Barbara Thiering

Barbara Thiering (born 1930) is an Australian nonfiction writer, historian, theologian, and Biblical exegete specialising in the origins of the early Christian Church. In books and journal articles, she challenges Christian orthodoxy, espousing the view that new findings present alternative answers to its supernatural beliefs. Her analysis has been rejected by many scholars in the field.

Background

Born in Sydney, Australia, Thiering graduated in 1952 from the University of Sydney with First Class Honours in Modern Languages, was a high school teacher of languages for several years, and then, while caring for her three young children, continued study and research privately. She obtained an external B.D. degree from the University of London, a M.Th. degree from Melbourne College of Divinity, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Sydney in 1973.

Work

Further information: Jesus the Man (book)

From her specialty, studying the Dead Sea Scrolls, their semiotics, and their hermeneutics, she has propounded a theory arguing that the miracles, including turning water into wine, the virgin birth, healing a man at a distance, the man who had been thirty-eight years at the pool, and the resurrection, among others, did not actually occur (as miracles), as Christians believe, nor were they legends, as some skeptics hold, but were "deliberately constructed myths" concealing (yet, to certain initiates, relating) esoteric historic events. She alleges that they never actually happened (that is, that the events they chronicle were not at all miraculous), as the authors of the Gospels knew. They wrote, according to her interpretation of the methods of pesher, which she discovers in the scrolls, on two levels. For the “babes in Christ,” there were apparent miracles, but the knowledge of exact meanings held by the highly educated members of Gnostic schools gave a real history, of what Jesus actually did.

In view of her research publications in academic journals, she was invited to lecture at Sydney University, at first in the Department of Semitic Studies, then in the School of Divinity (now the Department of Religious Studies) where she continued until her retirement. During this time she was a member of the Board of Studies in Divinity and the Board of Continuing Education, and served for twelve years as a lay member of the New South Wales Equal Opportunity Tribunal. When her work became known in the United States, she was made a fellow of the Jesus Seminar.

In 1990 a documentary film about her research, Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was shown by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Academic reception

While Thiering's thesis attracted some controversy in the media when Jesus the Man was published in 1990, her ideas have not received acceptance by many of her academic peers. In a response to a letter Thiering wrote to The New York Review of Books, objecting to a review by Dead Sea Scrolls and Jesus scholar Géza Vermes, Vermes outlined the academic reception of her work stating:

"Professor Barbara Thiering's reinterpretation of the New Testament, in which the married, divorced, and remarried Jesus, father of four, becomes the "Wicked Priest" of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has made no impact on learned opinion. Scroll scholars and New Testament experts alike have found the basis of the new theory, Thiering's use of the so-called "pesher technique", without substance."

In 1993 N. T. Wright, New Testament historian and former Bishop of Durham, wrote:

It is safe to say that no serious scholar has given this elaborate and fantastic theory any credence whatsoever. It is nearly ten years since it was published; the scholarly world has been able to take a good look at it: and the results are totally negative.

James F. McGrath, an Associate Professor in the Religion and Philosophy department at Butler University in his 1996 review of the book states that Thiering's thesis lacks proof, and that she herself acknowledges that the pesher of the Revelation of St. John is her own composition.

Selected bibliography

• Jesus the Man: New Interpretation from the Dead Sea Scrolls, re-issued in paperback with foreword by Barbara Thiering (Simon and Schuster, New York; November 2006; ISBN 1-4165-4138-1).
• Jesus of the Apocalypse: The Life of Jesus After the Crucifixion (Transworld Doubleday 1995, ISBN 0-385-40559-6). (Translated into Japanese)
• The Book That Jesus Wrote - John’s Gospel (Transworld Doubleday 1998, ISBN 0-552-14665-X)

External links

• Pesher Technique website of Dr. Barbara Thiering.
• A Review of Jesus the Man by C.B. Forbes
• Thiering's Profile at the Westar Institute
• Pesher and the Dead Sea Sectarians