The Lost Mary: How the Church Erased Christianity’s First Founder w/ Dr. James Tabor

Johnny Ova: Welcome everybody to the Dig In Podcast. I am your host, Pastor Johnny Ova of the Sound of Heaven Church, and I have the privilege of having Dr. James Tabor on with me today. Dr. Tabor, thanks so much for joining us. I can't wait to talk about all the work you've been putting out there.

Dr. James Tabor: It's my pleasure. I don't know much about your work and you're learning about mine, so it's going to be a fruitful exchange, I'm sure.

Johnny Ova: It's going to be good. Like I said, I appreciate you being so gracious with your time. So let's jump right in. You open your book, which we're going to get into, and you were just showing us the cover, with this paradox: Mary is the most famous woman in history, recognized by billions of Christians and Muslims, yet she's also the most erased woman in history. I feel like that's a good place to start. What do you mean that Mary's erased?

Dr. James Tabor: It is a good place. In fact, the first line of the book, I won't get it exactly, is that Mary's the best known, least known woman in history. And I would stand by that. There's no question that she's the best known. Who would be a rival, if you even try to think of ancient women, because of the way we have forgotten women, not just Mary but others? I always do this in class. My students will come up with Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, and usually they can't come up with another one from the entire ancient world. Then they'll go to Joan of Arc or Queen Elizabeth the First. And yet the men we can name. So it kind of starts there. But the erasure is something more.

Dr. James Tabor: Let me illustrate it like this. Whether you know the Apostles' Creed by heart or not, I think you'll know this phrase. Christians recite it. It's the earliest Christian creed, and it's about Jesus, not Mary. Among other things, it says he's born of a virgin, crucified, died and buried, and raised the third day. So even about Jesus: born, crucified, died, buried and raised. For the apostle Paul, the entrance and exit points are the main thing, particularly the exit, the crucifixion. As he says in 1 Corinthians, I decided to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and him crucified. But if you put that on Mary, it's really odd. We almost get the same thing, but much less, because we have whole gospels about Jesus and some of his teachings. With Mary, we have the birth of Jesus and a couple of little things along the way. I counted 11 or 12 mentions of her.

Dr. James Tabor: John, for example, doesn't even give her name. That's a shocking fact to most people, because we know her name, so we don't think of it when we're reading. But think about it. You write about Jesus and mention his mother five or six times, but you just say, his mother. Then she's at the cross in all of our accounts. She's there with Mary Magdalene and this band of sisters that I talk about in the book, that we need to remember because they're the loyal ones who stick with Jesus to the end. Whereas, as Mark says, the disciples, the apostles, all forsook him and fled. So what about the middle? What about Mary's life? She's introduced at the birth of Jesus and she exits at his death. What about her as a woman? The erasure comes from a different motive, not just a lack of historical information. I wish they'd written more about her. You've got to have the woman, the mother, to bring Jesus into the world. But she must have had a life. We can say she lived in Nazareth, and it's a small village, supposedly. We're going to talk about that, I'm sure, because that's not a real understanding of where that village was.

Dr. James Tabor: We begin to see an erasure of the family, or let's call it a fading of the family, like something going out of focus. It happens with John the Baptist at one end. John comes on stage, introduces Jesus, and then he's out, imprisoned by Herod Antipas, beheaded, and Jesus carries on. It also happens with James, the Lord's brother, Jesus' brother according to Paul. When we get all of our historical material together, as I do in this book, James takes over the leadership of the Jesus movement at the death of Jesus. Some of the people who listen to you, who have dug in a little bit into the history, might know of James. His name in Hebrew is Yaakov. But we don't normally think of him as the leader. It's hidden in the New Testament.

Dr. James Tabor: So how is it hidden? I'll give you an illustration, and this goes for the erasure of Mary too. Our main account of the movement after the death of Jesus is what we call the Acts of the Apostles. In the first chapter you get the eleven choosing a replacement for Judas. And then one line: his mother, Mary, and his brothers were there. So you can't deny their presence, but Peter's clearly in charge. He stands up, he preaches, he says, let's do this, let's do that. I'm not denying his central role with the twelve, which I think he did have historically. And then James just disappears. In fact, he's not even introduced by name. It's his mother Mary and his brothers.

Dr. James Tabor: Go to chapter 15, though, and it's the most momentous decision the movement has to make. What are we going to do with non-Jews, Gentiles? Thousands of them are believing our message. Do they need to convert to Judaism? How much of the Torah should they keep? How much should we still keep? Peter speaks at this meeting. We usually date it 49 to 50 CE. It's in Jerusalem, the headquarters. Paul speaks. All the apostles and elders are gathered. Picture a kind of council of maybe well over a hundred people. Remember, Jesus had 70 followers he sent out, and there's this band of sisters, so let's say 150 people, maybe more. We don't know how many are at the conference. But then we have this verse that's chilling to me, if you're not expecting it. After everybody's spoken, James stands up and says, my decision is. Now, if you had only read Acts to that point, or Luke, the first volume of what we think is a two-volume work, you'd go, James who? He's not named in chapter one. It's his brothers. What does he mean, my decision is? He's not making a decision just for the local Jerusalem congregation. He's making a decision for the worldwide movement, including Paul's followers.

Dr. James Tabor: We get another version in Galatians. According to Paul, I went up to see the pillars of the church, although there's a phrase in Greek that I would translate as the RSV does, the so-called pillars. And he adds, what they are means nothing to me. That's kind of testy. But in context he means, I've got my gospel. I know what I'm standing for, because I'm talking directly to the heavenly, glorified Christ. And yes, I went up to see them. Who are they? James, Peter, and John, the son of Zebedee. And he says they agreed with me. Acts 15 says everybody agreed. They made the decision that Gentiles do not need to undergo a formal conversion to Judaism. They need to turn from idolatry, live a sexually moral life, and other things that in Greco-Roman society would not be obvious. He doesn't list things like don't steal and don't trip blind people. He talks about the things that in the Gentile world might not be considered by a strict standard of biblical morality, sexuality and idolatry being the main two.

Dr. James Tabor: So James is faded even more. After that, all we have is the letter attributed to James. A lot of scholars have said he probably didn't write it because it's really good Greek, but he might have. Josephus, the Jewish historian, says he wrote The Jewish War in Aramaic, his native tongue, and had it translated into the beautiful Greek we have today. So who's to say James might not have dictated it and had it put into good Greek? I don't know, but it does seem to reflect what we might call, with a funny adjective, a Jamesian slant on things, because it's not the Pauline message. Even Luther said, I don't know if there's any gospel in this thing. I think he might have put it in the back of the first edition of the Luther Bible, like, this is okay to read, but Paul should come first. So you have Acts, Romans, and then all thirteen letters attributed to Paul.

Dr. James Tabor: So that's what I mean by the best known, least known. What do we know about her life, and can we begin to put together the threads we have? I use the analogy of breadcrumbs, the famous breadcrumbs through the forest. You follow a trail, but it's not so clear. You've got to go on down the trail: we turn here, we turn there, we find this and that. When we do that, and there are only about a dozen, you can begin to construct a fuller picture of Mary, not just as the woman who bore Jesus and was present at the cross, but what I would call the lost Mary, who has largely been made the mother of God, the queen of heaven, the exalted one. In Roman Catholic theology, although this comes late, she bodily ascends into heaven just like Jesus did, and there's God the Father, Jesus the Son, and Mary sitting right there in Catholic Marian devotion. So that's opening a response to your question, and we can dig in any way you want.

Johnny Ova: I really find this fascinating, because you've written books on Jesus and Paul, and I remember you mentioned in some of your writings that the search for Mary has been such a great challenge in your career. Why is recovering the historical Mary so much harder than recovering the historical Jesus?

Dr. James Tabor: It's because the family itself is fading away in our New Testament sources, and I think that comes mainly from the influence of Paul. Paul says in 2 Corinthians, we no longer know Christ after the flesh. Well, that's true. He's gone. He died, and Paul believes he's been raised to heaven and sits at the right hand of God, and believes he's talking to him. Then he adds something interesting: even if we once knew him after the flesh, we don't know him that way any longer. That could be a simple statement that he's gone to heaven. But remember, Paul never met Jesus. We have no evidence that he listened to him. He's in Jerusalem when the main events take place, that final Passover week when Jesus is crucified. So from a historical standpoint we have every reason to believe he was aware of what was happening, was against Jesus, and likely approved of the decision that we need to get rid of this messianic imposter, this dangerous person who is going to stir up trouble and cause the Romans to take away the little freedom we have to run our religion and our temple. He says, I was an enemy of this movement.

Dr. James Tabor: But think about what else could be implied there. I think in that context he's talking about the difference between himself and the apostles, and James, who grew up with Jesus as his brother. James and the other brothers grew up with Jesus. The other apostles spent two or three years with him. Paul's not part of that. All of those teachings we read, the red-letter material in some Bibles, the sayings of Jesus in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and John has the most, Paul would never have heard any of that, even if we're getting a theologized version later. And it's not just the teachings. If you're a disciple of a rabbi, that relationship is amazing. We know that culturally from Judaism of the time. Paul's not in that inner circle. He mentions that the apostles travel through the churches. He mentions Peter, whom he calls Cephas, other apostles, and the Lord's brothers who travel. So some of those brothers might have come through town. And in 2 Corinthians, when there are divisions and problems, he says, we no longer know Jesus after the flesh.

Dr. James Tabor: I see more behind that than a simple observation that Jesus died and he's gone. I think he's saying in effect, I speak to the heavenly Christ. Yes, you spoke to the earthly Jesus, but I'm not so sure that what you're getting now is equivalent to what I'm getting. I don't know that any of the apostles are claiming direct visions and revelations for their teaching the way Paul is. So as we put these threads together, these breadcrumbs, we do begin to get the picture, but it's not huge chunks of teaching like we have in the gospels, which we also have to read critically. I try to go through that in the book with readers on a beginning level, what critical scholarship would say about the sayings of Jesus and which are the earliest and least edited.

Dr. James Tabor: The other thing that's huge is to take the tidbits that are almost explosive. I'll give you two examples. One is a passing verse in Mark 6:3. Jesus is back in Galilee in his hometown area around Nazareth, and what's said about him is, isn't this the son of Mary, and his brothers James, Joseph, Jude and Simon? We know them, and we know his sisters. The scene is not about identifying the brothers, but because of Mark, our earliest gospel, which most historians think Matthew and Luke use as a source, we get the names of the brothers. And James is first. That's going to connect to something else. Who's the beloved disciple at the cross? Everybody feels that's John. Why would you think it's John? That tradition, as I trace in the book, is very late. It's Irenaeus, around 180. I think it's James.

Dr. James Tabor: If I'm the eldest son and my mother is a widow, remember, Joseph just disappears. He's not around after Jesus is twelve. That's the last word we get of Joseph. Something happens to him. So Mary's a widowed mother of seven or eight children, depending on the sisters. Now Jesus is dying, and he says, son, here's your mother, mother, here's your son, and he takes care of her. And what do we find at Pentecost? His mother's there with the brothers. People are shocked: Tabor says James was the beloved disciple? I always thought it was John. Well, why would you think it was John? There's no hint that it's John. And the first clue is that it needs to be somebody who's never named in that gospel, the Gospel of John. He's not named. Again, let's not say who this is, because he's obviously in charge of the family and the mother, but we know it from other sources. So that's one verse that gets the names in order.

Dr. James Tabor: The other verse is Matthew 1:25, about the birth of Jesus. In the Eastern Church, you can't deny these kids exist, they're named, but they aren't children of Mary. She's a perpetual virgin. She never lives sexually with her husband. In one of the texts he's something like 95 years old. Those kids are from his previous marriage. He's an old widower, kind of a caretaker. You don't get that feeling at all in the gospels. In the West it gets even more removed from historical reality. Joseph can't have sexual relations either, so he can't be the old man who had all those kids before he married Mary, because Joseph is really holy. He's with the Holy Virgin Mary, so he can't be sexually involved with anybody even before. So these are kids of his brother. He had a brother named Clopas, and those are Clopas's kids. So we end up with cousins or stepchildren.

Dr. James Tabor: But what does Matthew 1:25 say? It's so clear. Joseph has a dream: your betrothed is pregnant. When you're betrothed in Judaism at this time, and we know the customs, you might wait months, up to a year, for the marriage to be consummated, because a lot of things have to be arranged. We have that today. When are you getting married? Next June. But from that moment on, the engagement counts. In a conservative culture you're not supposed to sleep together until the marriage. Whether people followed that then or now is an open question, but it's considered proper. So in the dream he's told, don't put her away, don't break the engagement. He was even thinking of doing it privately, because he obviously loves her and didn't want to ruin her life. But he's told, take her. So it says he took her as his wife, so they get married, but literally it says he knew her not until she had brought forth Jesus, the firstborn.

Dr. James Tabor: Until does imply pretty clearly, by any normal reading, what came after. People argue that until doesn't imply anything after. Of course it does. It's a marriage. He takes her as his wife, and that means consummating the marriage in any tradition. He didn't do that because of the pregnancy, but once Jesus is born, he obviously does. So there are just two verses, Mark 6 and Matthew 1:25, and all of a sudden we've got brothers and sisters of Jesus, and we've got them living together as a normal Jewish couple, probably having children every two years. I'll get personal here. My father's mother had 12 children. One died in childhood, so 11. I knew my uncles and aunts growing up. And I learned from looking at old genealogical records on both sides of my family that these kids were born about every two years. If you're open to having children and you're a fertile couple, you nurse maybe a year or so and then another pregnancy. That's the way it works. It's not strange at all. So if they're living together as husband and wife, there are going to be brothers. So what about the brothers? What about the sisters? Why don't we know more about them?

Dr. James Tabor: Some of these breadcrumbs, these threads you begin to pull, are very revealing, like those two. Some of them, though, people have taken as negative. The main one is in Mark. Many Bible readers will remember where Jesus is at the house in Capernaum. People call it Peter's house today. I think that's probably because Peter and Andrew aren't from Capernaum. They're from Bethsaida, around the lake. Maybe the Zebedee house is acting as host to the Jesus movement, like a headquarters. It's a major port on the north of the Sea of Galilee, and the roads from the north come right through Capernaum, and the roads go east and west and down toward Nazareth and Sepphoris. Basically, the family can't get in. Your mother and brothers are seeking you. Knock, knock, knock. We can't even get in. There are so many people in that little area. It's probably a courtyard with little rooms where you could stand and see Jesus teaching.

Dr. James Tabor: And when Jesus is told your mother and brothers are outside, he says, who are my mother and brothers? All of you are my mother and brothers, if you're here to do the will of God. Now, I see that as positive, and I'm not the only one. There's a wonderful scholar on James, and I recommend his book if people are going, I don't know much about this James. It's called Just James, a great title. John Painter. Easy to remember. Get that book. He suggests this too. What is Jesus saying? He's saying, mi casa su casa. My mother and brothers are outside. They live here. But you all are here. If I were doing a movie, I would have him say, you know what, there's room for everybody. Some of you go out in the courtyard. Let's get food. Let's have lunch together. Mom, come on in. Brothers, come on in. Meet some of these people. Now, you'll say, you don't know all that. No, I don't know all that. But I don't think he thinks of his mother and brothers negatively. You have to read the book to get the whole argument.

Dr. James Tabor: But more than the threads, positive or negative, and there are many more, you also have other texts, and you have archaeology and geography, and they help contextualize. And by the way, you mentioned the cover. Look at that. That's the Mona Lisa of the ancient world. It's by an Italian Renaissance painter. You can read about him in the book. What is she thinking? That face is thinking everything.

Johnny Ova: Wonderful. I'm going to link all of this in the description box.

Dr. James Tabor: So let's start with where she lives. Nazareth. Everybody knows Nazareth. I've pointed this out for years in my classes, and the students are blown away. Where's Jesus from? Nazareth, Nazareth, Nazareth. If you go to Israel today, Nazareth is the largest city in the Galilee. Imagine, the little village everybody says Jesus is from. And he is from there. He does grow up there. But what people don't know is that four miles north of the village of Nazareth, just four miles, is Sepphoris, the largest urban center of the Galilee, the capital. So Jesus is growing up outside the capital of Herod Antipas. Herod the Great dies just after Jesus is born, and three revolts break out all over the country. Messianic revolts. Different Jews who want to take over and become king of the Jews now that the despot is dead.

Dr. James Tabor: Sepphoris is one of the centers of rebellion. There's a rebel, as he's called by his enemies, the Romans at least, Judas son of Hezekiah. That's not the later Judas the Galilean in 6 CE. This is 4 BC, right after Herod's death. He breaks into the armory at Sepphoris and starts a revolt. The Romans come down with three legions and simply burn Sepphoris to the ground. Now remember, Mary's in Nazareth nursing Jesus. It would probably be the summer of 4 BC, because Herod dies in the spring, and she's still nursing this child if he was born the year before. And she's seeing the flames of the major city go up.

Dr. James Tabor: When I finished my PhD at the University of Chicago, I'm sorry to say I hadn't done archaeology. I traveled to Israel once as a kid, but I wasn't really familiar with it. I've been there 78 times in my career since then, and I've excavated at half a dozen sites, including Sepphoris, where I dug for three seasons. So it really came home to me. But if you had asked me back when I got my PhD in biblical studies, James, tell us a little about Sepphoris, honestly, I think I would have said, what's that again? That means I didn't read my Josephus carefully enough, because we had to study Josephus. It just didn't click with me that it was four miles from Nazareth. I might have said, wasn't that Herod Antipas's capital? But what you'd be asking is the influence of that urban area.

Johnny Ova: How exciting that must have been.

Dr. James Tabor: The main north-south road from Damascus all the way to Egypt goes down through Sepphoris, and across from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, over to Beth Shean, across into Jordan and down to Amman and the Decapolis. Jesus travels all those roads. The gospels say he went through the cities of the Decapolis. So we've got to restore this urban background to the Galilee. Josephus says there are 250 villages in the Galilee, and it's a very small area. So it's not the movie version of a little village where you hardly ever see anything. It's a bustling urban center. And Jesus and his brothers and his father are probably working in Sepphoris as builders. The Greek word tekton is translated carpenter in the King James Version and most later translations. It's really unfortunate, but it gets embedded in the tradition. Jesus is a carpenter. You see the license plates: my boss is a Jewish carpenter. You should say a Jewish stonemason, because it's more likely he's a builder, and you build in stone in those times.

Dr. James Tabor: That's why he tells these stories about building. He's always talking about foundations. You've got to dig really deep, you can't put it on sand. He's probably done this. I was excavating a first-century building with my students, and you know what they asked me the whole time? Dr. Tabor, we're down on this street from the first century. Could Jesus have laid this stone? Of course I say, you never know, kids. It's something to think about. But whether he walked this street, I would say 99%. This is the main east-west street through this Roman rebuilt city. So all of a sudden we're getting a different picture. And Sepphoris, a city set on a hill cannot be hid. He had to be talking about Sepphoris. He grew up right there.

Dr. James Tabor: Also, just south of Nazareth there's another town. So there's Sepphoris, Nazareth, and this town called Japhia. Not Jaffa, Japhia. Josephus says that's the largest town in the Galilee. You know how cities spill over into big suburbs. Think of New York City, and as you go out you get other large population areas. So Jesus is urban. And we think Mary was born in Sepphoris and grew up there. The sources on that are late, but there is a first-century house with a Byzantine church built over it that's now in ruins, and a Crusader church that's still there. I have pictures of it in the book. So we've got these texts, we've got outside sources, we can bring in the archaeology, and finally the history of the times. When I talk about Sepphoris going up in flames while Mary is nursing Jesus, that's a whole new picture of Silent Night. It's not the day he was born, but the point is, what was it like?

Dr. James Tabor: It's sort of echoed in Matthew's story about Herod destroying the infants. Most historians would say that's not historically exactly correct, but the idea that the Romans would wipe out anyone of Davidic lineage is not so far-fetched, and they did it later. When Vespasian attacks Jerusalem in 70 and destroys the city, afterwards he asks, are there any more people of the family of David out there? We want to get rid of them all, because they're a potential threat. I quote all of that in the book. So you begin to put it together. You've got your little tidbits that you can expand. You've got the archaeology that gives you the setting. You've got the historical context.

Dr. James Tabor: Say Mary is 14 years old when Jesus is born, if we say 5 BCE. Would she remember Herod, since he's dying when she's just a teenager? Of course she would. She's living in Galilee, and the news of the country, what Herod is doing and then his son Herod Antipas, is on her front page, you might say. I usually use the illustration of growing up with World War II so much in my memory, though I wasn't born until after the war. I'm a baby boomer. My father was in the war, an Air Force officer, and we went to England in the fifties. As a kid I was seeing bombed-out London. I didn't experience any of that, but I was hearing about it. Adolf Hitler was talked about all the time with my friends growing up. So Mary's the same way. In the book you get two chapters of that history. It's kind of dense, but you'll find it's sort of a page turner. You won't remember all the names, but as you go through it, it's like, what a time to live through, because Herod is killing this son and that son and this wife and that wife, and things are happening that cause great stress with the finances and with Rome.

Dr. James Tabor: His son Herod Antipas is living in Rome. He gets his education in Rome, and then he comes in and takes over the Galilee. So Mary is aware of all that when Jesus is born, and she's going to be talking to those boys and girls about what she experienced growing up. Like, I remember the day we got word that Herod had his wife Mariamne, the beautiful Hasmonean Jewish princess, executed, because he thought she might be a threat given his lack of Jewish pedigree and royalty. Mary's going to hear that story and know about it. The book tries to put all that together into a composite picture. I don't always know these things, but I try to offer the context for you to imagine.

Johnny Ova: That's great. I was going to go there with Mary's upbringing. You mentioned the location, but it seems she was raised in one of the most brutal periods in Jewish history. I believe you mention Mary likely witnessed mass crucifixions as a young girl, painting the picture of the world around the time she was born, maybe around 19 BC. And even what you just mentioned, where Herod the Great murdered his own wife and drowned her teenage brother in a pool. How does that political violence connect to Mary's family itself?

Dr. James Tabor: I think it probably moves her in a direction. I don't know where she started, but a pious Jewish family of the lineage of David is going to be very aware of one chapter in the Hebrew Bible in particular, Isaiah 11. In Isaiah 11 you get the whole messianic agenda of what the Jewish people then, and down to this day, are expecting. It says there will come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse. Jesse's the father of David. So it's talking about a tree. We say today a family tree. The family tree of David's father is cut off like a stump. That has to do with the Babylonian captivity. We usually date it around 586 or 587, so almost 600 years before the birth of Jesus. What happens to the royal lineage? Essentially, the Babylonians end it with the final king of Judah, Zedekiah. He's blinded and finally executed, and his sons are killed. That doesn't mean all the descendants of David were slaughtered. Some survived, but they're cut back drastically.

Dr. James Tabor: Then you read on in Isaiah 11, and it talks about a little branch that will grow out of this stump. It doesn't just mean the general line of David will survive. It uses a Hebrew word you will know: netzer, the branch. Nazareth, the town of the branch people. Branch town is what Nazareth means. So it probably gets its name that way. It's been partially excavated where we have Nazareth today. Today it's huge, spilling over because of Jesus. But in that day, down by the water source, there's a spring called Mary's Spring today, and right around there maybe a hundred people could have lived in a little village. Then there's Japhia, then there's Sepphoris. So it's a very special village, because these Davidic families live there. She's well aware of that. And she has seen the violence, the one I mentioned first, when Judas son of Hezekiah is killed and his followers crucified to put down any possibility of revolt, centered in the Galilee.

Dr. James Tabor: Now, I do want to correct an idea you see all the time in the movies and Christmas specials. The Romans are not walking through Nazareth and Japhia and Sepphoris kicking over people's produce and shoving women and kids. That's movie stuff. They weren't doing that.

Johnny Ova: Don't spoil it for me. Don't spoil the drama.

Dr. James Tabor: The Romans are generally up in Damascus with their legions, probably bored as hell and hoping a revolt doesn't break out, but they're ready. What they're worried about is the Parthians. They're not worried about Galilee and Judea. The Herod family is going to keep that under wraps, and later they put procurators over Judea after the other son of Herod, Archelaus, is deposed. They're worried about the Persians, known then as the Parthians, coming in and taking over the whole eastern Mediterranean and getting a foothold on the Roman world. It was their greatest fear. Not the German forest. Those tribes could be fierce, but the Romans held them at bay along the Rhine. England, the same. They were established halfway up the British Isles, with Hadrian's Wall later. But the East? The Parthians had come in before and tried to support native Jews and Hasmoneans who would be loyal to a more Jewish cause, thinking, we can get the Jews to let us come because we'll let them have their Messiah, so to speak, or one of their native rulers.

Dr. James Tabor: So I just want to correct that. I'm not saying you'd never see a Roman squad or a centurion. Centurions are mentioned in the gospels several times. A centurion would be over a little military outpost of perhaps a hundred men. But they're not persecuting the people all the time and beating and whipping them like you see in the movies. If there's any trouble, though, could they come down hard. That's the problem. So she witnesses all that. And I have to wonder about her reading Isaiah 11, about this branch of David who's going to grow up and become very great and bless the meek and the poor. Notice Jesus' teaching: blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek. The first words out of his mouth are Isaiah 11. And eventually he's going to do something very threatening. He's going to regather the twelve tribes of Israel and set up rulers over them. Many people would say Jesus wouldn't do that, it sounds very political. But what does he tell the twelve? I've chosen you to sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Later the church makes that spiritual, in heaven. We're all spiritual Israelites. I don't know what tribe they think they're from. But in Jesus' day, that's like choosing your cabinet.

Dr. James Tabor: I've got a cabinet of twelve. I'm over the twelve. When I die, my brother will take over. Peter, you're in charge of the cabinet. You're like secretary of state. That's what Isaiah 11 says. Then it says he's going to bring the Gentiles in as well, and finally the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, and the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and there won't be any hurting or destroying. The temple will be a house of prayer for all people. All of that is in Isaiah 11. So Mary's thinking, how is that going to be done? And one phrase there I wonder if she dwelt on: he will slay the wicked with what? The breath of his lips. Is he a dragon? Is this a metaphor? Because Jesus said with his lips, love your enemy, do good to those who persecute you. So I present in the book the case for nonviolent resistance. It's not the same as absolute pacifism, but it's saying that Rome and the oppressive powers of the rulers of the world will not be overthrown by military might. They have to be overthrown by what I would call messianic subversion.

Dr. James Tabor: What he begins to do is raise up an egalitarian society, where male and female, slave and free, rich and poor are together in a community. I mentioned that band of sisters. We don't know how many there were, but Luke in chapter 8 names three: Susanna, Joanna and Mary Magdalene, and many others. I don't think it's one or two. It's dozens of women, and they're supporting the movement. It's an entourage. Jesus later sends out 70 two by two, which means 35 teams. Those could be husband and wife teams, brother and sister teams. We leave the women out. It's really too bad. And that's Mary. Yes, she bore Jesus, and I'm sure she was a good woman, God bless her. But she's the matriarch of this whole movement. She's behind it all. She is the one who birthed the movement that Jesus then leads as the firstborn, and then James comes along.

Dr. James Tabor: You could imagine it a different way. You don't have to go with mine. You could say Jesus is the wunderkind, the genius. His mother's a nice woman, but she's not the spiritual inspiration. And those brothers didn't really like him. They were jealous. That's a portrait you could imagine, and many people have. But what about Mary being the one who taught Jesus when he's three, four, five, six? Remember the book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? I read it years ago. I need to remember the author's name and give him credit. What a wonderful book. And it's so true. The basic ethics every one of us knows, like Paul says, the law is written in your heart. What does the first-grade teacher say? Don't take that away from Bill, Bill was playing with that. How would you feel if I took your toy? Nobody's questioning the standards. When you get sent to the principal's office, everybody agrees you did something wrong, even the kid that did it.

Dr. James Tabor: So why don't we picture it this way? I know this may sound trivial, but not really: the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Whatever we teach our kids in our culture today, whatever those two- and three- and four-year-olds are learning before they even go to school, that is the future of this country right there. If they're learning ethics and love and understanding. So I believe Mary would be the inspiration for that, and I think Jesus honors her in that way. And remember, she lived after Jesus. Her son James is in charge now. Well, she taught him as well. Read the book of James again. I know it's kind of tangled, but when you read the book you'll see the sweep of it.

Johnny Ova: You're painting an amazing picture here, and some of this information has been incredible, because we're just not taught it. It's not common to be taught. So it's exciting to hear. We're a little tight on time, but I have to ask you this, and we'll end with it, so there's no time constraint on your answer. There's a chapter titled Mary's Secret, and it deals with a question I feel most scholars and a lot of Christians would like to avoid. You put out there that if Joseph wasn't Jesus' biological father, do we have any idea who was? And you trace the name Pantera through multiple ancient sources. What did you find? Dig deep on that for me.

Dr. James Tabor: Sure. And remember the title, Mary's Secret, so I don't know. But there are only three possibilities. No father, and billions of Christians would say, there's no father, why are you even discussing that? If you approach things as I do as a historian, I can understand how that story in Matthew and Luke can be told within a Greco-Roman context, because we're familiar with it with other men, Alexander the Great, Plato, various philosophers and rulers who had human fathers, and people knew it. We know Alexander the Great's father was Philip. Yet we get stories that before he was born, a god came and was with his mother in some way. It's very mythological. So whether you take it that way or not: no father, or a god for the father, or a human. And with a human, you've got Joseph, or question mark, another man. What I feel obligated to do in the book, and usually it's avoided, is trace those two possibilities, Joseph and another man.

Dr. James Tabor: I haven't done a poll, obviously, but from what people usually say, I think most of my colleagues, biblical scholars who take a historical-critical reading of these texts, would say the father is Joseph and the virgin birth story is a way of desexualizing and honoring Mary, because there's a growing view that holiness and sexuality could be separated more properly. A really holy person doesn't need to get married and live a sexual life. A bit of that comes from Paul, but it really comes from what we call Neoplatonism. It's in the atmosphere of Greco-Roman culture. So it's easier to say, hey, it's Joseph, be done with it. But what began to intrigue me is the early Jewish sources in Sepphoris in the second century, so 110, 120. There are rabbis in Sepphoris, so we're in the local area, a generation after the destruction of Jerusalem, and Jews are living in Sepphoris. It's a thriving Jewish city at that time, kind of the center. Even after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, the Jews didn't all leave the country. That's where the Mishnah, for example, was finally put together.

Dr. James Tabor: In some of those Jewish sources Jesus is mentioned. He's called Yeshua bar Pantera, or Pandera sometimes. It's spelled different ways, but Pantera is the Greek. So Yeshua, son of Pantera. You'd think they're slandering him, claiming some Roman soldier named Pantera impregnated Mary. That's a later story. Forget that story. That's 180, 190. Celsus, a critic of Christianity, writes a book and spins that story. That's another time and place. I'm talking about right after the destruction of Jerusalem, when Jews are regathering and people are alive who remember Jesus, four miles from Nazareth. Local rabbis are talking about Yeshua ben Pantera. And guess what? They're telling positive stories about him. If it were a pejorative term, Jesus, that son of a Roman soldier, and his mother was raped by a Roman, that's not the idea at all. Later it gets picked up because of Celsus as a negative name. I don't think it is.

Dr. James Tabor: I'll give you one of the stories. I know we're tight on time, but you've got to hear this. It's in the book. Rabbi Eliezer, a great rabbi, so respected in the Mishnah and Talmudic literature, says that one day they were discussing what to do with the wages of a harlot in the temple. There's no temple anymore, but the Talmud discusses theoretical matters because they have principles. If a prostitute wants to give, should we take the money? It's a logical question. And he says, Yeshua ben Pantera, I heard him say, why don't you build toilets with that money? And he says, I sort of liked that idea. Then Yeshua quoted a scripture from Micah, something like, from filth it came and to filth it will return. If you know rabbinic literature, that's what the rabbis do all the time. They play with wordplays and scriptures, this is that and this is like that, and they form different views, what we call halakhic opinions. So Jesus is quoted positively a couple of times, and he's just referred to as Jesus ben Pantera.

Dr. James Tabor: So I began to look in the church fathers. I thought they should be identifying this Roman soldier and defending against it, no way did that happen. They don't say that. And these are church fathers who do not like Jewish Christianity, the Ebionites and the Nazarenes. They think they're too Jewish. So they're not prejudiced that way. And you know what they say? That's a name in Joseph's family. Pantera. It's a family name. That could work two ways. There could have been somebody named Pantera in the family whom Mary fell in love with and considered her treasured one, her soulmate. It's Mary's secret. We don't know. Or it could just be a way of referring to Joseph's family more generally. But there are little hints in other texts, in the gospels and outside them. The best known is in John: we weren't born of fornication. These are the Pharisees saying to Jesus, we weren't born of fornication like you, as if to say, we've got some stories about your mother. So apparently in his own lifetime, it wasn't just a regular marriage where Joseph is betrothed, gets married, and nothing is ever said. There are things going on.

Johnny Ova: Do you think that could have just been an accusation, though? When they make a statement like that, saying, you're telling me you were born of God, I think your mother slept with somebody. The reputation and rumor aspect of it?

Dr. James Tabor: I'll answer your question. I think that's entirely possible, so this is a light thesis of mine. And even if it is Pantera, Joseph could have had a family clan named Pantera. So Yeshua bar Pantera could mean Yeshua from that Pantera clan. It doesn't have to mean that's the biological father. Usually when I talk about it, I say, let's fill out Jesus' birth certificate. I'm going to put a question mark by father, and Mary as the mother. But I could almost pencil in Joseph too, because Jesus is called son of Joseph numerous times. And we have the ossuary of James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus, and even one that says Jesus son of Joseph. Whether that's Jesus of Nazareth or not, it shows the pattern of naming in the family. So, you know, it's her secret. I leave it at that. But I'm glad you brought it up. People have to ask that. They have to wonder about it as they search for the historical Jesus and the historical Mary.

Johnny Ova: It's all just fascinating conversation. I enjoy the journey of talking about it, thinking about it and studying it. Dr. Tabor, this has been a blessing to me. It really has been, and your knowledge is incredible. I'm going to link all your books. For those of you watching or listening, please check out Dr. Tabor's work and his book. Is there any way for people to get hold of you if they have questions?

Dr. James Tabor: There's my Patreon group, but the best way to get hold of me is probably my blog, jamestabor.com. From there you can get links to everything else I do, including a newsletter. If you get the newsletter, you can just hit reply and I get it personally. That would be the easiest. So jamestabor.com, easy to remember. It lists the books, it lists everything.

Johnny Ova: There you go. There's the tidbit. Thank you so much, Dr. Tabor. I appreciate your time today, and we definitely have to have you on again in the future.

Dr. James Tabor: Okay, thanks, Johnny. I appreciate being your guest. Thank you.