The publication of this revised and expanded 4th edition of my book Restoring Abrahamic Faith has been delayed over the past months due to pending research that I want to include. The official publication date is now October 3, 2024. The book will be published on Amazon in Kindle, Paper, and Hardcover. I also have translation in Spanish in mind, and perhaps a few other languages.
Restoring Abrahamic Faith (Charlotte, NC: Genesis2000, 2024).
This is a non-specialist book written in plain language that takes the Hebrew Bible as its foundational text. It addresses five basic areas: Knowing God, The Way, The Plan, The Messiahs, and Turning to God. It was written particularly for those interested in understanding Jesus in his own historical context, as a first century Jew; an exponent of the faith of Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets, rather than the founder of the new religion we know today as Christianity.
From the Preface:
This little book was first published in 1991 as a forty-eight-page stapled pamphlet. I made it available to a few hundred friends and interested readers as part of Genesis 2000, the publishing enterprise I had formed in 1987. It was subsequently expanded into a spiral bound “book” in 1993 and a few thousand copies were printed and distributed. In 2008 it appeared in its third incarnation as a professionally printed paperback book—now out of print. This fourth edition is revised and expanded with much new material.
I began thinking seriously about the contents of this book back in the late 1960s. I had graduated from college with majors in Greek and biblical Studies, fired by a passion for discovering the historical Jesus. It was that Quest that led me to the insights and concepts represented herein. The more I learned about Jesus, the more I realized how vital it was to see him as a Jew of his time, who put his faith in the God of Abraham, who upheld the Torah and the Hebrew Prophets, and who lived and died for his ancestral Hebrew faith.
I was raised in an evangelical Christian family, and I had grown up with a strong emphasis on the New Testament. The “Old Testament,” as we called it, was looked on as mere “background” to the superseding revelation brought by Jesus and the apostle Paul. It was even common to speak of “the old Law” as “done away.” I had never taken the “Jewishness” of Jesus seriously—at least not in terms of its implications. And I assumed, since Paul was such a dominant influence in the evangelical Christian tradition, that whatever he presented as his “Gospel Message” was identical to that of Jesus. That was then and this is now. I ended up making an academic career out of my passion for the study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity—or perhaps I should say, as Paula Fredriksen puts it so well, that brief period “when Christians were Jews.”
I presented the results of my forty years of academic work on the historical Jesus based on textual research and archaeology, in a triad of books— published by Simon & Schuster: The Jesus Dynasty (2006), The Jesus Discovery (2012) and Paul and Jesus (2012). More recently I completed a fourth book in this non-specialist series on “Christian Origins,” The Lost Mary: From Jewish Mother of Jesus to Virgin Mother of God (forthcoming: Knopf, Fall 2025), seeking to interpret the “Jesus movement” through the turbulent life and times of Jesus’ mother. I have also nearly completed work on a fifth book in this series: Jesus Betrayed: How the Church Rejected the Message of its Founder.
This book, Restoring Abrahamic Faith moves out of those academic parameters and is much more of a personal “non-specialist” exposition of what I call Hebraic faith. I am enamored with the Hebrew Bible—Torah, Prophets, and Writings—those texts generally considered as sacred Scripture in period we refer to as late Second Temple Judaism. To put it in Christian terms, my focus is on the “Bible of Jesus” and that of his earliest followers. The Hebrew Bible is a vast collection of texts, spanning centuries, and composed by dozens of writers and editors, but it nonetheless reflects at its core, an emerging vision of the Creator God (i.e. the “Force of all Forces”), of human potential and purpose, and the unrealized hope of the Creator’s will “done on earth as in heaven.” That vision is one that beckons us across the ages and seems increasingly relevant in our troubled new millennium. I hope my readers will find this book both informative and inspirational.
Shavuot/Pentecost
June 16, 2024
Charlotte, NC
Endorsements
This terrific little book is a “must read.” We love this book because it takes the Bible completely seriously, explores it fearlessly, following the text itself, and other sources, and explains things – including, e.g., the nature and early history of Christianity, but also many aspects of the Torah Tradition itself – directly, simply, and rigorously honestly. This is an openhearted, large-souled book, very American, in its way (in its trust in the power of logic, truth and the black-letter Scripture itself to create change), which convincingly explains why the whole human race needs to re-think the Bible and rediscover the ancient faith of Abraham.
Michael Dallen, 1st Covenant Foundation
I just finished reading an amazing book entitled Restoring Abrahamic Faithby Professor James Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Tabor’s book is a manifesto of biblical theology deeply rooted in the text of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). The book is full of profound wisdom and penetrating observations that skillfully elucidate the meaning of numerous biblical verses. Whether or not one agrees with all of the author’s conclusions, there is much to be learned from his encyclopedic knowledge of the biblical text and archaeology. I strongly encourage anyone who has a love for God’s holy Word to read this book!
Nehemiah Gordon, Ph.D. Hebrew University, Founder, Nehemia’s Wall, biblical scholar, Author
I have just finished Restoring Abrahamic Faith. I’m not sure that my words will convey how profoundly your book has reached me. You have put into words something that I have “felt” and understood but didn’t have words or ways to convey what I felt and understood. I was raised in the Episcopalian tradition and have attended many other main line churches in my lifetime but I have always “talked to God.” Your book has given me a new understanding of what biblical Faith is. A new pathway has opened for me through your words and I can’t wait to see where it takes me.
Lori Bollinger, Executive Assistant, Trinity Episcopal Church in the City of Boston
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