For two thousand years, cathedrals, hymns, and paintings have celebrated Mary, the mother of Jesus, as the Virgin Mother of God. From Michelangelo's Pietà to the gilded mosaics of Byzantium, she is most often depicted serene, young, and eternally pure. Yet behind the halo and icons lies a very different woman, a life of flesh and blood obscured by centuries of theological patina. According to biblical scholar James Tabor, a respected archaeologist and former professor specializing in ancient Judaism and early Christianity at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, rediscovering the historical Mary could not only transform our understanding of Jesus but also rewrite the very origins of Christianity. James Tabor's argument, presented in his latest book titled The Lost Mary, unfolds through five radical theses: he believes Mary was one of the founders of Christianity, that she was of royal descent and also descended from the first high priest, that she was deliberately erased from Christian memory, that she transmitted the essential teachings of Jesus, and that she must first and foremost be considered a Jewish woman grappling with the violence that plagued Roman Judea in the first century of our era. According to the traditional narrative, Christianity begins with Jesus and spreads through the preaching of Peter and Paul. Mary is present, but only on the margins: a quiet presence in the manger, at the wedding in Cana, and at the foot of the cross. James Tabor insists that these portrayals minimize her true role. Mary, he argues, was not only the mother of Jesus but the matriarch of a dynasty. She was also the mother of James, who succeeded Jesus as the leader of the movement in Jerusalem, and related to John the Baptist through her cousin Elizabeth. These three men, John, Jesus, and James, shaped the first decades of Jesus' movement, and Mary was the person who connected them. It was a "family affair." During the crucifixion, in the Gospel of John, Jesus entrusts his mother to an anonymous disciple referred to only as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." James Tabor argues that this beloved disciple was actually James, Jesus' brother, and that from the beginning of his ministry to the end, Mary and James were closely involved in the direction of the movement. If this is indeed the case, far from being a secondary figure, Mary would have been the cornerstone of the movement, providing stability, continuity, and inspiration after the crucifixion of her son. One of the reasons historians did not recognize her role, writes James Tabor, is that in the 19th century, when academics began searching for the historical Jesus, "women were largely marginalized in the academic world, within the Church, and in society more generally." The marginalization of women in the 19th century, he says, led academics to project their own social structures onto first-century Galilee and thus to overlook the role of Mary. Women were also marginalized in first-century Galilee, but antiquity knew influential women. Bernadette Brooten, emeritus professor at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, for example, has compiled epigraphic testimonies for her book Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue, which show the influence and power women had in ancient Judaism. This does not mean that Mary herself was influential, and there is very little ancient source material suggesting this, but in principle James Tabor is correct. Viewed from this angle, he says, Mary was not simply present at the beginning of Christianity, she was a matriarch whose wisdom and self-sacrifice enabled the emergence of a new religious tradition. A "doubly royal" lineage? Mary's authority was not only maternal but also genealogical. James Tabor argues that Mary descended from both a priestly lineage and a royal lineage, making her and her children "doubly royal." The crucial evidence for this lies in Luke's genealogy, traditionally interpreted as tracing Joseph's ancestry. Strangely, James Tabor sees in this list, which goes from David to Jesus, a genealogy of Mary. Unlike Matthew's lineage, which follows the royal line of Solomon, Luke's genealogy includes many names associated with Israel's priestly class: Levi, Eliazer, and Jannaï. Mary, he suggests, descended from both David, the emblematic king of Israel, and Aaron, the first high priest (according to Leviticus, all temple priests had to be descended from Aaron). But this argument poses a difficulty. If Luke's account of the birth of Jesus focuses on Mary, the genealogy itself never mentions her and instead traces Jesus' lineage through Joseph. James Tabor offers a convincing argument for why one could see in Luke 3:2 an allusion to Mary, although other scholars who have considered this possibility, such as Raymond Brown, author of The Birth of the Messiah, do not agree. If James Tabor is correct, this heritage would have given Mary's children the right to claim power as legitimate heirs to both the throne and the Temple, although many others would likely have been able to make similar claims if they had dared. There is no evidence of this in the New Testament, but some early Christian authors, such as Hippolytus of Rome and Origen, writers of the late second and early third centuries, said of Jesus that he was "of mixed descent," combining the royal lineage of Judah with the priestly lineage of Levi. Likewise, James, Mary's second son, is presented in the writings of Hegesippus as wearing priestly garments, something that would only have been allowed if it was indeed considered that he belonged to the priestly class. Epiphanius, a fourth-century author, suggests that James may have worn priestly garments in the Jerusalem Temple itself. These sources are well later and theologically motivated, but they demonstrate an interest among early Christians in creating a priestly lineage for Jesus. This must come from Mary, argues James Tabor, "because Joseph had no claim to any priestly status whatsoever." Erased from Christian history If Mary's role was so central, why does the New Testament so often place her in the background? If Mary indeed had a royal lineage both religious and secular, why are there only very indirect signs of this in the Gospels? James Tabor points to what he considers a deliberate erasure. In the oldest Gospel, that of Mark, Jesus is strikingly called "the son of Mary," an unusual way to name a Jewish man. Joseph is completely absent from the narrative, which makes Mary the central figure of the family. But competing visions of Jesus' legacy relegated Mary to the margins. In Paul's epistles, she disappears almost entirely. Paul never names her; he only says of Jesus that he was "born of a woman." The other Gospels reintroduce Joseph into the narrative and elevate him to the role of legal father, which further diverts attention from Mary. According to James Tabor, this silence is not accidental. By erasing Mary, Paul and other prominent later Christian figures could divert attention from Jesus' Jewish family and redirect it toward his cosmic identity as Christ. The theological emphasis, once placed on a dynasty of flesh and blood rooted in Judean politics, now focused on a message of universal salvation. Mary, James, and the rest of Jesus' family were eclipsed by Peter and Paul, who became the "official pillars" of the religion. Other scholars have also advanced similar arguments about the erasure and marginalization of women in the early Church. In a series of publications, Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, a lecturer who teaches New Testament at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, has shown that early Christian manuscripts had deleted references to Mary Magdalene. An article recently published in the Journal of Biblical Literature by Yii-Jan Lin, a lecturer at Yale Divinity School, demonstrates how Junia, named an apostle by Paul, was devalued and reinterpreted in Christian interpretation. James Tabor advances an equally solid argument, if not more controversial: Mary was sidelined in favor of Paul and his own vision of discipleship. During this process spanning three centuries, Mary was made the eternally pure, submissive, mother of God; certainly a saint, but historically silenced. The source of Jesus' message And if Jesus' radical message of justice and compassion came not only from a divine revelation but also from his mother? Mary experienced poverty, oppression, and loss. Becoming a young widow, she raised a large family in a land shaken by revolt and Roman brutality. Her experience, suggests James Tabor, gave her a deep sense of justice. In the Gospel of Luke, she speaks words referred to as the Magnificat: "He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty." (Luke 1:52-53) According to James Tabor, whether she actually spoke these words or not, they reflect the ethics that Jesus himself would later proclaim: the kingdom of God belongs to the poor, the last will be first, the meek will inherit the earth. Mary's voice resonates in her son's most famous teachings, the Beatitudes, found in the Sermon on the Mount. Her vision of a reorganized world influenced not only Jesus' preaching but also the role of James in Jerusalem. After Jesus' crucifixion, it was James who took the lead among the disciples in Jerusalem. We know this from Paul, who mentions James and his tense relations with the leaders of the Jerusalem Church. James Tabor imagines Mary living with James and leading the Jerusalem Church alongside him, as the "nerve center of the entire Jesus movement." He even identifies a first-century house, located under the Church of the Apostles, built on Mount Zion during the Crusades era in Jerusalem, as their home at that time. The hypothesis is attractive, especially since it aligns with the social realities of the time: widows like Mary generally lived with family members, such as James. It should be noted, however, that the Bible remains strangely silent about Mary's life after the events of Easter. Viewed this way, Mary was not only the womb that bore Jesus; she was the source of his message. This aspect of James Tabor's argument is undoubtedly the least controversial and the most intuitive. The Catholic tradition assumes that Mary would have taught the young Jesus the details of the Annunciation, the episode where the archangel Gabriel announces to her that she will conceive a child. In an article for the website Catholic Answers, an online database for Catholic teaching, Michael Pakaluk argues that Mary would also have influenced the composition of the Gospel of John. A historical Jewish woman James Tabor advocates for taking Mary out of the "display case" of Christian tradition and remembering her as a historical figure: a Jewish woman from the first century raising her children under the yoke of Roman power. This should be evident, but a heavy cloud formed by centuries of Christian interpretation and tradition has obscured both her original religious identity and the trials she had to endure. This begins with her first name. If we call her Mary, the New Testament refers to her by the Greek name Mariam, a Hebrew name that connects her to Mariam, sister of Moses and Aaron. This Mary was a young mother who likely gave birth under precarious conditions, who went every day to fetch water, and who had difficulty feeding her children. It is likely that she was particularly young when she gave birth to Jesus; she must have been about fourteen years old. Jesus' parentage was surrounded by controversy. Although the Gospels make God the father of Jesus, Mary's contemporaries were probably not as generous. As James Tabor explains, there are later legends claiming that Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier, but "from our historical perspective, it would have to be said 'of unknown father.'" As the Gospels report, Joseph may have protected Mary from cruel rumors and gossip, but his support was temporary. It is likely that some time after her arranged marriage to Joseph, she became a widow and raised her sons and daughters with limited help. Joseph, notes James Tabor, never appears in our sources after Jesus reaches the age of twelve. We only see Mary traveling alone with her children. According to the Gospels, she was also Jewish and traveled to Jerusalem and the Temple on occasion for religious festivals and was deeply involved in Jewish life. She experienced political terror as the Herodian dynasty and Rome executed those who claimed to be messiahs. In the year 4 BCE, as Mary entered adulthood, Galilee experienced a revolt. A rebel named Judas the Galilean seized the royal arsenal during the battle of Sepphoris and declared himself king, sparking messianic hopes in the surrounding villages, including Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph lived. Rome's response was swift and merciless. The Syrian legate Varus marched with two legions (about 12,000 men) into Galilee, reducing Sepphoris to ashes and sowing terror. Josephus, the Jewish historian, reports that the Romans crucified two thousand rebels along the major roads, so that for as far as the eye could see, the roads were lined with crosses, each bearing a dying victim. For villagers like Mary and her family, who could see the smoke from the city from Nazareth, this grim spectacle was inevitable: the stench of carbonized ruins, the cries of the crucified, the sight of neighbors' bodies hanging just meters from the paths they took daily. As James Tabor points out, this was a formative trauma, a first lesson on the cost of empire and the price of messianic hope. But this was not the most harrowing experience. In her later years, three of her sons (Jesus, James, and Simon) had been killed for their claims or their role as leaders. Her life was marked by her ability to resist, by grief, and by resilience. According to James Tabor, restoring Mary to history involves seeing her not as an ethereal figure but as a woman whose faith and courage were forged in suffering. Her Judaism was essential: her entire life revolved around the Torah, the Temple rituals, and the hopes of Israel's deliverance. She belonged to a community waiting for justice and she passed on this hope to her children. For centuries, Christian tradition has celebrated Mary as the Virgin while ignoring the woman behind the myth. The reconstruction proposed by James Tabor is not without controversy, and there will be no shortage of discussion about certain aspects of his argumentation, but it invites us to see her anew as a founder, matriarch, visionary, and survivor. By retracing her history, we discover not only the hidden roots of Christianity but also a model of resilience that resonates across the ages. As James Tabor shows, Mary reminds us that behind every movement are women whose voices were silenced, but whose influence is hidden just beneath our eyes. Two thousand years later, the most radical act may be to designate her as she was: not only "blessed among women" but also the forgotten founder of Christianity.