The Best Known, Least Known Woman in History
Mary is recognized by billions of Christians and Muslims worldwide. Her image appears in countless churches, paintings, and devotional materials across every continent. Yet the actual Jewish woman behind these icons has been almost completely erased from history.
“Mary is the best known, least known woman in history,” explains Dr. James Tabor, Distinguished Fellow at Hebrew University and two-time New York Times bestselling author. “Ask people to name ancient women, and they’ll struggle to come up with more than Cleopatra or Helen of Troy. But ask them to name ancient men, and the list goes on.”
In this conversation on The Dig In Podcast, Dr. Tabor reveals what 20 years of research, 78 trips to Israel, and critical biblical scholarship have uncovered about the real Mary. What emerges is not the passive, silent figure of tradition, but a revolutionary Jewish matriarch who shaped Jesus’s teachings, witnessed mass crucifixions as a teenager, and whose voice still echoes in the Beatitudes.
The Deliberate Erasure of Mary’s Story
The erasure of Mary wasn’t accidental. It was systematic and intentional.
“The erasure comes from a different motive, not just a lack of historical information,” Dr. Tabor explains. “You’ve got to have the woman, the mother, to bring Jesus into the world. But what about the middle? What about Mary’s life?”
The pattern is clear in the New Testament texts themselves. Mary appears at Jesus’s birth and at his crucifixion, but the decades in between are largely blank. Even more shocking: the Gospel of John never mentions her by name, referring to her only as “his mother” in all six references.
This erasure extends to Jesus’s entire family. His brother James took over leadership of the movement after Jesus’s death and made the decisive ruling at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15). Yet he’s barely introduced in the Book of Acts. The text mentions “his mother, Mary, and his brothers” in one line, then Peter dominates the narrative until suddenly, in chapter 15, “James stands up and says, ‘my decision is.'”
“If you’d only read Acts to that point, you’d go, ‘James who?'” Dr. Tabor notes. “He’s not named in chapter one. What does he mean ‘my decision is?’ He’s making a decision for the worldwide movement, including Paul’s followers.”
Sepphoris: The City Everyone Forgot
Most people imagine Mary living in a tiny, isolated village called Nazareth. This image is completely wrong.
Four miles north of Nazareth sat Sepphoris, the largest urban center in Galilee and the capital of Herod Antipas. This was a bustling Roman city of approximately 30,000 people, complete with paved streets, public buildings, and all the infrastructure of Roman civilization.
“Jesus is growing up outside the capital of Herod Antipas,” Dr. Tabor explains. “The main north-south road from Damascus all the way to Egypt goes down through Sepphoris. This is a bustling urban center.”
Dr. Tabor himself has excavated at Sepphoris for three seasons. His students would constantly ask him: “Dr. Tabor, we’re down on this street from the first century. Could Jesus have laid this stone?”
“You never know,” he would tell them. “But whether he walked this street? I’d say 99%. This is the main east-west street going through this Roman rebuilt city.”
Jesus and his brothers likely worked in Sepphoris as builders. The Greek word tekton, usually translated “carpenter,” actually means builder or stonemason. In first-century Galilee, you built with stone, not wood.
The Violence Mary Witnessed
When Jesus was still an infant, Mary witnessed one of the most traumatic events in Galilean history.
In 4 BC, shortly after Herod the Great’s death, three messianic revolts broke out across Judea. In Sepphoris, a rebel named Judas son of Hezekiah broke into the armory and started an uprising. The Roman response was brutal.
“The Romans come down with three legions,” Dr. Tabor recounts. “They simply burned Sepphoris to the ground. Now remember, Mary’s in Nazareth nursing Jesus. It would be late summer of 4 BC. And she’s seeing the flames of the major city go up.”
Mass crucifixions followed. The Romans lined the roads with crosses bearing the bodies of rebels as a warning to anyone else who might challenge their authority.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. Mary lived through Herod the Great’s entire reign. Herod murdered his own wife Mariamne (the beautiful Hasmonean Jewish princess), drowned her teenage brother in a pool, and executed multiple sons he suspected of plotting against him.
“Mary is aware of all that when Jesus is born,” Dr. Tabor explains. “She’s going to be talking to those boys and girls about the things she experienced growing up.”
The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus
The Gospel of Mark (6:3) explicitly names Jesus’s brothers: James, Joseph, Jude, and Simon. It also mentions “his sisters” (plural).
Traditional Catholic and Orthodox teaching claims these were either Joseph’s children from a previous marriage or cousins. But Dr. Tabor argues the biblical evidence is crystal clear: these were Mary’s biological children with Joseph.
Matthew 1:25 states that Joseph “knew her not until she had brought forth Jesus the firstborn.”
“‘Until’ does imply pretty clearly what happens after,” Dr. Tabor explains. “It’s a marriage. He takes her as his wife. That means to consummate the marriage. And he didn’t do that because of the pregnancy, but once Jesus is born, he obviously does.”
Mark 6:3 lists the brothers in order: James first, then Joseph, Jude, and Simon. This ordering matters tremendously.
“James is first,” Dr. Tabor notes. “That’s going to connect to something else. Who’s the beloved disciple at the cross? I think it’s James. If I’m the eldest son and my mother’s a widow, who would take care of her?”
Dr. Tabor uses his own family history to illustrate the typical pattern: “My father’s mother had 12 children. One died in childhood, so 11. What’s interesting, 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.”
If Mary and Joseph lived together as a normal Jewish married couple starting around 5 BC, by the time Jesus began his ministry around age 30, there could easily be six or seven younger siblings spaced roughly two years apart.
Mary’s Royal Lineage
Dr. Tabor presents a compelling case that the genealogy in Luke’s Gospel, traditionally assumed to be Joseph’s lineage, is actually Mary’s family tree.
This would make Mary “doubly royal,” descended from both King David (the royal line) and Aaron (the priestly line). This dual heritage would have made her family extraordinarily significant in Jewish messianic expectations.
The town name “Nazareth” itself may be significant. The Hebrew word netser means “branch,” as in “the branch of David” from Isaiah 11. Nazareth may have been “branch town,” a village where Davidic families lived.
“It’s a very special village because these Davidic families live there,” Dr. Tabor explains.
This royal Davidic lineage made Mary’s family extremely dangerous in Roman eyes. When Vespasian destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, he specifically sought out remaining Davidic descendants to eliminate them as potential threats.
Three of Mary’s sons (Jesus, James, and Simon) would ultimately be executed, likely because of this royal heritage and the messianic threat it represented.
Isaiah 11: Where Mary’s Vision Shaped Jesus’s Teaching
Dr. Tabor argues that Mary shaped Jesus’s worldview through her teaching when he was young, particularly through Isaiah 11, the key messianic text in Hebrew scripture.
Isaiah 11 describes how “there will come forth from the stump of Jesse” (David’s father) a branch who will bless the meek and the poor, regather the 12 tribes of Israel, bring the Gentiles into God’s covenant, and create a world where “the wolf will dwell with the lamb.”
“Notice Jesus’s teaching: ‘Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek,'” Dr. Tabor points out. “First words out of his mouth, Isaiah 11.”
But Isaiah 11 also says this coming leader will “slay the wicked with the breath of his lips.” How could this be reconciled with Jesus’s teaching to “love your enemy”?
Dr. Tabor believes Mary taught Jesus a revolutionary interpretation: nonviolent resistance and messianic subversion.
“Rome and the oppressive powers of the rulers of the world will not be overthrown by military might,” he explains. “They have to be overthrown by what I would call subversion, messianic subversion.”
Jesus began building an egalitarian community where “male and female, bond and free, rich and poor are all together.” This was the revolution Mary envisioned and taught her son.
The Band of Sisters
One of the most overlooked aspects of the Jesus movement is the central role of women, what Dr. Tabor calls “the band of sisters.”
Luke 8 names three women who supported Jesus’s ministry: Susanna, Joanna, and Mary Magdalene, “and many others.”
“I don’t know how many ‘many’ is, but I don’t think it’s one or two,” Dr. Tabor says. “So it’s dozens of women, and they’re supporting the movement. It’s an entourage.”
When Jesus later sends out “the 70” two by two, Dr. Tabor suggests these may have been husband-and-wife teams or brother-and-sister teams, not just male disciples.
“We leave the women out. It’s really too bad,” he says.
At the crucifixion, while the male disciples fled, the women remained. Mary stood at the cross with Mary Magdalene and the other women, the loyal ones who stayed to the end.
“Mary didn’t just bear Jesus,” Dr. Tabor emphasizes. “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.”
After Jesus’s death, Mary continued living with the early community. When James took over leadership, she was there. The woman who shaped Jesus’s ethics and vision remained the matriarch of the movement for decades.
Mary’s Secret: The Question of Pantera
Dr. Tabor tackles one of the most controversial questions in biblical scholarship: if Joseph wasn’t Jesus’s biological father, do we have any idea who was?
In early Jewish sources from Sepphoris (just four miles from Nazareth) dating to the second century, Jesus is referred to as “Yeshua bar Pantera” or “Yeshua ben Pantera,” meaning “Jesus son of Pantera.”
Many assume this was a slander, claiming Mary slept with a Roman soldier. But Dr. Tabor discovered something surprising.
“Four miles from Nazareth, local rabbis are talking about Yeshua ben Pantera,” he explains. “And guess what? They’re telling positive stories about him. So if it was a pejorative term, that’s not the idea at all.”
One story in the Talmud describes Rabbi Eliezer recounting a discussion in the academy about what to do with wages from a prostitute offered to the temple. “Yeshua ben Pantera said, why don’t you build toilets with that money? And I sort of liked that idea.”
This is rabbinic debate, not mockery.
Dr. Tabor looked to the church fathers for clarification. “You know what they say? They say, well, that’s a name in Joseph’s family. Pantera. It’s a family name.”
This could work two ways. There could have been someone named Pantera in the family that Mary loved. Or it could simply be a way of referring to the Joseph family clan more generally.
“It’s Mary’s secret,” Dr. Tabor concludes. “We don’t know.”
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
Dr. Tabor invokes the old saying: “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”
“Whatever we teach our kids right now, whatever those little two and three year olds are learning before they even go to school, that is the future of this country right there,” he says.
Mary taught Jesus when he was three, four, five, six years old. She taught him the ethics of Isaiah 11, the vision of nonviolent resistance, the dream of an egalitarian kingdom. She taught James too, and we can see her influence in the letter of James.
“I believe that Mary would be the inspiration for that,” Dr. Tabor says. “And I think Jesus honors her in that way.”
After Jesus’s death, Mary lived to see her son James lead the movement from Jerusalem. She witnessed the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles. She remained the matriarch, the one who started it all.
The woman who gave birth to Jesus also gave birth to the movement that transformed the Roman Empire and ultimately changed world history.
Watch the Full Episode
This blog post only scratches the surface of this incredible conversation. In the full episode, Dr. Tabor discusses:
- The archaeological evidence from his excavations at Sepphoris
- Why Paul’s statement “we no longer know Christ after the flesh” reveals tension with Jesus’s family
- The political context of Herod Antipas and the Parthian threat
- How Nazareth as “branch town” connected to messianic expectations
- The evidence that James (not John) was the beloved disciple
- The “breadcrumbs” in the text that reveal Mary’s actual story
- Why three of Mary’s sons were executed for their Davidic lineage
- The case for Luke’s genealogy being Mary’s (not Joseph’s) family line
Watch the full episode now on YouTube, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Get Dr. Tabor’s New Book
“The Lost Mary: Rediscovering the Mother of Jesus” (Knopf, 2025)
More from Dr. James Tabor
Blog: jamestabor.com
YouTube: @JamesTaborVideos
Patreon: patreon.com/jamesdtabor
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