The Jesus Dynasty / James Tabor

One of the most fascinating names inscribed on the ossuaries in the Talpiot “Jesus Family” tomb is the unusual and rare form of the Greek inscription for a “Mary,” as first published by the learned L. Y. Rahmani in 1994:

MARIAMNENOU (HE) MARA: of Mariamene, who is (also called) Mara

[IAA 80.500, CJO 701: L. Y. Rahmani (A Catalog of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel, Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities and Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994)]

Rahmani understood the name as a neuter genitive of the name MARIAMNENON, which is in turn a diminutive form of MARIAMENE.

Although this reading has been only lately questioned and disputed by various scholars, (Pfann, Price, Puech, et al.), who have proposed it be read as MARIAME KAI MARA or MARIAM HE KAI MARA (Mariame AND Mara OR Mariam also known as Mara), whether referring to two women or one by two names, what I find really interesting about Rahmani’s reading is the presence of the Greek letter “Nu” or “N,” in other words: MariameNe.

I for one have not been so quick to dispute the skilled and sharp eye of Rahmani, supported now after further reexamination by Prof. Leah Di Segni and incorporated into Amos Kloner’s official report on the tomb. Mary in English takes various forms in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Coptic: Miriam, Mariam, Mariame, Mariamme, and Maria, but the name spelled with an “N,” as Rahmani read this ossuary, is virtually unknown in antiquity (see E. Stanley Jones, ed., Which Mary: The Marys of Early Christian Tradition, Atlanta: SBL, 2002).

I say “virtually” unknown, for a reason, so bear with me here. Now here is where things get really interesting.

If you do a search for Mariamne, spelled with an “N,” on Wikipedia, you will read that it is a name frequently used in the Herodian Royal house for Mariame or Mariamme. If you search further on Google, again for “Mariamne” spelled with an “N,” even excluding references to the inscription in the Talpiot tomb, you will find dozens of “hits.” If you read many English or French editions of Josephus’s works you will find dozens of references to Mariamne, spelled with the “N.” And finally, even Voltaire wrote a play called “Herode et Mariamne,” yes, you guessed it, spelled with an “N.” And yet the fact remains, so far as I have been able to discover, all these sources, from Wikipeida, to Josephus in translation, and even Voltaire, have no basis in any Greek texts from Antiquity. My guess is that the root of this widespread misunderstanding comes from translations in English and French of Josephus that incorrectly put “Mariamene” for the name “Mariame.” But the original Greek has no “Nu” or “N.”

I had a colleague run a search on Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the University of California at Irvine data base that has collected and digitized all of Greek literature from Homer to the fall of Byzantium in 1453. Currently this is a collection contains 3800 authors, 12,000 texts, and about 99 million words–and it is updated quarterly. UNC Charlotte and most major universities are subscribers to the TLG Library and search engine. Non-subscribers can access a trial version, see the TLG Web site for information. We asked for all examples in extant Greek literature of the name Mariam spelled with an “Nu,” or “N.”

Our results were rather amazing. As it turns out this very unusual form of the name Mariam in Greek, namely any form containing the “N,” popped up in only two works–the Acts of Philip and Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, and in both works the reference was to the woman named Mary Magdalene in our Gospels. There are multiple references in the Acts of Philip to Mary Magdalene and her apostolic mission and travels. However, the reference in Hippolytus is of particular interest in that he mentions a Jewish-Christian group of “Naassenes” who taught that James the brother of Jesus handed on the secret tradition of Jesus to “Mariamene.” Hippolytus flourished in the late 2nd century CE and he was linked to Irenaeus, who in turn was linked to Papias. If there are other instances of any form of the name “Mariam” spelled with an “N” we missed them and would be glad to have them pointed out. But assuming this data result is correct, what if one asks the question differently? If we begin with the Talpiot tomb inscription, read as Mariamene, spelled with an “N,” that surely Rahmani and Di Segni would vehemently deny has anything to do with Mary Magadalene, and just ask two related questions:

• Where in all of Greek literature do we know this unusual form of the name?

• Is/are there any identifiable woman/women in all of antiquity who was/were known by this form of the name Mary?

So far as I can discover the answer is clear. Our only references, outside the Talpiot tomb, are to a single woman, Mary Magdalene. It seems to me that this result has great force. Rather than one having to “jump” to the 2nd century or the 4th century, to desperately find a parallel to “Mariamene” in the Jesus Tomb, is not quite the opposite the case? When one searches the linguistic evidence for this form of the name no one other than Mary Magdalene turns up. I think this fact should give us a bit of pause. Whether the Talpiot tomb can ultimately be identified with that of Jesus and his family or not, what an odd turn of events that the odd and completely rare occurrence of “Mariamne” spelled with an “N” would turn up in a 1st century tomb containing these other names–including Jesus son of Joseph. That Rahmani and Di Segni read the name in that way, and still do, without the least inclination to connect it to Jesus of Nazareth, seems to be all the more telling in terms of an honest linguistic reading. However, given this result, perhaps all the criticism that Jacobovici received for “jumping” from a 1st century tomb with the name Mariamene to a 4th century “gnostic” text like the Acts of Philip, should be reconsidered.

We have moved forward, with an update to our software. Please let us know about any problems. We apologize for the delays in posting on the Blog. I have saved up a whole series of posts that I will begin to put up shortly.

James Tabor

I just received a copy of The Jesus Dynasty in Chinese produced by Locus Publishing Co. in Taiwan. This marks the 12th of an eventual 25 foreign languages in which the book has sold. It will circulate in all markets except the Mainland and is produced in Chinese Complex Characters. I am working with some very high level contacts in the Mainland now who are quite interested in seeing a version come out there, which would be in Simplified Chinese. There is a tremendous interest among Chinese populations in the historical Jesus, Biblical archeology, and associated subjects.

I am in the airport at Newark International ready to fly over to Israel for the Mt. Zion dig. I expect to send reports from the field through next week as well as continue posting on a number of topics, including new material on the form of the name Mariamene as related to Mary Magdalene.

I am working steadily on the sequel to the The Jesus Dynasty, a book mainly dealing with Paul and the development of early Christianity during the first 20 years (30-50 CE), the period Crossan called the “dark ages” of the movement in terms of our dearth of sources. The working title is The Paul Dynasty, but what I mean by that title has a surprising twist that I don’t want to reveal until the book is published. It is one of the major discoveries I have made on Paul over the past 25 years since I published my dissertation, Things Unutterable.

Two weeks from today, on March 2, which just happens to be my birthday, we will officially inaugurate our Mt Zion Excavation for 2008. We have three sessions planned this year, the first running March 2-28, the other two in the summer running June 15-July 25 and August 17-September 12. Minimum stay in March is one week; and two weeks for the summer sessions. Volunteers, whom we call “Team Members,” of whatever age, level of experience, or affiliation are welcome to join us, as long as they are physically fit. Full details are on our Web site: DigMountZion. Although we are past our deadline for registration there are still a few spaces left in March if anyone wants to join us at the last minute.

I have had quite a few people ask me just where we are digging. In this case, a photo is worth a thousand words. You can see below that we are just along the road, outside the Old City Wall on the south, at the base of Mt Zion, between the Dung Gate and Zion Gate. In Roman times this area of Herodian Jerusalem was square inside the city walls, in fact, fairly much at the center of the main city itself. Our Web site explains some of the exciting potential we anticipate lies just below the ground.

University sponsored excavations are usually funded by private donations. We are in the process of raising money for our Mt Zion efforts as described in this Proposal that we welcome you to download, print out, and otherwise circulate. If any of you wish to help with funding or point us to individuals or sources with which you are in touch, please contact me directly via e-mail: jdtabor@uncc.edu

I wanted to express my warmest best wishes in the New Year. I have appreciated so very much the personal messages and feedback so many of you have given me related to my book, The Jesus Dynasty, as well as the many related topics I have covered in this Blog during 2007. I will continue to address many of your queries through the Blog as well as personal responses as I can get to them.

2008 looks to be a most interesting and fascinating year in terms of news, developments, and further research in the ever changing field of Christian Origins.

I will be attending the Princeton sponsored Jerusalem Conference on the Talpiot Tomb in mid-January and will offer a series of reports and comments upon my return. Our excavations at Mt Zion in Jerusalem will become fully operational in 2008 and I hope to see some of you at the dig either in the March or the June seasons. My new book dealing with the apostle Paul, that picks up where The Jesus Dynasty left off, should see the light of day in the coming year. Although I began my academic career nearly 30 years ago with a published Ph.D. dissertation on Paul, this book promises to put things together in a way that truly ties up the loose ends and addresses some of the major questions with a new clarity. In writing the Paul book I have been able to construct a comprehensive overview that puts things together in a way that I think will make a lasting and significant contribution to our understanding of how Jesus became the “Christ” of Christianity.

I wanted to point out to new readers of this Blog, and older ones as well, that there is now an extensive archive of hundreds of posts at this site covering a variety of topics related to the historical Jesus and Christian Origins more generally. I have devoted many hours to writing these entries and they number now in the many hundreds of pages. Even though this Blog began in April, 2006, with the publication of my book, The Jesus Dynasty, as a way of updating readers and addressing various issues and questions related thereto, its scope has always been a broader discussion of what we generally call “Christian Origins.”

The WordPress software makes it quite easy for readers to investigate posts by Category, such as Archaeology (17 posts), Biblical Expositions (24 posts), Pantera (12 posts), Christian Origins (20), or the Talpiot Jesus Family Tomb (55 posts). There is a menu at the right of the page that one can simply click on to bring up all the posts under that topic. These categories are quite general, and there is some overlapping, but they are useful for a beginning survey of what is archived. The menu on the right of the page also contains a powerfully accurate Search feature whereby one can find all posts that mention a key word or concept. One could, for example, search for Mary Magdalene, and references to her would come up across a variety of the Categories.

There is so much here I was actually thinking of extracting these posts and turning them into a small topical book of some sort, or at least making them available on my University Web site, The Jewish Roman World of Jesus. If you don’t know that site you might take a look. It has a very extensive collection of materials I use in my classes here at UNC Charlotte and it is now used by many colleagues throughout the world who are teaching Christian Origins.

Anyway, this post was prompted by a reader of my book who wrote me this week asking some basic questions on the Talpiot tomb. Rather than trying to answer through e-mail, covering things I had already written, I referred her to this Blog site. I heard back from her two or three days later and she reported that she had spent two days reading through all the posts–literally hundreds of pages, and had found that the material more than answered her basic questions. Although I have put up posts that cover “news” items, about my book and other related things in the field, by far the majority of posts are serious and sustained treatments of various topics. I invite all of you to delve in and e-mail me (jesusdynasty@earthlink.net) with resulting questions or responses.

One question I get via e-mail several times a week is: What is the best and most accurate translation of the Bible? That is a tough one, in that there are so many good translations that serve well various purposes. Much depends on what one is looking for, whether for close scholarly study, devotional reading, or a literary overview. Since I have been working for over a decade on a new translation, the Transparent English Bible in connection with the Original Bible Project, I wish I could refer readers to that finished work, but alas, it is only now being released in preliminary samples on the Web.

My leanings are toward more “literal” translations, but unfortunately, most of those are done by evangelical Christians and they tend to reflect a Christian slant within the Hebrew Bible or so-called “Old Testament.” As Bibles go, meaning those that contain both Hebrew Bible and New Testament, I think the Revised Standard Version (that I rate in some ways above New RSV) might be one of the better scholarly translations, though I prefer one that would stay closer to the Masoretic text for the Hebrew Bible. If you can stand the archaic language, the older American Standard Version (1901) might be better in that regard. There is also the English Standard Version (2003) that tries to improve on the old RSV and in some ways does a good job–but again its Christian theological bias comes through all too often.

All in all I think it might be best to split off the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. For the latter I would highly recommend Hugh Schonfield’s The Authentic New Testament, that is unfortunately out of print. It is well worth searching out through the used book dealers or via e-Bay. I would recommend the hardback edition if you can find it, as it is beautifully designed. For the Hebrew Bible, even though it is out of date in many ways, I would say that the original Jewish Publication Society Holy Scriptures or Tanakh, is a good choice. This is the one first published in 1917 but revised in 1955. It too, unfortunately, is out of print, though there are still used copies around. There is also the Koren Holy Scriptures, also called The Jerusalem Bible, published in Israel in 1992 and still in print. The newer JPS Tanakh (1985) does not take a “literal” approach, but something closer to what the scholars call “dynamic equivalence.”

As some of you know I have been working for over a decade on a new and quite different translation of the Hebrew Bible, and eventually the Greek New Testament and the so-called Apocrypha. The official name of the translation is The Transparent English Bible and it is being produced as part of The Original Bible Project, a non-profit educational organization founded in 1992. I serve as the main textual editor, so it is my responsibility to produce preliminary drafts of the translation and Prof. Robert Haak of Augustana College has served as my main consulting editor for the Hebrew Bible. Once we have produced a given draft, and are reasonably satisfied with it, we have contracted with various other academic readers for input and evaluation. It is a long and tedious process and both of us have had to work on this in the midst of our otherwise full academic and scholarly agenda, but slowly we have made progress. A popular and non-technical overview of the translation method and the basic concept behind the Project is posted at the OBP site.

We have also made the decision, beginning this month, to release Beta Versions on the Web. It might be tempting for scholars to think that non-specialists would have little of value to contribute to discussions of translations of the Bible but many of us know such is not the case. It is absolutely amazing how many thousands of serious Bible students have given years of their time and devotion to poring over every line of the Bible, doing word studies, comparing translations, and learning how to use sophisticated Bible software. Dr. Haak and I have learned to welcome this kind of evaluation feedback as a crucial part of this Project, and of course, we welcome input from our professional colleagues as well.

The first Translation Sample is now available as a PDF file for downloading, consisting of the Torah Sedrah Bereshit (Genesis 1:1-6:8). Others will follow over the coming weeks and months. Most readers of this Blog have come here because of an interest in the historical Jesus, and a critical part of understanding Jesus and early Christianity is to make use of good and historically accurate translations of both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament, so I am thinking that the Original Bible Project might be of interest to many.

Comments on the translation can be sent to: originalbible@earthlink.net

Through this summer I have listened to the new CD by Sinead O’Conner titled Theology many dozens of times–every chance I get. It is the most amazing collection of songs, put together with a skill, a unity of vision, and a power that one seldom encounters. I have not been moved so deeply on a spiritual level by a CD since Ten New Songs by Leonard Cohen (2005), whom I consider to be the high priest of a prophetic musical genre of this type. The power of O’Conner’s work is based on the raw power of her soul, as with all her work, but shaped, often word-for-word, by the words of the Hebrew Bible–namely Jeremiah, Isaiah, Job, and several of the Psalms, cast at times with a Jamaican flavor (Yah for Yahweh, etc.). For me at least the effect was to leave me speechless, sort of “slain in the spirit,” I think the term is, and I have no “charismatic” background or experience.

My own understanding of the message of the Jesus movement (John the Baptizer, Jesus, and James the Just) is that the group was powerfully shaped by the visionary perspective of the Hebrew Prophets (particularly Isaiah and Jeremiah) and certain of the Psalms. That vision centered on the notion of the Kingdom of God, with the will of God being realized on earth as in heaven, through a new world characterized by peace, justice, and righteousness. In my book, The Jesus Dynasty, I try to bring to the public a perspective that many scholars share–namely that there is a vast difference between the message Jesus preached and “Jesus as the message,” as touted by later “orthodox” Christians shaped by the visions of Paul. Sinead seems to have tapped into that in an extraordinary way, but without any reference whatsoever to the “person” of Jesus per se, or anything one could recognizably call distinctively “Christian,” in the later dogmatic sense of the term. I noticed that Christianity Today eagerly latched onto Sinead for an interview when the album came out, but I sensed in reading it that the content must have been quite disappointing to those who might have hoped for something more along Christian evangelical lines. Sinead clearly values her Catholic upbringing on a cultural level, and she “loves Jesus,” as a “spiritual energy,” but she is sharply critical of orthodox Christianity and clearly rejects any kind of exclusive views of Jesus.

There are two discs with eleven songs each, with mostly the same songs recorded in different settings. The first, “The Dublin Sessions” is more acoustic and simple; the second, “The London Sessions,” has a full instrumental arrangement. I much prefer the former for its vocal intimacy and expression. Each disc ends with an interview with Sinead where she talks freely about how she came to do this particular album and what it means to her. You can listen to samples at Amazon.com.