James Tabor lecture: What kind of Jew was Jesus?

JAMES TABOR is lecturing on "What Kind of Jew was Jesus?"

How would Jesus worship? Scholar to address Jewishness of Jesus at UNCA

By Arnold Wengrow • February 7, 2010 (Citizen-Times)

ASHEVILLE — Should Jews who are committed to their faith be interested in Jesus? Would Christians who believe in the divinity of Christ want to know about Jesus the Jew?

James Tabor, a scholar of early Christianity, says he will pose these “deliberately provocative” questions in his talk “What Kind of Jew Was Jesus?” at 7 p.m. Thursday at UNC Asheville's Reuter Center.

“Next to Moses, Jesus was the most famous Jew on the planet,” Tabor said in a telephone interview from his office at UNC Charlotte, where he chairs the religious studies department. “If he was a faithful Jew in his own world,” he said, “there's a sense, as (Jewish philosopher) Martin Buber said, that Jews can reclaim him. Not as what the church made him, but as he was.”

Christians should be interested in the Jewishness of Jesus, Tabor said, because “whatever their theology might be, history must be brought in. Even the Catholic Church is interested.”

Tabor, the author of “The Jesus Dynasty,” a book about the historical Jesus and his family, noted that the current pope, Benedict XVI, is writing a two-volume book that discusses both the history and the theology of Jesus' life.

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For the "Jesus Family Tomb" or Talpiot Tomb, see here and follow the links.