Commentary on Tabor Video

We have stated in our “Further to our Statement of Faith” that one book that greatly influenced our thinking is James D. Tabor’s Restoring Abrahamic Faith. From his own website, this is what is written about his lifelong professional involvement in biblical history/archeology:

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James Tabor (Ph.D. 1981, University of Chicago) is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he has taught since 1989. He previously held positions at Notre Dame and the College of William & Mary. His training is as an historian of Christian Origins and Ancient Judaism. Tabor has combined extensive field experience in archaeology in Israel and Jordan with his work on ancient texts, including work at Qumran, Sepphoris, the “Suba” cave, and most recently, Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. He has also been one of the principle researchers on the controversial “Talpiot Jesus family tomb.” He is chief editor of the Original Bible Project, a new scholarly translation of the Bible for the year 2016. Among his publications are Things Unutterable (1985); A Noble Death (1992); Why Waco: Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (1995); Restoring Abrahamic Faith (2008) the bestselling The Jesus Dynasty: A New Historical Investigation of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (2006). Tabor has two books coming out 2012: The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find that Reveals the Birth of Christianity (with Simcha Jacobovici) and Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (both with Simon & Schuster).

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Greatly impressed with Tabor’s achievements, we asked Sinaite “VJP” who is based in North Carolina to watch the video-seminar of Tabor.

What is significant about his report [posted below] is the same sentiment that this group shares about the lack of authoritative sources from gentiles like ourselves, who could approach the Hebrew Scriptures and teach it authoritatively from the perspective of a gentile.

This feedback echoes the sentiment of another website visitor in “Recent Comments: Email from a Reader.”

His last sentence suggests a more definite direction that could be undertaken by Sinaites through this website.

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REPORT BY VJP@S6K

It really wasn’t very good.

He spent a lot of time on the Jesus Discoveries and really focusing more on archeology. He also spoke a lot about Paul. Overall, it was very archeology focused. The other sessions were showing the new Jesus Discovery movie and and talking about the Facebook outreach program.

I was telling [BAN@S6K] that one of the most disappointing things is that there really isn’t a Gentile scholar that teaches specifically about the Bible from the perspective of a Gentile that wants to follow the One True G-d.

There are certainly a lot of Jewish scholars but one of the difficulties with Jewish scholars is that there isn’t necessarily a separation between tradition and Torah. A lot is spent on Talmudic studies which are very good — but may not necessarily be practical or commanded to the Gentiles.

Maybe that is something you should focus on? Maybe you should ask NSB@S6K to create a new program as part of her school? Or maybe we should just start a little school of our own both online and in a real physical campus?

Source: Exodus/Shemoth 24 – "the sight of the Glory of YHVH (was) like a consuming fire" -- We gentiles living in this 21st century are able to experience that climactic moment [God appearing on Sinai] by reading and studying this portion of the TORAH. Indeed, we see YHWH not quite as dramatically as the mixed multitude did, but perhaps even better through these accounts recorded in Exodus. There is a saying that hindsight is 20/20 vision, i.e., we begin to see and understand the question marks in our past only later in our lives, as we mature and hopefully become wiser and more introspective about the meaning or seeming meaninglessness of happenings in history, whether personal, national, or universal. Søren Kierkegaard adds a twist to this: “Only 20:20 vision is hindsight. Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” As we endeavor to understand each portion in the TORAH of YHWH, much of it will seem irrelevant to our current situation but if we see beyond the time-bound cultural and religious situations and begin to understand what truly has not change—human nature and the Great Revelator who designed the perfect blueprint for living in peace, happily and contentedly with family, community, country and the nations, the unquestionable conclusion is: TORAH is relevant to ALL humankind, not just to Israel, to this very day.

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