The Mikado
Moderators
Atlas Star
Posts: 21,774
|
 |
« on: April 11, 2012, 09:17:27 PM » |
|
|
« edited: April 11, 2012, 09:21:49 PM by The Mikado »
|
Tabor is a bit of a hack/crank, and is the leading proponent of the "Pantera" theory that few people have taken seriously for 1800 years or more that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman centurion...there's no evidence for it other than 2nd century CE pagans bashing Jesus as "Yeshua ben Pantera" and such. That said, I never really saw him as trying to "take down" Christianity, only to deny the Virgin Birth and Resurrection. He's (almost by definition as a believer in the Pantera theory) a very strong believer in a historical Jesus and a politically and culturally relevant and significant Jesus.
I read one of his books (The Jesus Dynasty) back in...2007? He argues that the Church was supposed to become a family affair, with power handed down from Jesus to James to Jude and continuing through the Holy Family, but that James' murder and the subsequent destruction of the Jerusalem Church in the sack of Jerusalem ended that.
EDIT: Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention. One of his points in favor of the Pantera argument was literally that Pantera was from Sidon, and Jesus ends up visiting the pagan cities of Tyre and Sidon and says nice things about them and might have secretly been visiting his relatives on his father's side. It's...pretty ridiculously weak as an argument, IMO.
|
