Whether you believe or not, you owe it to yourself to read this book. This link will take you to Amazon.com
When I was a kid, growing up in central Virginia, I noticed that it always rained on Good Friday. My mother noticed that too and was certain there was a cosmic significance to it.
Of course, my mom was always looking for proof that the things she had been taught to believe were really true. I, on the other hand, had read Greek mythology and the Bible at pretty much the same age (starting at about age six) and viewed them as pretty much the same–history plus an ancient people’s explanation of the way the world worked. So I was no more prone to believe (or disbelieve) that it rained on Good Friday because it had rained on the original Good Friday than I was to believe (or disbelieve) that thunderbolts were thrown by Zeus.
I’ve been re-reading a really extraordinary book, The Jesus Dynasty by James D. Tabor. The book is too complex to do justice to in a brief summary, but the author takes a look at what the evidence suggests really happened 2000 years ago, and it’s not quite what people have come to believe. Among other things, Jesus didn’t die on Good Friday.
I wondered early on about that business about “and on the third day,” because there’s really no way to get a “third day” between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning. Christians assumed that because Jesus had to be taken down from the cross before the Sabbath started, he must have died on Friday. But the start of Passover is also a Sabbath, and Passover began on Thursday that year.
So Jesus died on Thursday, was taken down… and on the third day he wasn’t in the tomb. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know what really happened (the Gospels don’t even get the story straight among them). The tomb was empty. How it got that way is a matter of facts or faith.
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The Jesus Discovery (book review)
I’m a passionate consumer of the printed word. I read hundreds of books every year, almost all of which I get from the public library. I seldom buy books any more, lacking both budget and storage space, but there are a few authors whose works I will buy sight unseen as soon as I can get my hands on them. The most notable of those authors are Diana Gabaldon (fiction) and James D. Tabor (fact).
When I first read Dr. Tabor’s The Jesus Dynasty several years ago I was astounded by the simple rightness of it. I found myself saying “Yes! That’s how it was! That’s how it had to have been!” over and over as I turned the pages. I wrote a review of it here at the time, but in the various transitions and transformations of this blog over time (several new versions of the software, one big database swap, etc etc etc) the review itself got mangled and I can’t link to it now.
When Dr. Tabor teamed up with Dr. Simcha Jacobovici to write The Jesus Family Tomb, and to produce a show about what they then called the “Talpiot Tomb,” I read the book with interest, but could not quite agree with them on their conclusions. I had no religous objections (obviously, since I espouse no recognizable religion) to the idea that the man whose name has come to us as Jesus the Christ was interred with his family in a tomb near Jerusalem, and Dr. Tabor and Dr. Jacobovici laid out their case carefully and with plenty of supporting evidence. But I just could not accept the idea that after all these thousands of years, any particular family’s tomb would still exist, much less the tomb of such an important family.
However, with the publication of The Jesus Discovery, I must say that Dr. Tabor and
Dr. Jacobovici have changed my mind. With the new discovery of another, adjacent tomb from the time of Jesus, with clear evidence of its occupants’ belief in the resurrection, it seems clear that the first tomb could indeed have been just as the authors said it was.
I’m just sorry that the book jacket design is so incredibly unfortunate. I think it’s supposed to be a Torah scroll with a silhouette of Jesus overlaid on it. But what it looks like, especially from any distance at all, is a vew of someone’s bare backside. I hope, hope, hope, that new editions will get rid of this cover!
As always happens when new discoveries have been made that have anything to do with Christian origins, there has been the predictable amount of breast-beating, sniping and derogatory commentary. I have never understood why some people are so completely frightened by the notion of new discoveries like this. After all, everything we discover now has been there all along. One would think that anyone who believes the concept of “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,” would have no reason whatever to fear and would welcome the chance for greater knowledge. Alas, this is definitely not the case.
Whether you believe or not, you really owe it to yourself to read this book. Dr. Tabor and Dr. Jacobovici once again lay out their case, point by point, backing everything up with evidence and facts. This is not a matter of accepting the improbable on faith; it’s a matter of following the facts to an inevitable conclusion. I can’t do justice to it in a short discussion because the reader needs to see and understand each step along the way. It’s also worth reading Dr. Tabor’s blog and the Jesus Dynasty Blog (see the link in the right sidebar) to see how he and Dr. Jacobovici answer their critics.
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