Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute? Photo: Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library/Courtesy of IAP Fine Art.

Was Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?

Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute who repented or simply an influential female follower of Jesus? Mary from Magdala has popularly been saddled with an unfavorable reputation, but how did this notion come about? In From Saint to Sinner, Birger A. Pearson examines how Mary Magdalene’s notoriety emerged in the early Christian tradition. Pearson writes that later interpreters of the Gospels attempted to diminish her “by identifying her with other women mentioned in the Gospels, most notably the unnamed sinful woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with ointment and whose sins he forgives (Luke 7:36–50) and the unnamed woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11).”

Read From Saint to Sinner by Birger A. Pearson as it originally appeared in Bible Review.

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Who was Jezebel? Image: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, UK/Bridgeman Art Library.

Who Was Jezebel? How Bad Was She?

Who was Jezebel? For over 2,000 years, Jezebel, Israel’s most accursed queen, has been condemned as a murderer, a temptress and an enemy of God. Who was Jezebel, really? Was she really that bad? In How Bad Was Jezebel? Janet Howe Gaines rereads the Biblical narrative from the vantage point of the Phoenician wife of King Ahab. As Gaines writes, “To attain a more positive assessment of Jezebel’s troubled reign and a deeper understanding of her role, we must evaluate the motives of the Biblical authors who condemn the queen.”

Read Janet Howe Gaines’s article How Bad Was Jezebel? as it originally appeared in Bible Review.

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Rahab the Harlot or just the inkeeper? Image: CCI/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

Rahab the Harlot?

As described in the Book of Joshua, Rahab (a heroine nonetheless known as “Rahab the Harlot”) assisted two Israelite spies in escaping down the city wall of Jericho. Was Rahab a Biblical prostitute? While the Biblical text identifies her as a zônāh, a prostitute (Joshua 2:1), Josephus reports that she kept an inn. Anthony J. Frendo critically examines the textual evidence.

Read about Anthony J. Frendo’s conclusions on Rahab the Harlot.

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Who is Lilith? Courtesy of Richard Callner, Latham, NY.

Who Is Lilith?

Fertile mother, wilderness demon, sly seductress—the resilient character Lilith has been recast in many roles. Who is Lilith? As Janet Howe Gaines writes, “In most manifestations of her myth, Lilith represents chaos, seduction and ungodliness. Yet, in her every guise, Lilith has cast a spell on humankind.” Follow Lilith’s journey from Babylonian mythology, through the Bible, to medieval lore and modern literature in Lilith by Janet Howe Gaines.

Read Lilith by Janet Howe Gaines as the article originally appeared in Bible Review.

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A salvaged page of the Codex Sinaiticus from St. Catherine’s Monastery recovered in 1975. Photo: Courtesy of St. Catherine’s Monastery.

Two hundred years after Constantine Tischendorf’s birth, questions remain as to the conditions of his removal of Codex Sinaiticus from St. Catherine’s Monastery. Dating to the mid-fourth century C.E., Codex Sinaiticus is the oldest complete manuscript of the New Testament.

In his article “Hero or Thief? Constantine Tischendorf Turns Two Hundred” in the September/October 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Stanley E. Porter contends that Tischendorf should be considered a hero, not a thief.

The text of Codex Sinaiticus differs in numerous instances from that of the authorized version of the Bible in use during Tischendorf’s time. For example, the resurrection narrative at the end of Mark (16:9–20) is absent from the Codex Sinaiticus. So is the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer: “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” (Matthew 6:13). The woman caught in adultery from John 8 is omitted in Codex Sinaiticus.

According to James Bentley, Tischendorf was not troubled by the omission of the resurrection in Mark because he believed that Matthew was written first and that Mark’s gospel was an abridged version of Matthew’s gospel. If this were true, the absence of resurrection in Mark would not be a problem because it appears in the older Matthean gospel. Modern scholarship generally holds that Mark is in fact the oldest of the Synoptic Gospels, which could cause theological concerns over the omitted resurrection.

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One other omission in Codex Sinaiticus with theological implications is the reference to Jesus’ ascension in Luke 24:51. Additionally, Mark 1:1 in the original hand omits reference to Jesus as the Son of God.

Below, see a visual comparison of these and other differences between the King James Version and Codex Sinaiticus.

The Markan Resurrection
(Mark 16: 1–14)

The Lord’s Prayer
(Matthew 6:9–13)

The woman caught in adultery
(John 7:53–8:11)

Significant omitted verses

Alterations perhaps due to later theological beliefs

Constantine Tischendorf’s chance finding of Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest New Testament manuscript, at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai—and his later removal of the manuscript—made him both famous and infamous. Learn more by reading “Tischendorf on Trial for Removing Codex Sinaiticus, the Oldest New Testament.”

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on August 12, 2015. Biblical quotations corrected on September 18, 2022.

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Tischendorf on Trial for Removing Codex Sinaiticus, the Oldest New Testament

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The Aleppo Codex

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The presepio (nativity scene) is a centuries-old craft and one of Naples’s best-known traditions. This Neapolitan presepio was displayed in Rome. Photo: Howard Hudson / Wikimedia Commons.

One of the most familiar images of the Christmas season is the nativity scene—the well-known depiction of Jesus’ birth—displayed in an array of public and private settings, including churches, parks, store windows and on fireplace mantles.

The scene, first assembled by St. Francis of Assisi in 1223, is iconographic, meaning its various elements are intended primarily to depict theological—not historical, nor even literary—truths. It harmonizes two very distinct stories: Luke’s birth of Jesus in a stable, visited by shepherds, and attended by an angelic host and Matthew’s Magi, who are led by a star to the home of Jesus’ family sometime before Jesus’ second birthday.

To most people viewing the nativity scene, it depicts the birth of Jesus as it happened, with farm animals, shepherds, angels and Magi crowding the Bethlehem stable. But the combination is apocryphal, in the wide sense that the complete scene is not an accurate reflection of what the Biblical texts say about Jesus’ birth and in the narrow sense that such harmonization of Matthew and Luke is a common feature of noncanonical Christian infancy gospels.

Actually, these gospels not only combine the Biblical stories, they enhance them, with additional traditions about the birth of Jesus that circulated in antiquity. Of course most Christians throughout history were unaware of this distinction; before widespread literacy, Christians told the story of Jesus’ birth without awareness of which elements were based on Scripture and which were not.

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The Christian Apocrypha are rich with tales of the birth of Jesus. The earliest and most well-known of these are the stories found in the Protevangelium (or “Proto-Gospel”) of James. Composed in the late second century, this text combines the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke with other traditions, including stories of the Virgin Mary’s own birth and upbringing. The Protevangelium was exceptionally popular—hundreds of manuscripts of the text exist today in a variety of languages, and it has profoundly influenced Christian liturgy and teachings about Mary.

The Protevangelium was transmitted in the West as part of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which added to it tales of the Holy Family’s sojourn in Egypt and, in some manuscripts, stories of Jesus’ childhood taken from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Other Pseudo-Matthew manuscripts incorporate a different telling of Jesus’ birth from an otherwise lost gospel that scholars call the Book about the Birth of the Savior.

In the East, the Protevangelium was translated into Syriac and expanded with a different set of stories set in Egypt to form the Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was later translated into Arabic as the Arabic Infancy Gospel. Another Syriac reworking of the Protevangelium lies behind the Armenian Infancy Gospel. Christians in the East also expanded on Matthew’s Magi traditions creating the Revelation of the Magi, the Legend of Aphroditianus, and On the Star (erroneously attributed to Eusebius of Caesarea), each of which in their own way narrates how the Magi became aware that the star heralded the birth of a king.

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This small tripartite painting, The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, is part of a massive altarpiece known as the Maestà. Composed of many individual paintings, the Maestà was commissioned by the Italian city of Siena in 1308 from the artist Duccio di Buoninsegna. It contains elements of the birth of Jesus from Christian Apocrypha, including the cave, the ox, the ass and the midwife. Photo: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

If readers of these apocryphal texts could see the modern nativity scenes, they would be surprised to find the baby Jesus in a stable: In the infancy gospels, the birth takes place in a cave outside of Bethlehem, the same location given also by Justin Martyr (in his Dialogue with Trypho 78), who died around 165 C.E. They might have expected also to see a midwife in the scene; indeed, she does appear regularly in Eastern Orthodox depictions of the nativity, helping Mary bathe the newborn.

As the Protevangelium tells it, Joseph left Mary in the cave and went into Bethlehem to find a midwife. But as Joseph and the midwife approached the cave, they saw a bright cloud overshadowing it. The cloud then disappeared into the cave and a great light appeared, which withdrew and revealed the baby Jesus. Each of the later expansions of the Protevangelium narrate this scene in their own unique way, but they all endeavor to show that Jesus was not born in a natural manner, thus allowing Mary to remain physically a virgin after the birth.

So superhuman is Jesus that some texts report that he could be perceived in multiple forms. The Armenian Infancy Gospel, for example, reports that the Magi each saw him in a different way: as the Son of God on a throne, as the Son of Man surrounded by armies, and as a man tortured, dead and resurrected.

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The apocryphal accounts agree with Luke that the shepherds visited the Holy Family shortly after Jesus’ birth. In the Western texts, the family then moves from the cave to a stable and places the baby in a manger. There an ox and an ass bend their knees and worship him, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 1:3, “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib” (see Pseudo-Matthew 14 and Birth of the Savior 86). Though an apocryphal embellishment, the animals became a common ingredient in subsequent depictions of the nativity and may be observable in nativity scenes today.

Tony Burke challenges the assertion that Christian apocrypha were truly rejected, suppressed and destroyed throughout Christian history. Read more >>

Most often, the cave remains the scene of subsequent events, including the circumcision (from Luke 2:21) and the visit of the Magi. The Magi are typically depicted in art and iconography as three richly-adorned Persian kings. However, Matthew calls them only “magi from the East” (Matthew 2:1) and does not say how many there were. The writers of the apocryphal texts did their best to clarify these matters. In the Revelation of the Magi, there are at least twelve Magi—the same number is given in other Syriac traditions—and they came to Bethlehem in April (not December) from a land in the Far East called “Shir,” perhaps meant to be understood as China. The Armenian Infancy Gospel says there were three kings, and they were accompanied by 12 commanders, each with an army of 1,000 men, which would make for a very crowded stable indeed.

Many of the texts continue the story of the Magi and tell what happened when they returned to their home country: In the Life of the Blessed Virgin (=Arabic Infancy Gospel) they bring back one of Jesus’ swaddling bands, which they worship because it has miraculous properties; in the Revelation of the Magi they share the vision-inducing food (some kind of magic mushrooms?) given to them by the star; and in the Legend of Aphroditianus they return with a painting of Jesus and his mother. None of these apocryphal Magi traditions are featured in nativity scenes today, but some of them influenced medieval art and literature.

Christians of all times and places have delighted in the story of Jesus’ birth, so much that they have yearned to learn more about the first Christmas than is found in the Biblical accounts. The Christmas nativity scene is the outcome of efforts by creative and pious writers to fill in blanks left by Matthew and Luke and to combine multiple traditions, Biblical and non-Biblical, into one enduring image. The nativity scene is a timeless representation of when God became man; it is also a testament to human imagination and the art of storytelling.

This Bible History Daily article was originally published on December 10, 2014.

Tony Burke is an associate professor in the Department of the Humanities at York University and the author of Secret Scriptures Revealed: A New Introduction to the Christian Apocrypha (London: SPCK, 2013). Burke’s research interests include the study of Christian biographical literature of the second century (infancy gospels), children and the family in Roman antiquity, curses and non-canonical Jewish and Christian writings. Follow his work at www.tonyburke.ca.

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The TAU researchers analyzed multi-spectral images of 16 Hebrew inscriptions, which were written in ink on ostraca (broken pottery pieces), using a computer software program they developed. The ostraca, which date to 600 B.C.E., according to the researchers, were excavated from the Judahite fortress at Arad in southern Israel.

When was the Hebrew Bible written? Ostraca with Hebrew inscriptions excavated from the Iron Age fortress at Arad in Israel may provide clues, say researchers from Tel Aviv University. Photo: Michael Cordonsky, courtesy Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The researchers say they were able to identify at least six different handwriting styles on the inscriptions, which contained instructions for the movement of troops and lists of food expenses. A TAU press release notes that “the tone and nature of the commands precluded the role of professional scribes.”

“The results indicate that in this remote fort, literacy had spread throughout the military hierarchy, down to the quartermaster and probably even below that rank,” state Faigenbaum-Golovina, Shausa and Sober in their paper.

“Now our job is to extrapolate from Arad to a broader area,” explained TAU Professor of Archaeology Israel Finkelstein, who heads the research project, in the TAU press release. “Adding what we know about Arad to other forts and administrative localities across ancient Judah, we can estimate that many people could read and write during the last phase of the First Temple period. We assume that in a kingdom of some 100,000 people, at least several hundred were literate.”

Israel Museum curators have called “Gabriel’s Revelation” the most important document found in the area since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Read the original English publication of “Gabriel’s Revelation” along with Israel Knohl’s BAR article that made scholars around the world reconsider links between ancient Jewish and Christian messianism in the free eBook Gabriel’s Revelation.

So when was the Hebrew Bible written? What does literacy in the Iron Age have to do with it?

Scholars have debated whether the texts of the Hebrew Bible were written before 586 B.C.E.—when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, razed the First Temple and exiled the Jews—or later on, in the Persian or Hellenistic period. If literacy in Iron Age Judah was more widespread than previously thought, does this suggest that Hebrew Bible texts could have been written before the Babylonian conquest?
The Tel Aviv University researchers think so, based on their study of the ostraca from Arad.

Not quite, says epigrapher Christopher Rollston, Associate Professor of Northwest Semitic languages and literatures at the George Washington University. In a lengthy blog post analyzing the TAU study, Rollston contends that there is not enough information from these ostraca to make estimates about the literacy of Iron Age Judah. Rollston points out that, according to a publication by Yohanan Aharoni, the original excavator at Arad, the 16 ostraca came from different strata dated across the seventh and early sixth centuries—and therefore do not all date to 600 B.C.E. Moreover, we cannot tell how many of these inscriptions were written at the Arad fortress and how many came from elsewhere.

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“Rather than arguing on the basis of 16 ostraca (that ended up at Arad) that we have a ‘proliferation of literacy,’” Rollston says, “I would simply conclude that we have some readers and writers of inscriptions at Arad. That’s all we can say.”

Rollston notes that he and others have argued, however, that there is enough epigraphic evidence from ancient Israel to conclude that “already by 800 B.C.E. there was sufficient intellectual infrastructure, that is, well-trained scribes, able to produce sophisticated historical and literary texts.”

“Additional detailed, sophisticated and substantive scholarly arguments for the early dating of the Torah have been made by William Schniedewind, author of How the Bible Became a Book, and Seth Sanders, in The Invention of Hebrew,” observes Candida Moss, Professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame, in The Daily Beast.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 15, 2016.

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There is a very intriguing story, unique to the Gospel of John, about a wedding attended by Jesus and his disciples at the Galilean village of Cana (John 2:1–11). Within the Gospel of John the story functions in a theological and even allegorical manner—it is the “first” of seven signs, the “water into wine” story, but that is not to say it lacks any historical foundation.

The story is part of an earlier written narrative that scholars call the “Signs Source,” now embedded in the Gospel of John much like the Q source is embedded in Matthew and Luke. Many scholars consider the Signs Source to be our most primitive gospel narrative, earlier than, and independent from, the Gospel of Mark.

Most readers of John’s gospel concentrate on the long “red letter” speeches and dialogues of Jesus with the lofty language about him as the “Son” sent from heaven, in cosmic struggle with “the Jews” who are cast in a pejorative light. Such elements are apparently a much later theological overlay, as they are absent from this primitive narrative source.

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The work, at least according to this “Signs Source,” was originally written to promote the simple affirmation that Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed King of the line of David, and to explain how his death was part of the plan of God. This narrative source is written in a completely different style from the later material now in John’s gospel. It moves along from scene to scene with vivid details and in gripping narrative flow.

The elements of the Cana story are fascinating. Jesus and his disciples, who have been down in the Jordan valley with John the Baptist, return to the area to join the wedding celebration. Jesus’ mother Mary (though unnamed in John) and his brothers are already there (2:12), so it seems to be some kind of “family affair.”

Indeed, Mary seems to be at some level officially involved in the celebration as a kind of co-hostess since she takes charge of things when the wine planned for the occasion, unexpectedly runs out, indicating either that the crowd was larger than expected or that things became quite festive, or both. Mary turns to Jesus and the rest of the story is well known to everyone—he miraculously turns six stone vessels, filled initially with water, into the finest wine.

But beyond the “miracle” or the “sign,” a number of other quite interesting questions arise.

First, one has to ask: Why would the lack of wine be a concern of Mary, Jesus’ mother?

And what do we know about Cana?

And most importantly, whose wedding was this and why were Jesus and his family present in the first place?

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What do we know about Cana?

Let’s begin with Cana itself. What do we know about it?

Most tourists are taken to the traditional site of Cana (Kefr Kenna) near Nazareth on the road to Tiberias that the Franciscans maintain. The problem is that this location has no Roman-period ruins and most certainly is not the place mentioned in the New Testament. Its veneration began sometime in the Middle Ages.

An alternative site, Khirbet Qana, is 8 miles northwest of Nazareth and 12 miles west of the Sea of Galilee. It is high on a hill overlooking the Bet Netofa valley. This location has much more evidence in its favor.

My colleague and friend, the late Professor Doug Edwards, began excavating there in 1998, and Tom McCollough has carried on his work as time has allowed. What they have found seems fairly decisive, including Second Temple period tombs, houses and possibly a beth midrash or synagogue. Evidence of Christian veneration at this site dates back to the sixth century C.E.

Khirbet Qana

Right after the wedding, according to John 2:12, Jesus goes to Capernaum and with him are his disciples, but also his mother and his brothers. I think that implies the whole family, including the brothers (and thus the sisters) were not only at the wedding but are now traveling with him. They go to Capernaum, where he sets up a kind “residence” or operational HQ, according to the tradition that Mark has received (see Mark 2:1; 3:19; 9:33 and the references to the house and being “at home”).

Mark knows nothing of Cana but John mentions it again when Jesus returns from a trip to Judea, where he stirred up a considerable amount of trouble and needs some place to “lay low.” He and his disciples go back to Cana (John 4:46). Why go back there if the first visit was just for a wedding and had no connection to him? I think this is important in that it seems to become for Jesus a kind of “safe house” or place of operations when he needs to retreat to Galilee, much like Capernaum.

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Peter Richardson of the University of Toronto has written a significant academic article on this point titled “What Has Cana to Do with Capernaum?” (New Testament Studies 48 (2002), pp. 314–331) that I highly recommend. He argues that the significant differences on geographical matters between the Synoptics with their sources and John with its sources—especially the question of Jesus’ “place”—should not be resolved simply in favor of Mark. Cana as a place in John is as significant as Capernaum in Mark. In fact, Richardson argues that Cana served as an operational base for Jesus according to the tradition that John reflects.

It is interesting to note that during the Jewish Revolt, Josephus, commander of the Jewish forces in Galilee, made Cana his strategic headquarters for a time (Life 86). Its prime location, overlooking Sepphoris and the cities of the Bet Netofa Valley, made it an ideal location. Also, Jewish tradition locates the priestly family of Eliashib, mentioned in 1 Chronicles 24:19 as one of the 24 orders of Cohanim or priest, as from Cana.

John indicates the connection in the last chapter of his gospel, where he says that the disciple Nathanael, mentioned only in the Gospel of John is from Cana in Galilee (21:2). Nathanael is mentioned earlier in the Gospel of John as an early follower or disciple, associated with Andrew of Bethsaida (1:45). He is most often identified as one of the Twelve, under his father’s name, Bar-Tholomew or “Bar Tolmai” in Aramaic, in Mark’s list of the disciples (Mark 3:18). I find this identification likely.

Given this background all we can do is speculate. I think we can assume that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is somehow involved in the wedding, and since we know Jesus and his disciples—as well as his brothers—are there, it is not a passing event but some kind of family affair. And since he returns to the place when things get heated for him and his disciples in Judea, it is a safe place for him, and one to which he is connected. So whose was the wedding? Or can we even make a wild guess?

Whose Wedding is it?

Many have suggested that the wedding at Cana was that of Jesus. I find this unlikely. Even though the account is very “allegorical” as it comes to us in John, and it is accordingly hard to derive historical material therefrom, the way in which Jesus shows up with his disciples, when his mother and brothers are already there, indicates to me that the wedding is of someone else.

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Why is Mary Involved in Preparations?

My own guess would be that it is the wedding of either one of his brothers or sisters, since Mary is involved—not, as I read it, as the hostess, but as one concerned with the provisions for the wedding. Since the wedding is held in Cana, my guess is that it could very well be the wedding of one of Jesus’ brothers, perhaps James, to a sister or daughter of Nathanael, thus accounting for it being held in that village. Cana then becomes a place to which Jesus can return, and as with Capernaum, it served as a kind of “home” for him.

Regardless, I do think, as Richardson has argued, that we should take John’s references to geographical locations as rooted in some of the earliest traditions we have related to the life of Jesus–even predating Mark.

I have of late become persuaded that Jesus well might have been married, and this represents a change of mind for me that I have detailed in our book The Jesus Discovery. If such be the case, it seems impossible to tell whether he would have been married long before this point in his life, perhaps in his 20s, or whether he chose not to be married into his adult life, and only subsequently did so closer to the end.

Dr. James Tabor is Professor of Christian Origins and Ancient Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Since earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1981, Tabor has combined his work on ancient texts with extensive field work in archaeology in Israel and Jordan, including work at Qumran, Sepphoris, Masada, Wadi el-Yabis in Jordan. Over the past decade he has teamed up with with Shimon Gibson to excavate the “John the Baptist” cave at Suba, the “Tomb of the Shroud” discovered in 2000, Mt Zion and, along with Rami Arav, he has been involved in the re-exploration of two tombs in East Talpiot including the controversial “Jesus tomb.”

Tabor is the author of the popular Taborblog, and several of his recent posts have been featured in Bible History Daily as well as the Huffington Post. His latest book, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity, has become immediately popular with specialists and non-specialists alike.

You can find links to all of Dr. Tabor’s web pages, books, and projects at jamestabor.com.

This Bible History Daily article was first republished in Bible History Daily from James Tabor’s blog on November 16, 2015.

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Was Mary Magdalene Wife of Jesus? Was Mary Magdalene a Prostitute?

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The Siloam Pool: Where Jesus Healed the Blind Man

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Searching for Cana: Where Jesus Turned Water into Wine

Biblical Views: Was the Wedding at Cana Jesus’ Nuptials?

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Jesus the Teetotaler

The post Mark and John: A Wedding at Cana—Whose and Where? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The Sisters of Nazareth Convent
A Roman-period, Byzantine, and Crusader site in central Nazareth
Ken Dark
ISBN 9780367542191
Published September 16, 2020 by Routledge
284 Pages 18 Color & 147 B/W Illustrations

The childhood home of Jesus may have been found underneath the Sisters of Nazareth Convent in Nazareth, Israel, according to archaeologist Ken Dark.

This very well could be the childhood home of Jesus. It doesn’t look inviting, but this rock-hewn courtyard house was quite likely Jesus’ home in Nazareth. The recent excavation by Ken Dark and the Nazareth Archaeological Project revealed good evidence to suggest this is where Jesus was raised. Photo: Ken Dark.

The excavation site located beneath the convent has been known since 1880, but it was never professionally excavated until the Nazareth Archaeological Project began its work in 2006. In “Has Jesus’ Nazareth House Been Found?” in the March/April 2015 issue of BAR, Ken Dark, the director of the Nazareth Archaeological Project, not only describes the remains of the home itself, but explores the evidence that suggests that this is the place where Jesus spent his formative years—or at least the place regarded in the Byzantine period as the childhood home of Jesus.

The excavation revealed a first-century “courtyard house” that was partially hewn from naturally occurring rock and partially constructed with rock-built walls. Many of the home’s original features are still intact, including doors and windows. Also found at the site were tombs, a cistern and, later, a Byzantine church.

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The remains combined with the description found in the seventh-century pilgrim account De Locus Sanctis point to the courtyard house found beneath the convent as what may have been regarded as Jesus’ home in Nazareth. Archaeological and geographical evidence from the Church of the Annunciation, the International Marion Center and Mary’s Well come together to suggest that this location may be where Jesus transitioned from boy to man.

Ken Dark also discusses the relationship between the childhood home of Jesus, Nazareth and the important site of Sepphoris. It has been thought that Sepphoris would have provided Joseph with work and Jesus many important cultural experiences. However, Ken Dark believes that Nazareth was a larger town than traditionally understood and was particularly Jewish in its identity—as opposed to the Roman-influenced Sepphoris. This is partially based on the result of his survey of the Nahal Zippori region that separates Sepphoris and Nazareth geographically.

For more on the childhood home of Jesus, read the full article “Has Jesus’ Nazareth House Been Found?” by Ken Dark in the March/April 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

The Sisters of Nazareth Convent
A Roman-period, Byzantine, and Crusader site in central Nazareth

Ken Dark
ISBN 9780367542191
Published September 16, 2020 by Routledge
284 Pages 18 Color & 147 B/W Illustrations

Read the full article “Has Jesus’ Nazareth House Been Found?” by Ken Dark in the March/April 2015 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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A version of this Bible History Daily article was originally published in March 2015.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Has the Tomb of Jesus Been Discovered?

Was Jesus a Jew?

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Baroque artist Guido Reni depicts the apostle James, son of Zebedee, in his painting Saint James the Greater (c. 1636–1638).

The problem of names surfaced at a Bible study at the St. Paul Union Church in Antalya, Turkey. Pastor Dennis Massaro was discussing the three men named “James” in the New Testament: Two were apostles, and the third was the leader of the Jerusalem church and author of the eponymous letter—the Book of James. Participants in the study came from a range of countries, including the Netherlands, Iran, Mexico, Moldova and Cameroon. When I asked what the name of these men was in their languages, they all said “Jacob.”

When I was teaching a course on the New Testament General Letters (Hebrews through Jude), I began by introducing the Book of Jacob, also known as the Book of James. Students were perplexed until they learned that Jacob is the proper translation of the Greek name Iakōbos. One student wrote later that knowing this “turned my understanding of the writing upside down.” Another observed that “with the name change, the loss of the Jewish lineage occurs.”

So how did the Jewish name Ya’akov become so Gentilized as James? Since the 13th century, the form of the Latin name Iacomus began its use in English. In the 14th century, John Wycliffe made the first Bible translation into English and translated Iakobus as James. (However, in both the Old and New Testaments he arbitrarily used the name Jacob for the patriarch). In all future English translations the name stuck, especially after 1611, when King James I sponsored the translation then called the Authorized Version. Since 1797 it has been called the King James Bible.

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So what is lost by using James instead of Jacob? First, it has created an awkwardness in academic writing. Scholars providing a transliteration of James indicate Iakōbos, which even lay readers know is not the same. Hershel Shanks has noted that the reason Israeli scholars failed to understand the significance of the eponymous ossuary is that they didn’t connect James with Ya’akov.¹

Second, James’s ancestral lineage is lost, as the student noted above. In Matthew’s genealogy, we learn that Joseph’s father was named Jacob (Matthew 1:16) and that his family tree included the patriarch Jacob (Matthew 1:2). James was thus named after his grandfather. As Ben Witherington writes, “It is clear that the family of ‘James’ was proud of its patriarchal heritage.”² So Jacob was the third Jacob in the family.

Third, James’s Jewish cultural background is minimized. Tal Ilan identifies Jacob as the 15th most popular name in Palestine in antiquity, with 18 known persons carrying it.³ Including both the Eastern and Western Diasporas, Jacob was the third most popular Jewish name, with 74 occurrences.

Fourth, the Jewish literary heritage is muddled. The Book of Jacob (i.e., the Book of James) is addressed to “the twelve tribes in the diaspora” (James 1:1) and full of references and allusions to the Torah and Wisdom Literature of the Jewish Bible (Christians’ Old Testament). Scholars consider James the most “Jewish” book in the New Testament. Its genre is considered to be a diaspora letter like Jeremiah 29:1–23 and the apocryphal works The Epistle of Jeremiah, 2 Maccabees 1:1–2:18, and 2 Apocalypse of Baruch 78–86.

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But can such a switch be made practically? Biblical scholars and publishers would need to agree that continued use of “James” is linguistically indefensible and culturally misleading. Most difficult to change would be Bible translations, which are very conservative. To start, a footnote could denote that James is really Jacob. And while we’re at it, let’s rehabilitate Jacob as the name of two of Jesus’ disciples/apostles. These connections, now lost only for English readers, were caught by Greek-speaking audiences as well as modern readers of translations in most other languages. Let’s give Jacob his due.

Mark Wilson is the director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey, and is a popular teacher on BAS Travel/Study tours. Mark received his doctorate in Biblical studies from the University of South Africa (Pretoria), where he serves as a research fellow in Biblical archaeology. He is currently Associate Professor Extraordinary of New Testament at Stellenbosch University. He leads field studies in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean for university, seminary and church groups. He is the author of Biblical Turkey: A Guide to the Jewish and Christian Sites of Asia Minor and Victory through the Lamb: A Guide to Revelation in Plain Language. He is a frequent lecturer at BAS’s Bible Fests.

Notes

1. Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington III, The Brother of Jesus: The Dramatic Story & Meaning of the First Archaeological Link to Jesus & His Family (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003), p. 28.
2. Shanks and Witherington III, Brother of Jesus, p. 97.
3. Ṭal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity. Part IV: The Eastern Diaspora 330 BCE–650 CE (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 27, 2017.

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The unstoppable force of refugees fleeing to Europe has in various places hit the immovable object of an attitude that there is no room at the inn. Spaces are filled. Migrants should be kept out, in order to preserve jobs, health and welfare services. In an environment of austerity, where economic cuts have hit people hard, this cold-heartedness in part derives from a deep sense of insecurity.

At this time it is worth remembering that Jesus of Nazareth is in the Bible presented exactly as one that would be rejected by such European countries: a refugee child.

Woodcut from Die Bibel in Bildern (1860) by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ (adoptive) father, Joseph, and mother, Mary, live in Bethlehem, a town in Judaea near Jerusalem. It is assumed to be their home village. Certain magoi (“wise men”/astrologers) come from “the East” to Herod, the Roman client king of Judaea, looking to honor a new ruler they have determined by a “star,” and Jesus is identified as the one. All this is bad news to Herod, and Herod acts in a pre-emptive strike against the people of Bethlehem and its environs. He kills all boys under two years of age in an atrocity that is traditionally known as “the massacre of the innocents” (Matthew 2.16–18).

But Joseph has been warned beforehand in a dream of Herod’s intentions to kill little Jesus, and the family flees to Egypt. It is not until Herod is dead that Joseph and Mary dare return, and then they avoid Judaea: Joseph “was afraid to go there” (Matthew 2.22) because Herod’s son is in charge. Instead they find a new place of refuge, in Nazareth of Galilee, far from Bethlehem.

Jesus’ earliest years were then, according to the Gospel of Matthew, spent as a refugee in a foreign land, and then as a displaced person in a village a long way from his family’s original home.

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Scholars of the historical Jesus can be suspicious of this account, as also with the other nativity account in the Gospel of Luke 1–2. It is clearly constructed with allusions to Jesus as a kind of Moses figure: just as Moses was under threat from an evil Pharaoh who killed children (Exodus 1–2), so was Jesus. But while resonances with the scriptural precedent are intended, there is no real need for the author to invent the idea of Jesus being a refugee child somewhere in Egypt to have him being Moses-like. There is a quote, “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11.1), in Matthew 2.15, but the “son” concerned is historical Israel, not Moses and not the Messiah, and it sits uncomfortably with the story. The author of Matthew did not need to build a myth out of such a text.

King Herod the Great began construction at Herodium in 28–27 B.C.E. Photo: Duby Tal.

It seems not then unlikely to me that Jesus’ family, with a lineage traced to the great king David (Matthew 1; Luke 3.23–38; Romans 1.3; 15.12), opted to flee from Bethlehem, long-standing residence of the kingly line and their original home. In many traditional societies, such locations of clans are maintained, even with social disruptions. Archaeology has shown how Herod built a palace complex at Herodium, including his future mausoleum, nicely overlooking the town of Bethlehem. It was as if Herod was breathing down Bethlehem’s neck.

The first-century Jewish historian Josephus portrays Herod as paranoid about any possible threat to his rule. He killed his own sons and had few qualms about killing anyone else’s. As Augustus quipped, “I would rather be Herod’s pig than his son” (Macrobius, Saturnalia 2:4; since pigs are not butchered by Jews).

We know also that Jews fled from troubles in Judaea of many kinds in the third–first centuries B.C.E., and that Egypt was one of the places they went to as refugees. Josephus comments on the problematic revolutionaries (and their children) that fled there after the First Jewish Revolt (66–70 C.E.; Jewish War 7: 407–419), but they were following a well-worn path.

Many epitaphs and inscriptions, as well as historical sources, testify to a thriving Jewish expatriate community in Egypt made up of earlier refugees that could be joined by others. However, just like today, new refugees were not welcome. A letter of the emperor Claudius, written in 41 C.E., states that Jews in Alexandria lived in “a city not their own” in which they were “not to bring in or invite Jews who sail down to Alexandria from Syria[-Palaestina]” (P. London 1912; CPJ I:151).

Visit the historical Jesus study page in Bible History Daily to read more free articles on Jesus.

A remembrance of Jesus’ family in Egypt is preserved in Matariya, in the suburbs of Cairo at Heliopolis, a spot understood to be a stopping place on the holy family’s flight, and it is probably the most important site in the world for anyone wishing to contemplate Joseph, Mary and Jesus as refugees.

For new refugees, as anywhere, life would have been very hard. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria tells us of the consequences of poverty, which could result in enslavement (Special Laws 2.82). Presumably, Jewish charity and voluntary giving through the synagogue would have helped a struggling refugee family, but they would also have been reliant on the kindness of strangers.

The legacy of being a refugee and a newcomer to a place far from home is something that I think informed Jesus’ teaching. When he set off on his mission, he took up the life of a displaced person with “nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8.20; Luke 9.58). He asked those who acted for him to go out without a bag or a change of clothing, essentially to walk along the road like destitute refugees who had suddenly fled, relying on the generosity and hospitality of ordinary people whose villages they entered (Mark 6.8–11; Matthew 10.9–11; Luke 9.3). It was the villagers’ welcome or not to such poor wanderers that showed what side they were on: “And if any place will not receive you and refuse to hear you, shake off the dust on your feet when you leave, for a testimony to them” (Mark 6.11).

“Jesus Was a Refugee” by Joan E. Taylor was first republished in Bible History Daily on May 12, 2016.

Joan E. Taylor is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London. Her research interests include the New Testament and other early Christian texts; the historical figures of Jesus of Nazareth, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene and other New Testament persons; Second Temple Judaism; and women and gender within early Judaism and Christianity. Dr. Taylor has received various awards and fellowships, including the Irene Levi-Sala Award in Israel’s archaeology for her book Christians and the Holy Places (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, rev. 2003).

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Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible

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Herod’s Death, Jesus’ Birth and a Lunar Eclipse

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“It’s About Time—Easter Time”

by Ben Witherington III

One of the problems in reading ancient texts like the Bible in the 21st century is the danger of anachronism—by which I mean bringing unhelpful modern ideas and expectations to our readings. This problem becomes all the more acute when dealing with ancient texts on which much historical import hinges.

On what day did Jesus rise? After three days or on the third day? Pictured is Henry Osawa Tanner’s moody rendition of the scene, “The Three Marys,” painted in 1910, and on display at the Fisk University Galleries in Nashville. Photo: Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, Tennessee.

Take a few examples from the Gospels that may help us read the stories about Jesus’ last week of life with more insight.

Some texts tell us that Jesus predicted he would rise “after three days.” Others say he would rise “on the third day.” In Matthew 12:40 Jesus mentions, “three days and three nights,” but this is just part of a general analogy with the story of what happened with Jonah and the whale, and as such the time reference shouldn’t be pressed. Jesus is just saying, “It will be like the experience of Jonah.”

On the other hand, in Mark 8:31 Jesus says, “The Son of Man will rise again after three days.” He mentions the same event in John 2:19 as “in three days,” and on various occasions the Gospel writers tell us Jesus used the phrase “on the third day” (see, e.g., Matthew 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; Luke 24:46). On the face of it, this might seem to involve a flat contradiction. While both predictions could be wrong, is it really possible both could be right?

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The problem with this sort of modern reasoning is that it assumes the Gospel writers intended always to write with precision on this matter. In fact the phrase “after three days” in the New Testament can simply mean “after a while” or “after a few days” without any clear specificity beyond suggesting several days, in this case parts of three days, would be involved.

In fact, the Hebrew Bible provides us with some clues about these sorts of differences. Second Chronicles 10:5, 12 clearly says, “Come to me again after three days … So … all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day because the king had said ‘Come to me again the third day.’” Apparently “after three days” means the very same thing as “on the third day” in this text.

Is this just carelessness, or is it in fact an example of typical imprecision when it comes to speaking about time? I would suggest that the phrase “after three days” is a more general or imprecise way of speaking, whereas “on the third day” is somewhat more specific (though it still doesn’t tell us when on the third day). These texts were not written to meet our modern exacting standards when it comes to time.

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One of the keys to interpreting the time references in the New Testament is being aware that most of the time, the time references are not precise, and we must allow the ancient author to be general when he wants to be general and more specific when he wants to be more specific. Especially when you have both sorts of references to the time span between Jesus’ death and resurrection in one book by one author, and indeed sometimes even within close proximity to each other, one should take the hint that these texts were not written according to our modern exacting expectations when it comes to time references.

Isn’t it about time we let these authors use language, including time language, in the way that was customary in their own era? I would suggest it’s high time we showed these ancient authors the respect they deserve and read them with an awareness of the conventions they followed when writing ancient history or ancient biography and not impose our later genre conventions on them.¹

“Biblical Views: It’s About Time—Easter Time” by Ben Witherington III originally appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2016. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily on April 18, 2016.

Ben Witherington III is the Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University, Scotland.

Notes

1. For help with understanding how to read the Bible in light of its original contexts, see Ben Witherington III, Reading and Understanding the Bible (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2014).

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The post On What Day Did Jesus Rise? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

This Roman theater played an important role in the riot at Ephesus against Paul and the early Christians, according to Luke’s account in Acts 19. Photo: Jordan Pickett.

In Acts 19, Luke describes a frenzied riot at Ephesus, a city in the Roman province of Asia in modern-day Turkey:

About that time no little disturbance broke out concerning the Way. A man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the artisans. These he gathered together, with the workers of the same trade, and said, “Men, you know that we get our wealth from this business. You also see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost the whole of Asia this Paul has persuaded and drawn away a considerable number of people by saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be scorned, and she will be deprived of her majesty that brought all Asia and the world to worship her.”

When they heard this, they were enraged and shouted, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” The city was filled with the confusion; and people rushed together to the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul’s travel companions. Paul wished to go into the crowd, but the disciples would not let him; even some officials of the province of Asia, who were friendly to him, sent him a message urging him not to venture into the theater. (Acts 19:23–31)

The so-called Beautiful Artemis statue was one of four statues of Artemis excavated at Ephesus in 1956. Measuring 5.7 feet tall, the statue dates to the Hadrianic–early Antonine periods (c. 117–150 C.E.). On either side of Artemis are female deer, and the zodiac signs appear on her upper chest. Rows of oval pendants—possibly representing bulls’ scrota—hang from her chest. These attributes, according to BAR author James R. Edwards, may represent “Artemis’s ultimate trophies in taming and subjugating the quintessential symbols of virility.” According to the silversmith Demetrius in Acts 19, the mission of Paul at Ephesus threatened the reputation of Artemis’s cult. Photo: Jordan Pickett.

According to Acts, the riot would have occurred at the end of the missionary visit of Paul at Ephesus (around 55 or 56 C.E.). How accurate is Luke’s description of Ephesus at this time? In “Archaeology Gives New Reality to Paul’s Ephesus Riot” in the July/August 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, James R. Edwards, the Bruner-Welch Professor Emeritus of Theology at Whitworth University, describes how archaeological evidence fills in the historical context for Luke’s account of the riot at Ephesus.

In the Roman period, Ephesus was an important commercial center. Excavations conducted by the Austrian Archaeological Institute since 1895 have shown that the ancient city—which rivaled Antioch as the third-largest city of the Roman world—boasted a harbor, various civic structures, bath complexes, a theater and the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Four times the size of the Athenian Parthenon, the famous Temple of Artemis had 127 gleaming marble columns that stood 60 feet tall and were topped with Ionic capitals. It was the Temple of Artemis, the silversmith Demetrius argued in Acts 19, that was being threatened by “the Way” (the early Christian movement) and Paul’s missionary effort. In saying that “gods made with hands are not gods” (Acts 19:27), Demetrius alleged, Paul was harming the silversmith industry that made little shrines used as dedicatory offerings to Artemis and tarnishing the reputation of the Artemis cult at Ephesus. However, a 16-line Greek inscription discovered during excavations showed that a century after the mission of Paul at Ephesus, in the late second or early third century, the silversmith trade and the cult of Artemis were still thriving.

When the anger that Demetrius incited reached a fever pitch, the rioters were said to have rushed into the city’s theater, dragging in Paul’s travel companions Gaius and Aristarchus. Excavations have uncovered the theater, which is set into a steep hillside at Ephesus. Massive in scale, the semicircular Roman theater held 25,000 seats and was one of the largest in the ancient world.

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According to BAR author James R. Edwards, Luke’s account of the riot at Ephesus in Acts “contains a wealth of historical detail, some of which—proconsuls, standing courts and a city secretary—were common throughout the Roman Empire. But many more details—the immense temple commemorating the Artemis cult, the Artemis figure peculiar to Ephesus who was believed to have ‘fallen from heaven’ (Acts 19:35), guilds of silversmiths, Asiarchs and the city of Ephesus itself: its greatness, its theater and its honor as neōkoros, ‘temple guardian’—all are unique to Ephesus and the Roman province of Asia.”

To the right, one can see the single column that remains from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the massive temple was the largest building in the Hellenistic world. Photo: Jordan Pickett.

Explore more of the archaeology that shines new light on Luke’s account—from statues of the goddess Artemis to inscriptions and monumental building remains—by reading the full article “Archaeology Gives New Reality to Paul’s Ephesus Riot” by James R. Edwards in the July/August 2016 issue of BAR.

BAS Library Members: Read the full article “Archaeology Gives New Reality to Paul’s Ephesus Riot” by James R. Edwards in the July/August 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Related reading in Bible History Daily

Destroying a Temple

Paul’s First Missionary Journey through Perga and Pisidian Antioch

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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on July 14, 2016.

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