The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity
by James D. Tabor
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Book Summary Information
Author: James D. TaborEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-04-04
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Book Reviews of The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity
Book Review: A Slanted Perspective?
Summary: 1 Stars
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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