Biblical scholar James Tabor presents an unconventional and provocative account of the beginnings of Christianity in his new book “Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity” recently released by Simon & Schuster. Tabor is chair of the Department of Religious Studies in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and professor of Christian origins and ancient Judaism.
Tabor contends that it was the apostle Paul, more even than Jesus himself, who shaped the religion known today as Christianity. “Jesus will always be the center of Christianity,” Tabor writes, “but the ‘Jesus’ who most influenced history was the ‘Jesus Christ’ of Paul, not the historical figure of Jesus.”
A double irony exists, Tabor contends. “Paul became the most influential defining figure for later Christianity, even beyond the historical Jesus, but he is also a man waiting to be discovered, even after nearly 2,000 years…Recovering the authentic Paul, as he was in his own time, and from his own words, is my task in this book.”
Tabor will sign copies of his book at 7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 29, at the Barnes & Noble at the Arboretum (3327 Pineville-Matthews Road, Charlotte). He also will be a guest on the Nov. 29 edition of WFAE’s “Charlotte Talks.” This radio program airs live at 9 a.m.
Drawing from his four decades of research into early Christian documents, including his readings of Paul’s letters, Tabor also uses insights gained from his archaeological digs.
This new book tells of a fierce struggle to define Christianity. On one side were Jesus’ early followers, led by his brother James, along with the apostles Peter and John. On the other side was the apostle Paul – the so-called 13th apostle and the Apostle to the Gentiles – who never met Jesus but based his claims of authority on his visionary experiences.
Paul’s understanding of Christianity triumphed, and the record of the first two decades of Christianity, and of the historical Jesus, has been largely obliterated, Tabor argues. Paul is the one who set Christianity apart from its parent faith Judaism, he writes.
A reviewer in Publishers Weekly wrote, “In this compulsively readable exploration of the tangled world of Christian origins, Tabor … vividly recreates the frenetic and fraught attempts by the earliest followers of Jesus to maintain his teachings and keep his memory alive.” Other reviews have appeared in Huffington Post, Booklist and others.
Tabor earned his bachelor’s degree in Greek from Abilene Christian University, a master’s in religion from Pepperdine University and master’s and doctoral degrees in the History of Ancient Mediterranean Religions in the Humanities Division of the University of Chicago.
In addition to his work on ancient texts, Tabor has conducted extensive field work in archaeology in Israel and Jordan, including work at Qumran, Sepphoris, Masada, and Wadi el-Yabis in Jordan. He is co-director with Shimon Gibson, Israeli archaeologist, of the Mount Zion project, an ongoing, multi-year archaeological excavation in the ancient city of Jerusalem. The project is under the academic oversight of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte – the only American university licensed to carry out such excavations in Jerusalem.
Tabor is the author of several previous books, including “The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find that Reveals the Birth of Christianity,” co-authored with Simcha Jacobovici.