Jesus Dynasty
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The Jesus Dynasty is a book written by James Tabor in which he puts forward the argument that the original Jesus movement was a dynastic one, with the intention of overthrowing the rule of Herod Antipas. By his parents' marriage, Jesus was better placed to be King of Israel than Herod Antipas was. The two contradictory blood lines in the gospels are seen as compatible if one belongs to Mary and the other to Joseph. In such a case Jesus would have united a formidable list of families into his ancestors.
Jesus joined John the Baptist's movement and the two were prepared to bring about an uprising in judaea, but the latter's arrest and execution caused Jesus to go underground to avoid the same fate. Eventually he resurfaced to carry on the Baptist's work alone.
Jesus was clearly a charismatic teacher and possibly a faith healer. James and Jude were his brothers and were destined to inherit the leadership after Jesus' death. He argues that the later, spiritualist, writings of Paul the Apostle polluted and effectively hijacked the movement, with the even later Gospels taking on the same evangelical point of view.
Tabor produces many supporting statements in the Bible, which escaped excision by the later church fathers, intent on selling the Pauline message at the expense of Jesus' dynastic one. The argument is convincing, producing a portrait of a real man in a tumultuous time, who really believed that his actions would accomplish the end of the Roman occupation and a return of the Jewish kingdom. Discovery of tombs in Jerusalem that may be the Jesus family tombs adds weight to his interpretation.
