Jesus the Man: New Interpretations from the Dead Sea Scrolls is a book written by the Australian biblical scholar and theologian Barbara Thiering. It was first published by Doubleday in 1992 with the title, Jesus & The Riddle of The Dead Sea Scrolls: Unlocking The Secrets of His Life Story. Using a decoding tool that the author calls the "pesher technique", she purports to have uncovered evidence in the Gospels themselves that effectively contradicts the story they narrate of Jesus and his mission. She calls this story the "surface meaning" of the Gospels, which is "for 'babes'", in contrast to the hidden meaning. Using this method, Thiering believes she has discovered, among other things, that Jesus was a member of the Essene community, that he survived the crucifixion, and that he married twice. The book was a bestseller, and has been several times reprinted. Its argument has been widely rejected by the scholarly community. Content The central thesis of the book is that "Jesus was the leader of a radical faction of Essene priests. He was not of virgin birth. He did not die on the Cross. He married Mary Magdalene, fathered a family, and later divorced. He died sometime after AD 64". From the New Testament gospels and Dead Sea Scrolls, Thiering constructs a new history of early Christianity which she contends was hidden in pesher coding. Thiering finds that the biography of Jesus hidden in the New Testament shows him to have been born in Qumran, an Essene community beside the Dead Sea, in March, 7 BC. Robert E. Van Voorst summarizes Thiering's account of the life of Jesus as follows: Jesus's distinctive ideas arose from the Essenes. In March, 17 AD, he was initiated at the age of 23, and took a political stance in favor of his spiritual "father", Annas the high priest, "who taught peace with Rome and the promotion of Gentiles". He was rebaptized by John the Baptist in March, 29 AD. Thiering says that John is identical to the Essene Teacher of Righteousness, praised in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jesus soon split from John, becoming one of the leaders of a party "called the Twelve Apostles", some of whom (including Judas Iscariot and Simon Magus) were zealots and others (including Jesus), pacifists. Because of his opposition to John, Jesus is referred to the Dead Sea Scrolls as the Wicked Priest. Thiering examines each