I’ve been reading The Jesus Dynasty by James D. Tabor for the last few weeks, and I have been enjoying it immensely.
As I’ve written a few times here, I was raised Roman Catholic, and even though I was staunchly and arrogantly atheist in my teens, I have always had a strange fixation with Jesus. I even refused to participate in the part of Easter mass where the congregation has to shout “Crucify him!” because something horrible and dark would rise up inside my belly when I would think about the last hours of his life.
I saw “The Passion of the Christ” when it came out in 2003 (pirated, of course, Mel Gibson will never get my money for that snuff film) and I could barely sit through it. I actually had to take a break during the scourging scene, locking myself in the bathroom and sitting on the floor, sobbing with my arms around my knees.
I was terrified at how traumatic it felt, how much pain seized my heart in its fist and refused to relent. Listen, there is a reason that two people were struck by lightning on set, including Jim Caviezel himself.
I read The DaVinci Code in 2005, and although the actual writing in the book is maybe at a fifth grade reading level, I had no idea before that book that there was a theory that Mary Magdalene and Jesus had been married and had children. My entire soul lit up like fireworks.
…wait. WHAT?!
Even as a teenager at the Easter mass, I could not understand why someone that the church had long pushed as a prostitute (which has since been rescinded, but is what I grew up with) or a random sea urchin besotted with seven demons would be the person Jesus would appear to first. Why?
When you read The Gospels, you feel like you’re flipping through the police files in the movie Memento– so many blacked out spaces and half stories. Strange metaphors, unexplained behavior. The sense that there is something vital missing, a centuries old game of telephone with misheard and mistranslated phrases watered down and down and down.
Yeshua Lite.
The Jesus Dynasty has been so gratifying to read because so much of it has validated the research I have been doing on my own for the last ten or fifteen years. I forget sometimes how much of my own work I have done, how I basically curated my own Masters Degree in Jesus. I have investigated his life like I thought I’d be the first to solve the mystery.
Who is Jesus, really? Don’t we all want to know? When our current timeline is literally based on his birth, how could you not?
To my delight, this book confirms that John the Baptist and Jesus were likely preaching and baptizing people together (or, as this book suggests, under the same purpose but moving in strategic groups through the area for maximum effect), and that Jesus deferred to John as a superior spiritual leader. John did, after all, baptize Jesus, not the other way around. I have always felt this to be true, and having the research to back it up felt like True Visibility.
It also explained the reason I’ve always felt so uncomfortable with the donkey parade Passover moment. Jesus knew that he was fulfilling Biblical scripture, and did it on purpose during a time when his life was already in serious jeopardy.
I also hadn’t realized until reading it in this book that this moment is the first time Jesus allows himself to be referred to as a King. During other points in the Gospels he admonishes and silences anyone who tries to claim him as such. Allowing it is sedition, instantly punishable by death.
For those unaware, Jesus is very likely part of the royal bloodline of King David, who is the assumed author of Psalm (my absolute favorite book in the Bible). Its verses helped me through the darkest time in my life, and I still refer back to it when I am in periods of great distress.
Even an atheist can find comfort in Psalm. The grief, the abandonment, the rage, the betrayal, the fear, the pain, is all so raw, so real. We have all been there. Faith is not the absence of anger at the Universe. Sometimes loving Grace means screaming until you are hoarse.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
After John’s murder, which would have been a devastating and terrifying blow to the movement, Jesus was forced into hiding for many months. To reappear in what everyone would realize was a massive fulfillment of prophecy, publicly claiming his bloodline to King David, making a huge fucking scene with a parade on a donkey, with rugs and palm fronds laid down in front of him?
The audacity, honestly.
I am in awe of what a badass move it was, and how furiously angry it would have made his enemies. The fact that he was able to escape Jerusalem that day is nothing short of miraculous, to be honest. In my story (steadily gathering dust), without realizing all of this, I wrote him in this moment as panicked, horrified, and for the first time, genuinely afraid. Again- I felt so Seen to realize how likely that probably was.
People act like Jesus was so soft, but moments like this prove how immensely brave (and honestly truly arrogant) that he could be.
I mean. The King of Israel? Excuse me, sir.
I did also learn that the flipping over of the money tables in the temple was also fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and was likely also a calculated strategic move by Jesus.
I still like the idea of a furious, chastising Jesus, rebuking the illness of society, and it is another story I have been obsessed with since I was a teenager. However, learning that it was also strategic is wildly impressive to me.
True war without weapons or violence. Spears and swords in the form of fulfilled prophecy.
But don’t forget that this is also the day that he curses the fig tree, which to me shows that he was intensely stressed to the point of histrionics. A man who can raise the dead kills a fig tree because it hasn’t produced fruit outside its season? Sounds very dramatic, Teacher. Wow.
Though lots of people were walking with him, these next steps were ones he would have to take alone. Crucifixion is one of the worst possible ways to die, no question, and to go into it knowingly? I can’t imagine the strength it took to sit on that donkey.
This book also says the scourging he received was so violent and vile that the technique was actually illegal to be used against a Roman citizen. When I allow myself to stare into the Middle Distance, the place where all things exist, I can see huge wet crimson mouths weeping into a purple robe. A man stooped over and shivering from blood loss. The faces of men, splattered with his blood, laughing with crimson teeth.
We are the ones who murdered the Messiah.
Imagine too, trying to make strategic plays while constantly on the run from either hordes of admirers or people seeking your death. While simultaneously preaching, healing, and baptizing. Being The Example for all to follow. The weight of being the Son of Man.
It also gave me confirmation of another issue that has long bothered me- reconciling this idea that Pontius Pilate was a blood-thirsty, unethical, vicious and violent man with his reluctance to condemn Jesus, who he would have seen as a threat.
The writers of the Gospels, whoever they were, were intent on showing that the Romans weren’t as responsible as the Jews were, and wanted to try to absolve Pontius Pilate of any responsibility. This book explains The Roman Influence so eloquently, and I kept jabbing the page with my finger. Yes! Yes! Thank you!
Jesus was arrested in the night, forced into an illegal trial and condemned that morning, on the day of Passover preparations. There is nothing about the event that shows anyone felt sorry for what was happening, and Jesus giving himself a regal prophecy parade into Jerusalem would certainly not have garnered any sympathy.
Historical Jesus is one of the most dynamic characters in the world. Present-day Christianity has white-washed him, made him vanilla and soft and safe. A gentle, quiet soul. But everything that I have ever learned about him shows he was a brilliant, charismatic, bold leader. Mercurial, demanding, even callous at times.
Even this book, one that relies only on historical records and ancient translations, and will not even discuss the Mary Magdalene/Jesus connection (the author even goes out of his way to explicitly state in the introduction that he will not speak of it and has no interest in it), describes him as a political activist, an exorcist, and a healer.
What would it have been like to see Jesus speak? What would it have been like to watch him exorcise demons, heal the sick, potentially even restore sight or resurrect the dead? How did it feel to be in those crowds? How did it feel to be part of his Inner Circle? How did it feel to love him? How did it feel to lose him?
I have always attributed the poem “Footprints in the Sand” to his energy, and will never forget the first time I read it as an arrogant atheist, because I had to hold both hands over my mouth to keep from sobbing in the pew.
When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.
And how do we carry him? In what way would we best exemplify true Yeshua energy? What does being “like Christ” really mean? In what ways can I have greater Grace? How do I honor the sacrifice he made in the hope that his work would live on? How can I help resurrect what it truly means to live like Jesus?
Help me to speak louder, and with more purpose. Help me to do greater good without acknowledgement. Help me to heal those who are invisible. Help me to have patience with those who are abandoned. Help me to have the strength to carry additional weight. Help me to see the ways I can give greater clarity.
Let me be the simple beast who leads the thirsty to an oasis. Let me be the silent voice that whispers Truth to those with ears that cannot hear.
Give me the strength to die for what I know is true. Give me the grace to be more like him.
The Constant Pursuit of Ghosts 