The Matriarch of Spiritual Revolution

While traveling in Italy earlier this year, I saw hundreds of paintings of the Annunciation, Pietà, and Madonna and Child. I wondered how many of the museum and church visitors around me were aware that they were marveling at, even worshipping, a worried Jewish mother. That’s who Mary really was, but most people don’t think of her that way. Religious studies scholar James D. Tabor aims to rectify this oversight with his long-awaited new book, The Lost Mary: Rediscovering the Mother of Jesus. Stripping away the “mythical and legendary”—and meek—Holy Virgin Mother of God we typically encounter, Tabor tries to recover who Mary was as a historical person: a Jewish woman, a widowed mother of eight children, and the matriarch of a revolutionary spiritual movement.