12. See Steve Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” in Journal for the Study of Judaism 38 (2007): 457–512, and the most helpful distinctions made by Daniel Boyarin, “Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (to which is Appended a Correction of my Border Lines),” in Jewish Quarterly Review 99:1 (2009): 7–36.
13. See my arguments in The Jesus Dynasty that this Mary, mother of James and Joses, is clearly Jesus’ mother (pp. 77–81).
14. There were two Jewish revolts in the homeland of Judea and Galilee against Rome. The first, lasting from A.D. 66 to 73, and ending with the last stand at the fortress Masada, resulted in the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and its Temple. It began during the last year of the reign of Nero and was brought to a conclusion by the new emperor, Vespasian, and his son Titus, who became emperor in A.D. 69. The second, associated with the messianic leader Bar Kosiba (also known today as Bar Kochba), lasted from A.D. 132 to 136, during the reign of Hadrian. Both cumulatively resulted in anti-Jewish legislation that restricted Jewish rights and freedom, especially in the homeland. See Louis Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
15. See my arguments in The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 243–54, that James functions as a messianic successor of Jesus, ruling over the Council of Twelve that Jesus has set up as a provisionary revolutionary government in preparation for the apocalyptic Kingdom that had drawn near.
16. Sanhedrin 56–60.
17. See the innovative and insightful work of April D. DeConick, Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity: The Social and Cultural World of the Gospel of Thomas, edited with J. Asgeirsson and R. Uro, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and Its Growth, Supplements to the Journal of the Study of the New Testament 286 (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005), and The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation: A Commentary and New English Translation of the Complete Gospel, Supplements to the Journal of the Study of the New Testament (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006).
18. This idea is found often in ancient Jewish sources (e.g., 2 Baruch 15:7).
19. Quoted by Eusebius, Church History 2.1.3.
20. Ibid., 2.1.4.
21. Ibid., 2.1.2. Translations of Eusebius are by Kirsopp Lake in the Loeb Classical Library edition.
22. Ibid., 2.23.4.
23. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., s.v. “Diadexomai,” p. 227.
24. Robert E. Van Voorst, The Ascents of James: History and Theology of a Jewish-Christian Community, SBL Dissertation Series 112 (Atlanta: Scholars Press: 1989). Van Voorst has isolated this source from Recognitions 1.33–71 and demonstrated its antiquity.
25. Syriac Recognitions 1.43.3.
26. Josephus, Antiquities 20.200–1.
27. Hegesippus’s account is preserved in extensive quotations by Eusebius, Church History 2.23.3–18.
28. See James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester, Trajectories Through Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), pp. 158–204; Paul Nadim Tarazi, The New Testament: Introduction: Paul and Mark (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999).
29. See Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 191–201.
30. Eusebius, Church History 2.23.24–25.
31. See Peter H. Davids, “Palestinian Traditions in the Epistle of James,” in James the Just and Christian Origins, eds. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 33-57.
32. For a restored copy of the Q source see www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/Qluke.html.
33. Pronounced: díd-a-kay.
34. Several English translations are in the public domain and are available on the Web at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html. I have used here the new translation by Bart Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, Loeb Classical Library 24, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 417–43. The Loeb edition has a critical Greek text on facing pages with the English translation.
CHAPTER 2: RETHINKING RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD
1. Shimon Gibson, The Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence (New York: HarperOne, 2009), p. 165, in his chapter called “Who Moved the Stone?”
2. The gospel of Mark, considered by most scholars to be the earliest of our four New Testament gospels, is usually dated between A.D. 75 and 80. I put it at least as late as A.D. 80, and perhaps even a bit later. See John Kloppenborg, “Evocatio Deorum and the Dating of Mark,” Journal of Biblical Literature 124:3 (2005): 419–50, for a discussion of the various proposals and arguments. Luke and John are generally thought to be the latest of our four gospels and recently a number of scholars have begun to put them into the early second century A.D. There is a papyrus fragment (John Rylands Library, Manchester, catalogued as P51), the oldest of any New Testament writing, containing a few lines from the gospel of John that some experts have dated on paleographic grounds alone to the early second century. The early dating is quite suspect. See Brent Nongbri, “The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel,” Harvard Theological Review 98 (2005): 23–48. Since all four authors of our gospels are anonymous, despite the personal names attached to these works by editors, and no explicit dates are given in any of these texts, one has to judge by internal evidence, particularly the relationship of the authors to the catastrophe of the first Jewish revolt, A.D. 66–73, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans and Judea and Galilee were brutally subjugated. David Trobisch has presented a convincing case for the production of an edited edition of the first New Testament in the mid-second century A.D., possibly by Polycarp; see The First Edition of the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
3. James D. Tabor, “What the Bible Really Says About Death, Afterlife, and the Future,” in What the Bible Really Says, edited by Morton Smith and Joseph Hoffmann (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), pp. 33–51, also available at http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/future.html.
4. The most extensive treatment of these issues is that of Alan F. Segal, Life After Death: The History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2004).
5. Plato, Phaedo 65C, translation by Harold North Fowler, Plato, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914).
6. See Arthur J. Droge and James D. Tabor, “The Death of Socrates and Its Legacy,” chap. 2 in A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).
7. Plato, Phaedo 107A.
8. Translation by C. W. Keyes, Cicero, De Re Publica, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928).
9. See Droge and Tabor, A Noble Death, chap. 4, “Acquiring Life in a Single Moment,” pp. 85–112.