The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity

by James D. Tabor

Overview

Based on a careful analysis of the earliest Christian documents and recent archaeological discoveries, The Jesus Dynasty offers a bold new interpretation of the life of Jesus and the origins of Christianity. The story is surprising, controversial, and exciting as only a long-lost history can be when it is at last recovered.

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 than his. He joined a messianic movement begun by his relative John the Baptizer, whom he regarded as his teacher and 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' 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, and among the Twelve he included his four brothers. After Jesus 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, Paul preached a message based on his own revelations, which 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 archaeological 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.

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743299183
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	04/04/2006
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	45,525
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

James D. Tabor is chair of the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He holds a PhD in biblical studies and is an expert on Christian origins. He is the author of several books, among them The Jesus Dynasty. Visit him online at JamesTabor.com.

Read an Excerpt

The Jesus Dynasty

The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity

Preface

DISCOVERING THE JESUS DYNASTY

It is a rare book that is forty years in the making. In some sense this is the case with The Jesus Dynasty. Over forty years ago, as a teenager, I made my first visit to the Holy Land with my parents and my sister. It was that experience that set me on my own lifelong "quest for the historical Jesus." This is the phrase scholars use to describe historical research over the past two hundred years related to Jesus and the origins of early Christianity.

What do we really know about Jesus and how do we know it? Forty years ago I had not even formulated the question with any sophistication. I knew nothing of archaeology, the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient texts, or historical research. But I had begun to read the Bible, particularly the New Testament, and had become fascinated with the figure of Jesus. On that Holy Land trip this interest began to develop into a more intense desire to know what could be known about him and to somehow touch that past.

I vividly remember walking around the Old City of Jerusalem. The city was thick with tourists, all Christians, no Jews or Israelis. This was before the 1967Six Day War when the Old City of east Jerusalem was still ruled by Jordan. We were shown around by one of the hundreds of would-be resident guides who could be hired on the spot pressing upon anyone who looked like a tourist. We saw all the sites typically shown to Christian pilgrims -- the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Upper Room of the Last Supper, and the Dome of the Rock, where the ancient Jewish Temple once stood. On such a tour one enters dozens of churches, all built centuries after the time of Jesus but supposedly at the precise place where this or that event took place.

Over the three days we were there I began to experience a growing sense of disappointment. I was having difficulty connecting, even in my imagination, 20th-century Jerusalem with the city in the time of Jesus as described in the New Testament. Even if the names and places were the same, and correctly identified, what I saw before me were Turkish, Crusader, and Byzantine remains, with little if anything from the 1st century a.d. visible. Even the modern street level, I learned, was twelve to fifteen feet above that of Roman times. I had purchased a tourist guidebook entitled Walking Where Jesus Walked, and somehow, in my naiveté, I wanted to do just that.

We stayed in a small hotel on top of the Mount of Olives just to the east of the Old City. About midnight, restless, I got out of bed, Bible in hand, and decided to walk to the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the mountain. The steep path down is now paved, but I could see bedrock cut or worn along the way on both sides, indicating this was the narrow road from ancient times. I imagined Jesus riding the donkey down that very path into the Old City, hailed by the crowds as Messiah, a week before he was crucified. In those days, unlike today, you could enter the Garden of Gethsemane at any hour, day or night, as the gate was always open. Visitors were also allowed to walk among the centuries-old olive trees. I was the only one there that night, at that hour. My reading had convinced me that this was the spot where Jesus spent the last night of his life in prayer. For the first time on our tour, on that path and in the garden, I felt that I was able to reach back and connect with the past that I sought. I stayed there for the longest time, trying to imagine it all. I kept thinking to myself -- this is the place. It happened here. The "historian" in me was awakening and I think a bit of the "archaeologist" as well. In some way I had begun what would become a lifelong quest to discover and to understand the life of Jesus as he lived it.

There is something in all of us that thrills to this experience of touching the past. It could be an old letter, a genealogical record, a battlefield, a cemetery, or fragments of an ancient text. Today in Israel you can visit the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum and view the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date to around the time of Jesus. I think many visitors experience the same feeling I did the first time I saw the displays. There, under glass, just a few inches away, are the actual ancient documents written over two thousand years ago. I remember pausing for long minutes before each exhibit, trying to take in the reality of what I was viewing. There one is looking at the very parchment or papyrus from that long-ago time, with words in Hebrew and Aramaic that could have been read by Jesus or his followers.

Many other sites in Jerusalem have now been excavated. You can walk or sit on the very steps that led up to the Jewish Temple built in the time of Herod the Great. When I first visited Jerusalem in 1962 these steps were twenty-five feet below the present surface, completely lost to modern eyes. In various places the paving stones of the streets of the Roman city have been exposed. Twelve feet below the modern street level, in the Jewish Quarter, you can walk in the ruins of a wealthy mansion, one that likely belonged to the family of high priests who presided over the trial of Jesus. In the summer of 2004 the pool of Siloam, mentioned in the New Testament, was uncovered, after being forgotten and hidden from view for centuries. All over the country the past is being exposed to the present by the spade of the archaeologist and equally by the deciphering of ancient texts by the historian.

I have since been back to Israel and Jordan dozens of times as a researcher and scholar. Whether I am digging an archaeological site, researching in a library, or studying firsthand a given area or location, my focus remains the same -- to recreate a past that has important relevance to our present. The Jesus Dynasty is a new historical investigation of Jesus, his royal family, and the birth of Christianity. At the same time it is a reflection of my own personal quest, integrating the results of my own discoveries and insights over the course of my professional career.

The Jesus Dynasty presents the Jesus story in an entirely new light. It is history, not fiction. And yet it differs considerably, sometimes radically, from the standard portrait of Jesus informed by theological dogma. The Jesus Dynasty proposes an original version of Christianity, long lost and forgotten, but one that can be reliably traced back to the founder, Jesus himself. The impact and implications of this book are far-reaching and potentially revolutionary. There is a sense in which one might call it "the greatest story never told." It will thrill and excite many, upset and anger others, but also challenge its readers, of whatever persuasion, to honestly weigh evidence and consider new possibilities.

The Jesus Dynasty has no connection to the recently popularized notions that Jesus married and fathered children through Mary Magdalene. While gripping fiction, this idea is long on speculation and short on evidence. But as is so often the case, the truth is even stranger than fiction -- and every bit as intriguing.

In The Jesus Dynasty you will discover that Jesus was the firstborn son of a royal family -- a descendant of King David of ancient Israel. He really was proclaimed "King of the Jews," and was executed by the Romans for this claim. Rather than a church, or a new religion, as commonly understood, he established a royal dynasty drawn from his own brothers and immediate family. Rather than being the founder of a church, Jesus was claimant to a throne. According to the Hebrew Prophets, the Messiah, the scion of David, who would lead the nation of Israel in the last days, was to spring from this specific lineage. Recently released portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls have shed further light on the concrete nature of this expectation. This coveted royal bloodline, the family of David, with its radical revolutionary potential, was well known to the Herod family, the native rulers of Palestine at the time, but also to the Roman officials who ruled the country, including the emperors themselves. These "royals" were not only watched, but also at critical times even hunted down and executed.

Shortly before he died, Jesus set up a provisional government with twelve regional officials, one over each of the twelve tribes or districts of Israel, and he left his brother James at the head of this fledgling government. James became the uncontested leader of the early Christian movement. This significant fact of history has been largely forgotten, or as likely, hidden. Properly understood, it changes everything we thought we knew about Jesus, his mission, and his message. Everyone has heard of Peter, Paul, and John -- but the pivotal place of James, the beloved disciple and younger brother of Jesus, has been effectively blotted from Christian memory.

The Jesus Dynasty explores how and why Christians gradually lost the recognition that Jesus was part of a large family, the members of which exercised dynastic leadership among his followers. This critical, alternative, story, which survives even in our New Testament records and in bits and pieces of later Christian tradition, can be effectively recovered. A combination of recent archaeological discoveries and the surfacing of texts long forgotten has given us a new perspective from which to view the birth of Christianity. Understanding the origins of this largest global religion not only offers us insights about the past, it also opens up whole new ways of seeing Christianity in our own day. We now have a sharper and more historically reliable understanding of Jesus as he was in his own time and place.

THE AMERICAN COLONY HOTEL, JERUSALEM

JUNE 7, 2005

Copyright © 2006 by James D.Tabor

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Jesus Dynasty by James D. Tabor Copyright © 2007 by James D. Tabor. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface: Discovering the Jesus Dynasty     1
Introduction: A Tale of Two Tombs     6
In the Beginning Was the Family
A Virgin Shall Conceive     37
A Son of David?     48
An Unnamed Father of Jesus?     59
Children of a DifiFerent Father     73
Growing Up Jewish in Galilee
The Lost Years     85
A Kingdom of this World     95
The Religion of Jesus the Jew     109
A Great Revival and a Gathering Storm
Hearing the Voice     125
A Crucial Missing Year     138
Ushering in the Kingdom     153
Entering the Lion's Den
Herod Strikes     171
Last Days in Jerusalem     187
The King Is Dead     208
Dead but Twice Buried     223
Waiting for the Son of Man
Go to James the Just     243
The Challenge of Paul     259
The Legacy of the Jesus Dynasty     272
The End of the Age     284
Conclusion: Recovering Lost Treasures     305
Epilogue     319
Timeline of Major Events and Figures     333
Notes     335
Acknowledgments     359
Index     361
Photo Credits     379

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Boldly provocative...a book unlike any the public has ever seen."
— Bart Ehrman, bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus

Editorial Reviews

The result of 40 years of research into documents and archaeological sites in the Holy Land, James D. Tabor's fresh, provocative, and controversial examination of the evidence for the nature of the historical Jesus offers an alternative view that will fascinate anyone with interest in this perennial question.

bn.com

Glancing at the title, you might conclude erroneously that The Jesus Dynasty is a Da Vinci Code spin-off. Scholar James D. Tabor's book does formulate an alternative theory of Christian origins that emphasizes Jesus' family, but its arguments are rooted in early Church history and recent archaeological findings (including his own.) According to Tabor, Jesus and John "The Baptizer" filled the paired roles of the anticipated Jewish messiahs: Jesus as a royal descendant of David and John as a priestly descendant of Aaron. The crucifixion of Jesus destroyed their joint messianic mission, throwing their movement into disorder and conflict. The New Testament seen from a new angle.

Tabor, chair of religious studies at UNC-Charlotte, offers a bold and sometimes speculative interpretation of the historical Jesus and his family, beginning with his paternity. Evaluating several possibilities, Tabor concludes that the most historically plausible claim is that Jesus' father was neither God nor Joseph, but another man, possibly a Roman soldier named Pantera. He also argues that Joseph likely died when Jesus was young, leaving Jesus head of a household that included his six half-siblings. Like many scholars, Tabor emphasizes that we must understand Jesus in the context of first-century Judaism. After Jesus' death, his brother James took over the titular family dynasty. James championed a version of the faith quite different from Paul's, and, although James was more faithful to Jesus' original teachings, Paul's Christianity won. Tabor not only challenges Christian dogma, he also makes some assumptions with which not all scholars will agree: he places a great deal of emphasis on the hypothetical text Q, calling it "our most authentic early Christian document." This book is accessible and sure to be highly controversial, attracting the attention of reporters, spiritual seekers, historians and fans of The Da Vinci Code. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Tabor (religious studies, Univ. of North Carolina at Charlotte; Why Waco?: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America) here aims to provide as accurate a biography of the human Jesus as possible. Recent archaeological discoveries, the rereading of Old and New Testament texts in light of these discoveries, and the use of additional intertestamental and noncanonical literature form the nuclei of Tabor's methodological search for the life of Jesus. The book is divided into five parts-"In the Beginning was the Family," "Growing Up Jewish in Galilee," "A Great Revival and a Gathering Storm," "Entering the Lion's Den," and "Waiting for the Son of Man"-that seek to explain who Jesus of Nazareth really was and the significance of his preaching. Yet Tabor's methodology exhibits serious weaknesses. Some of his interpretations (e.g., that Mary married Joseph's brother after he died in accordance with ancient tradition; that Jesus had a human father) go far beyond the evidence. It is this willingness to overreach and misuse theological sources that make Jesus Dynasty an ultimately irresponsible endeavor. Not recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 12/05.]-Charlie Murray, Boston Univ. School of Theology Lib. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

CD 0-7435-5203-2Think you know who Jesus was? Well, think again. Using archaeological evidence and textual analysis, Tabor (Religious Studies/Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte) puts forth a very different history of the Jesus movement than is traditionally taught within Christian theology. Jesus, a descendant of David, was shaped by the events of his time. He became a disciple of the charismatic John the Baptizer and soon became John's partner in ministry, taking over the movement upon John's execution. He was convinced that Roman rule over Israel would soon end, allowing him to set up an earthly kingdom. His Council of Twelve acted as regional rulers over this kingdom. When Jesus was crucified, the Council set up a provisional government, led by James, the brother of Jesus and heir to the Davidic line. Beyond that, not only was Jesus made divine, but his teachings were corrupted, and the roles of John and James were dramatically diminished, says Tabor, who raises some good points and spurs meaningful thought for the reader. And his archaeological backup makes for exciting reading. However, his book has a number of flaws. While identified as a historian, Tabor often sounds like a conspiracy theorist, piecing together tiny shreds of evidence to create a revisionist history, while rarely pausing to address the counterarguments that arise at every turn. Tabor accepts his conclusions as truth without ever entertaining the notion that there are other arguments to be made. This arrogance can be an affront to the educated reader. The author writes for those with only a marginal knowledge of Christian history and theology, and for those already skeptical of Christianity. There are vastdiscrepancies between his own presumptions and the presumptions of the majority of Christians-a gulf he fails to address and for which some will make efforts to debunk his work. Tabor simply speaks past actual believers, who will be perplexed by his approach at best, insulted at worst. A provocative contribution, diminished by an overbearing approach. First printing of 100,000

Kirkus Reviews

"Many scholars have undertaken studies of Jesus and his legacy; none has dared advance the boldly provocative theses of The Jesus Dynasty." — Bart Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus

"Provocative. . . . Takes the search for the historical Jesus to a bold . . . new level." — Jay Tolson, U.S. News & World Report

"James Tabor stands out among his generation of biblical scholars for his thorough familiarity with the full range of textual evidence from the first centuries, his extensive experience with archaeological excavations, and his imagination and creativity. Tabor has a remarkable ability to discern the contours of vital religious movements from the scattered bits and pieces of evidence that survive from antiquity. Anyone who takes the career of Jesus seriously will have to reckon with his bold, new synthesis."
— Professor Eugene V. Gallagher, Rosemary Park Professor of Religious Studies, Connecticut College

From the Publisher