Devotion, not Degradation

I appreciate Luke Timothy Johnson’s engagement with The Lost Mary (“Manufactured Matriarch,” May), but his review presents a characterization of my work that is difficult to reconcile with the book itself. Readers are told that I exclude anything supernatural, selectively and arbitrarily construct conspiratorial theories from ancient sources, deny the Resurrection, despise the Gospel of John, portray Paul as the villain who destroyed Jesus’ message, and misuse archaeological evidence—much of it from projects in which I have personally participated—to reshape history into fiction. None of these assertions accurately reflects the book.

My aim is straightforward: to recover, as far as our sources allow, the historical Mary within her first-century Jewish context. This requires the standard tools of historical inquiry—textual analysis, archaeology, and sociohistorical reconstruction—applied with attention to both evidence and limits. Where evidence is firm, I say so. Where probabilities are involved, I identify them as such. And where speculation is unavoidable, I mark it clearly. This is not “gerrymandering facts,” but the normal practice of reconstructing antiquity from fragmentary sources.

Johnson’s review largely bypasses this broader framework and instead focuses on a narrow set of claims, giving the impression that the book rests on tendentious reconstruction rather than cumulative evidence. Yet the central argument—that Mary has been historically obscured by later theological developments—arises from a wide range of data: the relative silence of the New Testament outside the birth narratives and Passion accounts, the diminishing role of Jesus’s family in later tradition, and the sociopolitical realities of Roman Galilee and Judea.

I am also concerned by the assertion that my work somehow disregards or diminishes the devotion of those—particularly women religious—who have honored Mary through lives of celibacy, poverty, and service. Nothing could be farther from my intent. Historical inquiry into Mary’s life is not a critique of devotion, but a distinct enterprise. To take seriously her humanity, family, and historical circumstances is not to diminish her significance, but to understand it more fully.

I do not ask readers to accept every conclusion, but I do expect that my work be represented fairly. I am confident that most readers—Catholic, Protestant, or nonbeliever—will recognize that The Lost Mary is not an exercise in conspiracy or dismissal of faith, but an effort to take history seriously, even when it challenges longstanding assumptions. As I say in the preface, I see my book as a contribution, not a degradation, of Marian devotion.

James D. Tabor
Distinguished Fellow of Humanities, Hebrew University Jerusalem
Retired Professor of Religious Studies/Christian Origins, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Beauty in AI?

With the publication of John J. DiIulio Jr.’s “A Faustian Bargain” in your December issue and, more recently, Alexander Stern’s “Wittgenstein’s Apocalypse” in your April issue, one is left with the impression that Commonweal is suggesting AI should be resisted rather than engaged.

At first glance, to characterize this “other” as an apocalyptic technology risks obscuring both the beauty and the promise of what may be—quite remarkably—a significant step toward Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of the noosphere. Framing AI in such negative terms may lead us to overlook the mystery and creative potential inherent in its development.

Referring to the technology as “machine intelligence” rather than “artificial intelligence” might better facilitate understanding and acceptance. Seen as a natural next step in the evolution of biological intelligence, machine intelligence could help address human problems while also assisting in the ongoing search for beauty, truth, and goodness. At the same time, it will not spare us the moral and spiritual challenges humanity has faced from the beginning of time.

All the concerns DiIulio and Wittgenstein raise in connection with AI—truth, power, meaning, and responsibility—already exist. These questions will endure, though they may now be addressed with expanded intellectual tools in a new era of heightened intelligence. The papacy has not labeled AI an existential threat, and for good reason. Recent popes have treated it as another technology that must be responsibly integrated as humanity continues its effort to participate consciously in the unfolding evolution of the universe. The deeper challenge may lie not in the rise of machine intelligence, but in our willingness to evolve ethically alongside it.

Philip T. Aaron, S.M.
Dayton, Ohio

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Humanity at Stake

I found Rand Richards Cooper’s article “Humanity on the Page” in the May issue excellent. As someone for whom writing is important, I appreciate the ways that AI can be appealing to the writer. Cooper does a good job of exploring the “slippery slope” of AI as we use it to replace more of the labor—and the personal stories that occur in the midst of that labor—that, over the course of a lived human life, result in the writer’s words.

David Baldacci’s point is a good one that what’s at stake is the writer’s own imagination. This article did a good job of getting to the deepest question with generative AI: In what ways might we allow its use to harm the exercise and development of those gifts and capacities that are unique to our humanity?

I also appreciate knowing that Commonweal has taken the editorial position of having only non-AI-assisted articles. I’ll be curious to see over time the differences between publications with and without AI “coauthorship.” And more than just the technical differences in the writing. Perhaps the content of the writing—and the character and culture of the publications and those who contribute to them.

Chris Goodwin
Washington D.C.