The Lost Mary

"A great leap forward in understanding and contextualizing Mary's life, after two millennia of her being dismissed and rewritten by patriarchal power structures." James Cameron, creator of Avatar, Titanic, and The Terminator











"A great leap forward in understanding and contextualizing Mary's life, after two millennia of her being dismissed and rewritten by patriarchal power structures." - James Cameron, creator of Avatar, Titanic, and The Terminator




"Tabor restores her voice, her faith, her motherhood, and, most of all, her humanity, in this groundbreaking portrait that challenges everything we thought we knew about the origins of Christianity." - Reza Aslan, author of Zealot




A world-renowned historian of early Christianity and ancient Judaism lifts the veil on the life of Mary - revealing her revolutionary role as the matriarch of the Jesus movement.



Mary, mother of Jesus, is the best known - and least known - woman in history. Revered and worshipped by millions, she remains a figment of the imagination, the ethereal subject of Raphaels and Botticellis, bathed in heavenly light, too virginal and too pure to move among us.


But what about the real Mary?


The young Jewish woman and single mother of eight - five boys and three girls. The defiant citizen of Roman-occupied Galilee who survived through one of the most dangerous periods of Jewish history - an ancient "game of thrones" that claimed the lives of three of her sons: Jesus and Simon by crucifixion, James by stoning. The historical Mary whose teachings and courageous example may in fact make her the "first founder" of what we now call Christianity.


This Mary has not only been lost to us - she has been systematically erased over the past two millennia by a theological, cultural, and political program intent on removing her from the human realm and marginalizing her womanhood, motherhood, and Jewishness.


In The Lost Mary, James D. Tabor corrects the record, laying out the results of his intensive textual and archaeological sleuthing over the past three decades, including new evidence regarding Mary's genealogy (which may be hiding in plain sight in the New Testament!). Tabor's quest for the historical Mary offers a transformative perspective on Jesus and his early followers, and recovers the nature and essence of earliest Christianity.



"The Lost Mary unfolds in five radical claims... . Together these arguments are Tabor's attempt to rescue Mary from pious abstraction and revolutionize our picture of her as one of the most consequential women in history... . In recovering her story, we discover not only the hidden roots of Christianity but also a model of resilience that speaks across time. Mary, Tabor shows, reminds us that behind every movement are women whose voices have been silenced, whose influence has been hidden in plain sight." - Candida Moss, National Geographic




"She is the most revered woman in history, but how many people know who Mary, the mother of Jesus, really was? In a penetrating and deep analysis of all our available sources, James Tabor presents a surprising, historical view that places Mary in her own, first-century, Jewish context." - Bart Ehrman, author of Misquoting Jesus




"Gospels, histories, legends, traditions, archaeological artifacts: James Tabor brings all these sources to bear as he retells the story of Mary, the mother not only of Jesus but also of the movement that he championed. The Lost Mary effects an imaginative repatriation of this ancient and elusive figure, vividly conjuring both her character and the times that she lived in. Tabor's Mary is 'lost' no more." - Paula Fredriksen, author of When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation