Finding ‘The Real Mary’: James Tabor On Jesus’ Mother ‘Lost’ To Theology
James Tabor opens his book, “Lost Mary: Rediscovering the Mother of Jesus,” with a paradoxical statement: “Jesus’s mother, Mary, is the best-known, least-known woman in history,” arguing she had been lost through “the thick fog of later tradition and theology and systematically erased over the past two millennia by a theological, cultural and political program intent on marginalizing her womanhood and Jewishness.”
In his book, published last year, Tabor, a retired professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, set out to recover what he argues is the real, earthly Mary
Religion Unplugged recently sat down with Tabor by asking him why he wanted to write a book about Mary’s life.
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“I realized, after decades of studying early Christianity, that Mary was everywhere and nowhere at the same time,” he said. “She is the most familiar woman in history and yet almost entirely absent as a real human being.”
He added that the “sources were there — textual, archaeological, historical — but no one had tried to assemble them into a coherent portrait of Mary as a Jewish woman living under Roman occupation, raising a family, surviving violence and shaping a movement. I wanted to ask a simple question historians had largely avoided: Who was Mary before theology transformed her into the heavenly quasi-divine figure that she is to millions today?”
Finding the ‘real’ Mary
What does Tabor mean when he said Mary had been lost?
“Mary has been lost not because we lack sources, but because centuries of theology stripped away her humanity,” he said. “She lost her womanhood, her sexuality, her seven or more children, her Jewishness, and the very real world she lived and died in. She became an abstraction — holy, pure, untouchable — but no longer a woman who lived, struggled, and endured.”
Tabor argues that Mary was not a lifelong virgin in her marriage to Joseph. Matthew 1:25 says that Joseph had no marital relations with her until she bore a son. Was this the correct translation of the Greek?
“The literal Greek reads, ‘He [Joseph] took his wife, but he knew her not until she had borne a son, and he called his name Jesus.’ The natural and obvious reading is that although Joseph went ahead with the marriage, it was not consummated until after Jesus was born. The phrase ‘to know’ a woman means to have sexual relations.”
Mary’s lifelong virginity, Tabor said, was a later idea driven by ascetic theology influenced by neo-Platonism.
“This is quite alien to her Hebrew culture in which humans are blessed in ‘being fruitful and multiplying’ in a loving marriage,” Tabor added.
He said later traditions attempted to explain away references to Jesus’ siblings by redefining them as stepchildren or cousins.
“Mary and Joseph lived their lives as husband and wife. In Judaism, there is no marriage without consummation — going back to Genesis,” he added.
A single mom?
Tabor reconstructed Mary’s life from numerous sources: Archaeological evidence, the historian Josephus, the New Testament and non-Biblical texts such as the Gospel of Thomas.
He argues that that her parents were part of a wealthy family in Sepphoris, capital of Galilee, and that Mary grew up educated in a cosmopolitan city marked by political violence. Betrothed to Joseph, she became pregnant as a teenager — and that Joseph was not the father — a controversial claim — and that they settled in Nazareth.
After Jesus’ birth, Tabor added, she bore eight children. After Joseph’s death, she raised them as a single mother. Following the crucifixion, she moved to Jerusalem and became a central figure in the Jesus movement led by her “other” son James.
Tabor said Mary’s genealogy included both priestly and kingly ancestors, giving Jesus legitimate messianic credentials independent of Joseph.
“This matters because claims to messiahship in the first century were genealogical and political, not abstract or spiritualized,” he added.
Reconstructing Mary’s life
Critics said Tabor extrapolated too much from limited evidence, but he described his work as a careful balance of probability and imagination.
“The hardest part was reconstructing Mary’s life where the sources fall silent,” he said.
Despite challenging orthodoxy, Tabor said he’s rejected claims that his book diminishes Mary’s holiness.
“Mary does not become less meaningful because she was a real woman with a real life. She becomes more powerful,” he said, calling the book a contribution to Marian devotion.
Tabor said he views his work as part of a broader effort to recover the leadership of marginalized women in early Christianity. Asked about Mary’s message today, he said, “Mary’s story reminds women that history often erases their influence even when they stand at the center of events.”
Jesus’s brother also played a role
Another controversial argument was Tabor’s claim that the Beloved Disciple mentioned in the Gospel of John was not John, but James, Jesus’ brother. James later led the movement and was executed in the year 62 AD.
Tabor said the identification of John the fisherman was a late tradition without historical grounding.
“One clue is that the mysterious ‘Beloved Disciple’ is unnamed,” he said, adding that James appeared prominently and often unfavorably in the Bible.
James’ leadership role, Tabor added, was later minimized for theological reasons connected to preserving Mary’s perpetual virginity. He wrote, “Later Christian writers were obsessed with maintaining Mary’s virginity and bodily purity, to the point of denying her normal body functions like urination, defecation and menstruation,” elevating her beyond humanity.
Tabor rejects the virgin birth as a historical event, viewing it as a metaphor for holiness. He said Jesus’ illegitimacy was widely known at the time.
“My position on the biological father of Jesus is that he had one,” he said, rejecting claims that the father was a Roman soldier. He maintained that the truth remained “Mary’s secret.”
Tabor said Mary’s life under Roman oppression shaped Jesus’ message.
“Mothers shape their children,” he said. “The themes we associate with Jesus — reversal of power, care for the poor, resistance to domination — did not emerge in a vacuum.”
Brian Bromberger is a freelance writer/journalist who works as a staff reporter and arts critic for The Bay Area Reporter weekly newspaper in San Francisco.