This is the third post in my interest in the ages of the disciples and their apparant youth. This post is the last of a long ChatGPT conversation on 8/7/2026. The conversation digs into the age ranges of the 12 disciples and others. That first post led to the second related to how James must have been much older than most of the disciples. That post led to this one, as the other responses did not mention Mary, the mother of Jesus, who could have been like a grandmother to the youngest disciples. The “grandmother” thought is mine and not addressed in the prompt/responses in these three posts. But it sounds plausible.

Next Prompt – I [Tom] like the last response but want you to consider the Recent book “The Lost Mary” by Dr. James Tabor and reconsider your response. Continue to provide all sources in line. [Chat’s original response is pasted below this one as it seems to be a traditional perspective before Tabor’s book that was well received by other scholars.]

Response – Yes. Having now looked specifically at James D. Tabor’s The Lost Mary: Rediscovering the Mother of Jesus (2025) and the early critical reaction to it, I would revise my previous answer in an important way.

My earlier answer treated Mary as a plausible but largely unsubstantiated participant in the family-based authority surrounding James. Tabor’s reconstruction is much stronger: he argues that Mary herself was a central figure in the Jesus movement, functioning as its matriarch, with James succeeding Jesus in a family-based/dynastic leadership structure. That is a substantially different historical hypothesis, and it deserves to be distinguished from the more cautious mainstream reconstruction.

Tabor’s reconstruction of Mary

Tabor’s central thesis is quite explicit. He describes Mary as “one of the forgotten founders of earliest Christianity” and essentially the “godmother” or matriarch of the Jesus movement. He argues that she was not merely Jesus’s mother but remained central to the movement before and after Jesus’s death.

More specifically, Tabor proposes:

Mary was the mother of eight children—five sons and three daughters.
Joseph apparently disappeared from the Gospel narrative after Jesus was twelve, leading Tabor to reconstruct Mary as a widow/single mother during Jesus’s adult life.
Mary possessed Davidic and priestly ancestry, which Tabor calls her “doubly royal” status.
Her sons consequently carried a family connection to both royal and priestly legitimacy.
James, whom Tabor identifies as Mary’s second-born son, became the successor to Jesus after the crucifixion.
Mary remained “by his side” in this leadership.
James was subsequently succeeded by his brother Simon, producing what Tabor regards as a dynastic succession within the Jesus movement.

This is considerably stronger than the formulation I gave previously.

The key change: Mary isn’t merely supporting James

In my previous response, I suggested:

Mary may have been part of the social foundation of James’s authority without herself exercising public leadership.

Tabor would say that this understates the evidence.

His reconstruction is closer to:

Mary + James constituted the family leadership of the post-Jesus movement.

The publisher’s description of the book is unusually explicit about this: Tabor says that “her second-born son, James, with Mary by his side,” took over leadership after Jesus’s execution and that the succession was dynastic.

That changes the way I would interpret Acts 1:14.

“Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”

Rather than simply being Luke’s way of mentioning Jesus’s surviving family, Tabor sees this as an important glimpse of the family at the center of the post-Easter movement.

And that is consistent with what we have already established about James.

The family structure becomes much more interesting

If Tabor’s reconstruction is substantially correct, the early movement looks less like:

Jesus → Peter → the Twelve

and more like:

Jesus → Mary + James + the family, alongside Peter and the other apostles

with several different kinds of authority operating simultaneously.

Person	Potential source of authority
Mary	Mother of Jesus; matriarch; family lineage; continuity with Jesus
James	Brother of Jesus; second-born son; resurrection appearance; Jerusalem leadership
Simon	Brother of Jesus; later successor to James
Peter	One of Jesus’s closest disciples; member of the Twelve; resurrection witness
John	Member of the Twelve; close disciple; possibly connected to Mary’s household
Other disciples	Membership in Jesus’s circle/Twelve

This is a substantially more kinship-oriented model of the earliest movement than the traditional apostolic succession model.

And it fits an important fact we discussed earlier: James was not one of the Twelve, yet Paul places him alongside Peter and John as one of the three “pillars” of the Jerusalem movement (Galatians 2:9).

Tabor also makes Mary’s genealogy much more important

This is one of the more controversial parts of his reconstruction.

Tabor argues that Mary herself came from a Davidic and priestly lineage. He believes the Lukan genealogy may preserve evidence for Mary’s ancestry rather than simply being another genealogy of Joseph. He consequently sees Mary’s family as possessing a combination of royal and priestly credentials that could have had enormous significance in a first-century Jewish messianic movement.

That is crucial to his argument about James.

If Mary was simply:

Jesus’s mother

then James’s succession could be explained through ordinary family relationships.

But if Mary was:

a woman of Davidic and priestly lineage whose sons carried that ancestry

then Tabor sees a much more consequential dynastic family.

In that reconstruction, James’s leadership isn’t merely:

“Jesus’s brother became leader.”

It becomes:

“Jesus’s brother, through their mother, belonged to the family lineage that could legitimately carry forward Jesus’s messianic movement.”

That is a much more ambitious historical thesis.

There is an important connection to your earlier question about James’s age

This also makes your observation about James being the second-born child considerably more relevant.

Tabor explicitly calls James Mary’s “second-born son.”

If Jesus was Mary’s firstborn and James was second-born, then James would naturally have been:

younger than Jesus,
older than Simon and Judas,
probably older than the younger siblings,
and potentially a mature adult during Jesus’s public ministry.

That gives us a possible family hierarchy:

Mary
↓
Jesus — firstborn
↓
James — second-born
↓
Simon
↓
Judas
↓
other sons/daughters

If Jesus died around age 30–33, James could quite reasonably have been in his twenties or perhaps around thirty.

And that makes the possibility we were exploring earlier—James being considerably older than some of Jesus’s disciples—quite plausible.

But I would still not claim that Tabor establishes that James was older than Peter. We simply don’t have Peter’s birth date.

What makes Tabor’s argument particularly interesting is Mary + James

I think this is the part I underemphasized in my previous answer.

Tabor isn’t merely proposing that:

Mary was an influential woman.

He is proposing that Mary and James functioned together as the surviving family leadership after Jesus’s death.

That interpretation makes several otherwise disconnected pieces of evidence more interesting:

Acts 1:14

Mary is specifically named alongside Jesus’s brothers.

Galatians 1:19

James is already a major figure when Paul first encounters the Jerusalem movement.

Galatians 2:9

James is one of the three “pillars.”

Galatians 2:12

People associated with “James” exercise enough authority at Antioch for Paul to discuss their arrival.

Acts 15

James gives the decisive formulation at the Jerusalem council.

Josephus, Antiquities 20.200

James is independently remembered by Josephus as “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.”

Those are all relatively strong pieces of evidence.

The more difficult question is whether Mary was actively exercising leadership alongside him.

And here is where I would modify my previous answer most substantially

I previously said:

“Mary may have been part of the social foundation of James’s authority without herself being the person who exercised the public leadership.”

After examining Tabor’s argument, I would now say:

That is one plausible reconstruction, but it is too conservative to represent the full range of historical hypotheses. Tabor makes a serious historical argument that Mary herself functioned as a central matriarchal figure in the movement, with James operating alongside her.

However, I would not say:

“Critical scholarship has established that Mary was the matriarch of the Jesus movement.”

It hasn’t.

Tabor’s proposal is a distinctive historical reconstruction, not a consensus position.

The strongest criticism of Tabor

This is where it is important to separate Tabor’s evidence from Tabor’s conclusions.

Luke Timothy Johnson recently published a substantial critique titled “Manufactured Matriarch” specifically responding to Tabor’s book. Johnson characterizes Tabor’s thesis as the claim that Mary and Jesus’s biological family were the leaders of a continuing “dynasty” and that Mary functioned as its matriarch. Johnson argues that Tabor’s reconstruction relies too heavily on later sources, speculative archaeological connections, and a tendency to construct historical narratives from very limited evidence.

That is a serious criticism.

Kirkus likewise found Tabor’s reconstruction interesting and thought-provoking, but specifically criticized his tendency to move from plausible possibilities to conclusions that are “not necessarily probable.” The review says his claim that Mary was the “glue” of the movement is supported by a mixture of historical-critical interpretation, apocryphal material, and speculation.

So I would distinguish the evidence like this:

Relatively secure

Mary survived Jesus and participated in the earliest Jerusalem community.

Acts 1:14 is very good evidence.

James became a major leader of the Jerusalem movement.

Paul is excellent evidence.

James’s family relationship to Jesus mattered to his identification and authority.

Paul and Josephus support this.

Jesus’s brothers became members of the movement after Jesus’s death.

Acts 1:14 supports this.

Reasonably plausible

Mary possessed significant status within the Jesus family.

Very plausible given her position as mother of Jesus and her continued presence with the movement.

Mary’s family status contributed to James’s authority.

Quite plausible within a first-century kinship society.

Mary may have exercised informal influence within the movement.

Certainly possible.

Tabor’s more speculative reconstruction

Mary was the matriarchal leader of the Jesus movement.

Possible, but not directly demonstrated.

Mary and James jointly led the movement after Jesus’s death.

Possible, but the evidence is indirect.

The succession from Jesus → James → Simon was deliberately dynastic.

Interesting and potentially explanatory, but considerably more speculative.

Mary’s Davidic + priestly ancestry provided the basis for this dynastic authority.

This is among Tabor’s most controversial arguments.

There is one piece of Tabor’s argument I find particularly relevant to our discussion

Tabor argues that the later Christian presentation of Mary as primarily the virginal, celibate, passive “Mother of God” obscured the historical woman who was actually a Jewish mother and matriarch. His argument is not simply that Mary was forgotten; it is that the theological development of Mary changed the kind of person she was remembered as being.

That is historically worth taking seriously even if one rejects parts of his reconstruction.

And this is where feminist historians such as Bernadette Brooten become relevant. National Geographic’s discussion of Tabor’s argument notes Brooten’s inscriptional work demonstrating that women could exercise significant authority in ancient Jewish communities, including women identified as leaders in synagogues. Brooten’s evidence doesn’t establish that Mary was such a leader, but it undermines the simplistic assumption that “a first-century Jewish woman could not have had substantial religious influence.”

That distinction is important.

My revised reconstruction

Given everything we’ve discussed—including the age question about the Twelve—I would now construct the historical possibilities this way:

Mary

adult Jewish woman;
mother of a large family;
survived Jesus;
present in the earliest Jerusalem community;
potentially possessed significant family/social authority;
possibly an important source of continuity after Jesus’s death.

James

probably Jesus’s younger brother;
probably the oldest of Jesus’s younger brothers if the biological-sibling reading is correct;
therefore potentially substantially older than some members of the Twelve;
not one of the Twelve;
nevertheless becomes one of the three major “pillars”;
ultimately the dominant Jerusalem leader.

Peter

adult, married;
probably one of the older members of the Twelve;
major apostolic authority;
but not necessarily the sole or even supreme authority in Jerusalem.

Younger disciples

potentially included several teenagers/young adults;
their youth would make Jesus’s familial language toward them more understandable;
their authority derived primarily from discipleship rather than family lineage.

That produces a fascinating possibility:

The earliest Jesus movement may have contained both an apostolic leadership structure and a family-based leadership structure at the same time.

Peter and the Twelve represented discipleship/apostolic authority.

Mary and James represented familial/household authority.

And the evidence we have from Paul suggests that both kinds of authority were already operating in Jerusalem within the first generation.

That, in my view, is a stronger historical hypothesis than the simple model I gave you previously.

One important correction concerning Tabor

I would also be careful with the phrase “James succeeded Jesus.” Tabor uses that sort of succession language, and there is a good historical basis for saying James became the leading figure in Jerusalem. But Paul does not say that Jesus appointed James as his successor. Rather, we see James emerge as a leader after Jesus’s death. So “James became the principal leader of the Jerusalem Jesus movement” is much more firmly established than “Jesus designated James as his successor.”

And Tabor’s distinctive contribution is to ask whether Mary’s continuing presence and family authority help explain that transition. That is the part of his thesis that I think deserves much more attention than my previous answer gave it.

Finally, Tabor’s book is not an obscure fringe publication: it was published by Knopf in September 2025, and scholars including Paula Fredriksen, John Dominic Crossan, Joan E. Taylor, Bart Ehrman, and Amy-Jill Levine supplied highly favorable endorsements emphasizing its historical and contextual contribution, although those endorsements should not be treated as endorsements of every specific claim in the book.

James Tabor’s *The Lost Mary* — publisher information

So, yes: after considering Tabor, I would give Mary considerably more weight in the reconstruction of the earliest Jesus movement than I did in my previous answer—but I would distinguish “Mary was an important family matriarch whose presence may have contributed to the movement’s continuity” from the stronger claim “Mary was demonstrably its co-leader.” The first is historically quite plausible; the second is Tabor’s distinctive and much more controversial reconstruction.

Below is the Prompt and Response immediately prior to the one above where I asked Chat to consider Tabor’s recent book, The Lost Mary. It is included here as IMO it provides a traditional analysis that does not provide the expansive perspective that Tabor recently demostrated.

Prompt – The family member who has not been mentioned in this conversation is the mother, Mary. I agree that what evidence we have shows James is leading the Jesus Movement but are there any scholars that see Mary as having a role?

Response – Yes. There are critical and feminist scholars who argue that Mary probably had a more significant role in the earliest Jesus movement than the very sparse New Testament references would lead us to think. But the evidence for Mary as an actual leader is much weaker than the evidence for James as a leader.

The most useful distinction is between three claims:

Mary was a participant in the earliest Jerusalem movement — strong textual evidence.
Mary had a special status within that movement because she was Jesus’ mother — quite plausible and supported by some scholars.
Mary exercised leadership or authority comparable to James, Peter, or John — a minority scholarly reconstruction, with much more speculative evidence.

1. The most important verse is Acts 1:14

Luke specifically names Mary in the group gathered in Jerusalem after Jesus’ departure:

“All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”

— Acts 1:14, NRSVUE

This is significant for several reasons.

Luke has just listed the Eleven individually in 1:13. He then describes the larger gathering:

the apostles + women + Mary + Jesus’ brothers.

Mary is therefore not merely mentioned as part of a biographical flashback. She is physically present with the community that is preparing for the emergence of the movement in Jerusalem.

Mary F. Foskett, in the Oxford Handbook of New Testament, Gender, and Sexuality, emphasizes that Mary’s New Testament “footprint” is very small compared with the enormous later role attributed to her, but she specifically examines how historical-critical and feminist approaches have reassessed that footprint.

2. Ally Kateusz makes the strongest historical argument

The scholar who comes closest to the question you’re asking is Ally Kateusz, a historian of early Christianity who has specifically investigated the possibility that Mary’s role in early Christianity has been suppressed or obscured by later male-dominated representations.

Her book Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership is particularly relevant. Kateusz argues that early Christian evidence preserves memories of women exercising authority as:

apostles,
baptizers,
teachers,
and presiders at the Eucharistic meal.

More specifically, she argues that Mary herself may have been remembered as a model of female religious leadership.

This is substantially more ambitious than saying Mary was simply present in Acts 1:14.

Kateusz’s argument is based heavily on early Christian art, liturgical evidence, textual traditions, and the ways Mary is represented in early Christian sources rather than simply on the canonical New Testament.

That distinction is important: her reconstruction is possible historical interpretation, not something that Acts explicitly tells us.

3. Kateusz sees something important in the way Luke presents Mary

Kateusz makes an especially interesting observation about Luke-Acts.

Mary appears prominently at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, particularly in the Magnificat:

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…”

— Luke 1:46–47

Mary’s speech in Luke 1:46–55 is the longest speech attributed to a woman in the New Testament.

Then, at the beginning of Acts, Luke specifically names her again:

“Mary the mother of Jesus”

— Acts 1:14

Kateusz argues that this creates a narrative connection between Mary as a prophetic figure at the beginning of Luke and Mary participating in the community awaiting the Spirit at the beginning of Acts. That is a genuinely interesting observation even if one does not accept Kateusz’s stronger conclusions.

4. But there is a major critical objection

A historical-critical scholar can respond:

Acts 1:14 may simply be Luke’s way of completing the story of Jesus’ family.

Luke has already told us extensively about Mary in his infancy narrative. He knows who she is. So naming her in Acts could be a literary device connecting Luke and Acts, rather than evidence that Mary exercised leadership.

A source-critical study of Mary argues precisely this point, noting that Luke’s reference to Mary in Acts 1:14 may derive from his own earlier portrayal of Mary and may serve his literary purposes rather than preserving independent historical information.

That is an important counterargument.

So we have to distinguish:

Mary is deliberately placed inside the earliest Jerusalem community

from:

Mary was a leader of that community.

The first is directly supported by Acts.

The second is an inference.

5. The position of Mary in Acts 1:14 is nevertheless unusual

There is something worth noticing in Luke’s wording.

He doesn’t say merely:

“the women and Jesus’ family.”

Instead:

“the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.”

Mary is singled out by name and relationship.

That makes her different from the otherwise unnamed women.

Compare:

“the women”

then:

“Mary the mother of Jesus”

then:

“his brothers.”

The grammatical structure therefore gives Mary a degree of prominence within the larger group.

The Cambridge commentary, for example, explicitly notes that Mary is mentioned separately from the other women and regards this as reflecting her special interest in Jesus.

That is not evidence of formal leadership, but it is evidence of special status.

6. Her family status may have been important

This connects directly with our previous discussion about James.

If the biological-sibling interpretation of Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55 is correct, then after Jesus’ death the Jerusalem group contained a remarkable family cluster:

Mary — Jesus’ mother

James — Jesus’ brother

Joses — Jesus’ brother

Simon — Jesus’ brother

Judas — Jesus’ brother

And Acts 1:14 explicitly places Mary and Jesus’ brothers together in the Jerusalem community.

That is potentially very significant sociologically.

Rather than imagining the earliest movement as:

Jesus → Twelve → church

we may have something closer to:

Jesus’ disciples + Jesus’ family + women who followed Jesus → Jerusalem movement

And within that family group, James eventually becomes the dominant male leader.

It is therefore reasonable to ask whether Mary’s position as the mother of Jesus contributed to the family’s collective authority.

I don’t know of a major critical scholar who has demonstrated that this was the case, but the social-historical possibility is quite reasonable.

7. Mary and James may represent two different kinds of authority

This is where I think your line of inquiry becomes especially fruitful.

The evidence may point toward:

James → authority as Jesus’ brother, resurrection witness, Torah-observant Jewish leader

Mary → authority as Jesus’ mother and a member of the original Jerusalem community

Those are different kinds of social capital.

And first-century Mediterranean kinship societies placed enormous importance on family honor and lineage.

So Mary’s presence may have reinforced the legitimacy of the family around James even if Mary herself did not exercise formal institutional authority.

In other words:

Mary may have been part of the social foundation of James’ authority without herself being the person who exercised the public leadership.

That is a much more historically cautious proposition than saying “Mary was the leader.”

8. There is another fascinating clue: Jesus’ brothers apparently changed status after the resurrection

John 7:5 says:

“For not even his brothers believed in him.”

Yet Acts 1:14 places them among the believers.

And James becomes a leader.

Mary, meanwhile, is already with the community.

That gives us an intriguing family trajectory:

During Jesus’ ministry

Mary → associated with Jesus
Brothers → skeptical/nonbelieving

After Jesus’ death

Mary → member of the Jerusalem community
Brothers → members of the community
James → major leader

This could indicate that Jesus’ family became an important component of the post-Easter movement, rather than merely being absorbed into it.

9. What about Mary’s relationship with Peter?

The New Testament gives us no evidence that Mary was subordinate to Peter.

That is worth saying because later Christian structures can make us unconsciously read the first-century movement as though it already had an apostolic hierarchy.

Acts 1:14 simply places:

the apostles
the women
Mary
Jesus’ brothers

together in prayer.

Peter is not presented as Mary’s superior.

Nor does Luke say:

“Peter led Mary and the others.”

The hierarchy we might expect from later Christianity isn’t visible here.

That doesn’t prove equality, but it cautions against assuming it.

10. What about John 19:26–27?

John has Jesus say from the cross:

“Woman, here is your son.”

and to the beloved disciple:

“Here is your mother.”

— John 19:26–27

If this is historical, it could mean that Jesus specifically entrusted Mary to the beloved disciple rather than to James.

That would be potentially significant because James was apparently not yet a believer according to John 7:5.

Thus a historically plausible sequence could be:

Jesus’ death: James is not yet a follower; John is entrusted with Mary.

Post-resurrection: James becomes a believer.

Later: James becomes the dominant Jerusalem leader.

That would explain why John, rather than James, is associated with Mary at the crucifixion.

But there is a major caveat: John 19:26–27 is a highly theological passage, and historical-critical scholars disagree about how much historical information can safely be extracted from it.

11. Stephen J. Shoemaker goes further—but in a different direction

Stephen J. Shoemaker’s Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion argues that Mary’s importance in early Christianity has been underestimated by historians, particularly because much attention has focused on later Marian doctrine rather than the earlier development of Marian traditions.

He finds evidence for Marian devotion beginning considerably earlier than is sometimes assumed, including evidence from the second century onward.

Shoemaker therefore strengthens the broader proposition that Mary’s importance was not simply a late medieval invention.

But he is not making the same claim as Kateusz that Mary was demonstrably a leader of the first Jerusalem community.

12. What I think the evidence supports

I’d rank the propositions this way:

Proposition	Assessment
Mary was a historical member of Jesus’ family	Very strong
Mary survived Jesus’ death	Strong — Acts 1:14
Mary joined the post-Easter Jesus movement	Strong — Acts 1:14
Mary had special status because she was Jesus’ mother	Strongly plausible
Mary was present among the Jerusalem believers before Pentecost	Strong — Acts 1:14
Mary participated in the Pentecost community	Probable from Luke’s narrative sequence, though not explicitly stated in Acts 2
Mary exercised informal influence within Jesus’ family/community	Plausible
Mary was a formal leader comparable to James	Not established
Mary was an apostle/official leader	Minority scholarly reconstruction
Mary was deliberately remembered as a model for female Christian leadership	Supported by some feminist/early-Christian scholarship, especially Kateusz
Mary actually presided over early Christian worship	Possible but highly disputed

The really interesting possibility

Given the direction of our discussion, I think there is a historically plausible family-centered reconstruction worth investigating, without overstating the evidence:

Mary → matriarchal/familial authority
James → adult male family authority and eventual Jerusalem leader
Peter → senior disciple/apostolic authority
John → prominent disciple and possible connection to Mary’s household
younger members of the Twelve → discipleship authority

That would mean the earliest Jesus movement may have had multiple overlapping sources of authority rather than a single chain of command.

And Mary may have been one of the people who embodied the family-based legitimacy of the movement.

The important limitation is that the canonical sources become almost completely silent about her after Acts 1:14. So a reconstruction of Mary as an active leader requires us to move beyond the New Testament into early Christian traditions, archaeology, iconography, and feminist historical analysis. Kateusz is particularly useful precisely because she attempts that reconstruction, while also being considerably more speculative than the conclusions we can draw about James.

If you want to pursue this, the next question I would examine is especially revealing: why does Luke specifically name Mary in Acts 1:14 but then apparently omit her from the Pentecost narrative in Acts 2, even though the “all” who are together in Acts 2:1 seems to include the people just listed? That may tell us quite a bit about what Luke intended Mary’s role to be.