early church would have imagined that Mary remained a perpetual virgin, never having sex with any man including Joseph. Was is beyond dispute is that she was pregnant from another man prior to her betrothal (engagement) to Joseph, which no doubt caused quite a scandal. In fact, it was not until 374 of the common era that Epiphonius first considered the idea of a Virgin Mary.

Paul believed that one should practice celibacy and said marriage was an antidote to the spiritually weak who might otherwise be tempted to fornicate!

Martin Luther and some other Protestant leaders of his day believed that Mary never had sex, but this view is less common among Protestants today.

Maria was the most common Jewish female name of her time. Cease to

Jesus was not technically a carpenter, but a Techton, a day laborer, working mostly with rocks and stone, not trees, which were

Herrod the Great died in 4 BCE when Jesus was just a baby.

Judas the Galilean led a revolt in 4 BCE which he claimed that God was the only just ruler and that they should refuse to pay Roman taxes.

Judas was the inaugurator of a movement, the zealots, whose goal was an independent Jewish state, and felt that Romans' controlling the Jewish state was a travesty and an affront to God.

Jesus and his brother Simon, who was nicknamed the zealot, were both crucified; James, another brother, died by stoning.

When Jesus was 16, the Emperor Augustus died and was replaced by his adopted son, Tyberius.

The Last Supper was on Wednesday. Jesus was crucified on Thursday, not Friday. The Last Supper was not a sader [spelling].

When Jesus was crucified, it seems clear that he believed that he was not going to die, that the heavens would open and the day of judgment would occur.

On a technical note, the hands would not have been pierced, nor the wrists (which would have caused too much bleeding and too rapid a death, since the Roman objective was a slow torture to set an example for others), but rather the forearm. Death could take 3 days. The legs could be broken to speed up this process. Jesus died in approximately 3 hours; the Jewish authorities asked that the legs of the 3 condemned men be broken so that the bodies could be buried by sundown since the next day (Friday) was Passover.

Mark, the earliest Gospel, and therefore the most reliable, makes no mention of sightings of Jesus at all. He simply ended with an empty tomb. "They said nothing to anyone and were afraid." As of 70 AD, resurrection would not have been a tenet of early Christian belief. References to resurrection were added later, probably by a pious scribe around 400 AD, adding this to Mark's text.

Paul, who never met Jesus, was clearly trying to establish himself as an equivalent of the disciple, stating that he had a vision of Jesus, who also appeared to his disciples, then to 500 of his followers, then to him.

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[1] There was a cruel calculus in the terror of crucifixion and the arena, in that a few public spectacles of terror would dissuade many from even contemplating revolt against the central authority of Rome, allowing the Empire to enjoy a tranquility the dominated regions never knew otherwise. This calculus would be used by countless empires afterwards to rationalize great cruelty. Churchill, for example, wrote fondly of using "poison gas" against the people of Iraq during Britain's occupation in the 1920s, citing its "civilizing" power.