The Lost Mary

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

“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

“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

“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


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 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.