Tabor was born in Texas but lived all over the world as the son of an Air Force officer. He was raised in the Churches of Christ and attended Abilene Christian University where he earned his B.A. degree in Greek and Bible. While earning his M.A. from Pepperdine University he taught Greek and Hebrew part-time at Ambassador College, founded by Herbert W. Armstrong, founder and president of the Worldwide Church of God.

Tabor earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1981 in New Testament and Early Christian Literature, with an emphasis on Christian origins and ancient Judaism, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, John the Baptist, Jesus, James the Just, and Paul of Tarsus.

The author of several books, he is frequently consulted by the media on these topics and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs.

His first book was a study of the mysticism of the apostle Paul titled Things Unutterable (1986), based on his University of Chicago dissertation. The Journal of Religion named it one of the ten best scholarly studies on Paul of the 1980s.

In 1992 Tabor turned to an analysis of attitudes toward religious suicide and martyrdom in the ancient world, the results of which appeared as A Noble Death, published by HarperSanFrancisco in 1992 (co-authored with Arthur Droge). Although the book is centered on the history of such ideas in antiquity, the results of this research have had immediate application in our current discussion of the ethics of volunteer death and assisted suicide. Prof. Tabor's book has been used as a standard by ethicists, lawyers, and physicians who are participating in the current debate. Tabor has also published a wide variety of scholarly and more popular articles in books, journals, and magazines.

In 1995, he published Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America (University of California Press), which he co-authored with Eugene Gallagher, and which was one of the first books to explore what had actually happened in Waco, Texas. In dealing with the Waco crisis, both during and after the tragedy, Tabor was able to make direct use of his academic specialties in ancient apocalypticism and messianism, religious martyrdom and suicide, and the use of Biblical prophetic texts as applied to the modern situation involving the Branch Davidians. In 1995 he testified before Congress as an expert witness on Waco and has urged both government officials and media spokespersons to drop the use of the prejudicial label "cult," and approach such new religious groups with a combination of critical evaluation and a sympathetic attempt to enter the world view of those involved.

In 1997 he wrote in the United Israel Bulletin (Vol. 52, Summer 1997, pp. 1—3) writing that he is "tentatively convinced that the Los Lunas inscription offers solid evidence that ancient Israelites explored and settled in the New World in the centuries before the Common Era. Whether we can precisely date this encampment, based on Mr. Deal's astronomical evidence, remains in discussion. However, I have little doubt, nor does Dr. Gordon,(Cyrus Gordon) who is one of the world experts on ancient inscriptions, that the text itself is authentic and was written sometime B.C.E. Beyond this we can not go at this point in time. What is needed is a rigorous archaeological examination of the whole mountain and its human artifacts." He also wrote "However, when the Los Lunas inscription is placed in the wider context of an abundant amount of evidence, such as that presented by Dr. Fell, that ancient Mediterranean peoples did visit the New World, it becomes not only plausible but perhaps the only logical explanation for the existence of this text." Dr. Fell is Barry Fell, former professor of invertebrate zoology at Harvard who later wrote the book America B.C. which Tabor relies upon in this article. Tabor states that the "historical and archaeological evidence" for "ancient Mediterranean peoples" to have travelled to the New World sometime BCE "is quite impressive. It has been well documented by Barry Fell in his major study, America B.C." Fell's work is however rejected by virtually all archaeologists and historians.

In 2006 Tabor published a controversial book titled The Jesus Dynasty that interprets Jesus as an apocalyptic Messiah whose extended family founded a royal dynasty in the days before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. He included archaeological data as well as textual interpretations of biblical texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient historical sources. The form of Christianity that grew out of this movement, led by the apostle Paul, was, according to Tabor, a decisive break with the Ebionite-like original teachings of John the Baptist and Jesus.

Tabor serves as Chief Editor of the Original Bible Project, an effort to produce a historical-linguistic translation of the Bible with notes. In 2006 Tabor completed an edited volume with Prof. Eugene Gallagher, Crossing the Bounds: Humanity and Divinity in Late Antiquity (E.J. Brill, 2006).

Tabor is involved in research on a tomb found in 1980 in Jerusalem in the area of east Talpiot. It contained ossuaries with the names Jesus son of Joseph, two Marys, a Joseph, a Matthew, and a Jude son of Jesus. In his latest book, The Jesus Dynasty, Tabor had discussed the possibilities that this tomb might be linked to Jesus of Nazareth and his family. He was a consultant for the film, The Lost Tomb of Jesus produced by James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici and shown in March, 2007. Tabor is working on his own formal publication of the results of his three years of research on this tomb.