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The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find That Reveals The Birth Of Christianity (2000)

by James D. Tabor(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 2

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review 1: I feel like this book made very large leaps and assumptions in trying to support the authors hypothesis. I am not opposed to the idea of Jesus being married and fathering a child, as this would have been typical of Jewish men during his lifetime, and certainly not sinful in any way. However, I don't feel like this book provides enough evidence to support this claim, or the claim that they located the bones of Jesus himself. If nothing else it is an interesting read.
review 2: "The Jesus Discovery" is a follow-up to "The Jesus Family Tomb" (Jacobovici and Pellegrino). The current book is by James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici -- different authors, but still receiving a similar treatment, since Tabor was involved in the investigations in the earlier book. "The... more Jesus Discovery" is the tale of investigations of a tomb very near the original Talpiot tomb, which they call the "Patio tomb". The original Talpiot tomb is now termed the "Garden" tomb, but this second tomb is deemed the "Patio" tomb (because it's underneath a patio).It's helpful, but not essential, to have already read the earlier book on the "Garden" tomb. It is well written and is quite accessible, while also going into some considerable depth to explain both the history of the whole controversy and explain the scholarship and research backing it up, so you get a review of all the evidence relating to their previous investigation of the Garden tomb. To cut to the chase, it appears that while the investigation of the Garden tomb suggested this may well have been the tomb of the historical Jesus and some of his family, the investigation of the Patio tomb essentially seals the case. In doing the investigation of the Patio tomb, the researchers did not actually do any physical excavation. The entire research is done by a camera manipulated by a long robot arm which was inserted into the tomb. So the tomb was, and remains, undisturbed.What they find is a tomb with clearly Christian symbols speaking of and describing the resurrection. Very important here is the distinction which is made between the physical resuscitation of a corpse, and spiritual resurrection. A spiritual resurrection means the person's essence survives, even though their original body is dead and decaying. This is the original idea of resurrection envisioned by Paul and shared, ironically, by the Jewish Christians, who later became Paul's bitterest opponents in the early church. The analogy given in the book is very convincing. Suppose that historians many centuries from now discover the graves of a George, John, and Paul. Could this be the Beatles? Well, the names were common. But then suppose that there is further identification of a nearby grave of a Ringo (an uncommon name) and that the father of one of them is also correctly identified on the gravestone. That's the analogy of the "Garden" tomb. But then suppose nearby we find a monument to the Beatles, celebrating their role in rock history. That's the analogy of the "Patio" tomb. Since both the Garden and the Patio tomb were probably owned by the same family, the evidence becomes very strong that this is the tomb of the Jesus known as the founder of Christianity. One interesting feature is the treatment of the James ossuary, which they now think is not the "missing" 10th tomb, but rather is an 11th tomb, perhaps looted many centuries ago and just recently surfacing on the antiquities market. The patina of the tomb clearly matches that of other ossuaries in the Garden tomb.The book clearly anticipates major objections, discusses Jesus' wife and children, as well as going over key objections to the thesis. So if you are curious about this and want to understand what the researchers have found from the horse's mouth, this book is indispensable.One minor criticism: contrary to the author's suggestions, I do not think you can draw conclusions about the Essenes or their influence on Jesus, based on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls community may represent some Essenes, but there were evidently many different Essene communities, some with wildly different views, as Hippolytus (3rd century) says. The Essenes of Philo (a pacifist sect, which refused the use of slaves) are clearly very different from the Essenes of the Dead Sea Scrolls (a violent group believing in war and slavery). So before making grandiose suggestions about the Essenes and Jesus, we need to ask, "which Essenes?" less

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