of the miracles in the New Testament and finds in them nothing miraculous, but rather events marking turning points in the history of "the Fig Tree", as the movement was called. Thiering sees Jesus as a prominent member of the Essene movement. His prominence derived from his descent from the Davidic kingship, as well as the efforts of his great grandfather, said to have been Hillel the Great, and his grandfather, Heli, to establish schools of religious instruction for Jews of the Diaspora. Unlike Simon Magus, the second most important figure in the New Testament according to Thiering, Jesus was a pacifist. He opposed the zealots, calling for a reform and renewal of religion. This would lead to a Jewish empire which would overrule the Roman Empire by its appeal to reason and morality. Scholarly reception Thiering's thesis has primarily received scepticism from the academic community. The most detailed discussion of Thiering's book, along with her other writings, is given by N.T. Wright, a former Bishop of Durham, New Testament historian and prominent figure in the historical Jesus debate. Wright debated Thiering in a BBC program in 1992. In his book Who was Jesus? Wright notes that Thiering objected that her claims about Jesus' personal life had been sensationalized by the media. However, he argues that they are the only significantly original aspect of the book. Thiering had already asserted that John the Baptist was identical with the Teacher of Righteousness and that the Gospels were written in code in earlier works. In 1990 she had made a documentary for the Discovery Channel entitled "The Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls", in which these views were expressed. Van Voorst describes it as "especially controversial" at the time. Wright notes that Thiering's new ideas about Jesus's family life were first aired in 1990 on an Australian TV show broadcast on Palm Sunday. The resulting furor "attracted the attention of eager publishers" who persuaded her to publish, and to incorporate her earlier theories "in a manner more accessible to the non-scholarly reader". Wright argues that Thiering is correct to emphasise the humanity of Jesus and to place him in the context of expectations of dramatic divine intervention in history. Wright agrees with Thiering that Jesus offered "a new way of working out what it meant to be the loyal people of God—a way, specifically that avoided the violence that was so endemic