Scholars discover ancient tablet that talks about Jesus before Jesus was born. :eek3:

[Dumpy Dooby]

Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection
By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.

Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.

“Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,” Mr. Boyarin said.

Given the highly charged atmosphere surrounding all Jesus-era artifacts and writings, both in the general public and in the fractured and fiercely competitive scholarly community, as well as the concern over forgery and charlatanism, it will probably be some time before the tablet’s contribution is fully assessed. It has been around 60 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered, and they continue to generate enormous controversy regarding their authors and meaning.

The scrolls, documents found in the Qumran caves of the West Bank, contain some of the only known surviving copies of biblical writings from before the first century A.D. In addition to quoting from key books of the Bible, the scrolls describe a variety of practices and beliefs of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus.

How representative the descriptions are and what they tell us about the era are still strongly debated. For example, a question that arises is whether the authors of the scrolls were members of a monastic sect or in fact mainstream. A conference marking 60 years since the discovery of the scrolls will begin on Sunday at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the stone, and the debate over whether it speaks of a resurrected messiah, as one iconoclastic scholar believes, also will be discussed.

Oddly, the stone is not really a new discovery. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. When an Israeli scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it last year, interest began to rise. There is now a spate of scholarly articles on the stone, with several due to be published in the coming months.

“I couldn’t make much out of it when I got it,” said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. “I didn’t realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”

Much of the text, a vision of the apocalypse transmitted by the angel Gabriel, draws on the Old Testament, especially the prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Haggai.

Ms. Yardeni, who analyzed the stone along with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the era of King Herod, who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long analysis of the stone more than a year ago in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of Israel, and said that, based on the shape of the script and the language, the text dated from the late first century B.C.

A chemical examination by Yuval Goren, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University who specializes in the verification of ancient artifacts, has been submitted to a peer-review journal. He declined to give details of his analysis until publication, but he said that he knew of no reason to doubt the stone’s authenticity.

It was in Cathedra that Israel Knohl, an iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, first heard of the stone, which Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur dubbed “Gabriel’s Revelation,” also the title of their article. Mr. Knohl posited in a book published in 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.

When he read “Gabriel’s Revelation,” he said, he believed he saw what he needed to solidify his thesis, and he has published his argument in the latest issue of The Journal of Religion.

Mr. Knohl is part of a larger scholarly movement that focuses on the political atmosphere in Jesus’ day as an important explanation of that era’s messianic spirit. As he notes, after the death of Herod, Jewish rebels sought to throw off the yoke of the Rome-supported monarchy, so the rise of a major Jewish independence fighter could take on messianic overtones.

In Mr. Knohl’s interpretation, the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to the first-century historian Josephus. The writers of the stone’s passages were probably Simon’s followers, Mr. Knohl contends.

The slaying of Simon, or any case of the suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation, he says, pointing to lines 19 through 21 of the tablet — “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice” — and other lines that speak of blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.

To make his case about the importance of the stone, Mr. Knohl focuses especially on line 80, which begins clearly with the words “L’shloshet yamin,” meaning “in three days.” The next word of the line was deemed partially illegible by Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur, but Mr. Knohl, who is an expert on the language of the Bible and Talmud, says the word is “hayeh,” or “live” in the imperative. It has an unusual spelling, but it is one in keeping with the era.

Two more hard-to-read words come later, and Mr. Knohl said he believed that he had deciphered them as well, so that the line reads, “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.”

To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says “Sar hasarin,” or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of “a prince of princes,” Mr. Knohl contends that the stone’s writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.

He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

Ms. Yardeni said she was impressed with the reading and considered it indeed likely that the key illegible word was “hayeh,” or “live.” Whether that means Simon is the messiah under discussion, she is less sure.

Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, said he spent a long time studying the text and considered it authentic, dating from no later than the first century B.C. His 25-page paper on the stone will be published in the coming months.

Regarding Mr. Knohl’s thesis, Mr. Bar-Asher is also respectful but cautious. “There is one problem,” he said. “In crucial places of the text there is lack of text. I understand Knohl’s tendency to find there keys to the pre-Christian period, but in two to three crucial lines of text there are a lot of missing words.”

Moshe Idel, a professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University, said that given the way every tiny fragment from that era yielded scores of articles and books, “Gabriel’s Revelation” and Mr. Knohl’s analysis deserved serious attention. “Here we have a real stone with a real text,” he said. “This is truly significant.”

Mr. Knohl said that it was less important whether Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact that it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus makes numerous predictions of his suffering and New Testament scholars say such predictions must have been written in by later followers because there was no such idea present in his day.

But there was, he said, and “Gabriel’s Revelation” shows it.

“His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said. “This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/world/middleeast/06stone.html [link]

[7960]

this is bad for christianity.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by 7960

this is bad for christianity.

There's always been many other messianic claimants that say they fulfill prophecy. It should be no surprise that those claimants will use established ideas to justify their claims. Jesus was not the first nor the last to claim to be the messiah. I really doubt this story will even make a ripple in the pond.

[Dumpy Dooby]

Originally Posted by Schrödinger's Cat

There's always been many other messianic claimants that say they fulfill prophecy. It should be no surprise that those claimants will use established ideas to justify their claims. Jesus was not the first nor the last to claim to be the messiah. I really doubt this story will even make a ripple in the pond.

Agreed. Three routes this will take:

1. It was prophecy as seen by the pre-Jesus Messianic Jews. (supposing these Jews aren't viewed as heretical)

2. Satan did it to make people not believe in Christ. (American Protestants would probably lean toward this)

3. God did it to challenge/test their faith. (Reformed churches and non-American Protestants would probably lean toward this)

[motivez]

Is there a link to the translated text somewhere? I'd be interested in reading it

I think your #1 is the most likely, I doubt many Christians will let their faith be shattered by something so petty as scientific evidence

[7960]

Originally Posted by Schrödinger's Cat

There's always been many other messianic claimants that say they fulfill prophecy. It should be no surprise that those claimants will use established ideas to justify their claims. Jesus was not the first nor the last to claim to be the messiah. I really doubt this story will even make a ripple in the pond.

I shouldn't have said it's bad for christianity. The people who want to believe will continue to believe even in the face of evidence that the story of jesus' resurrection is just that, a story. The people who don't want to believe will use this as more evidence that they're right in not believing. The people who are undecided aren't going to use scholarly writings to figure out if they should believe. So I was wrong, it may not have any effect on christianity.

[Libertaire]

I fail to see the controversy. Most Christian scholars are quite aware of messianic culture before and after the time of Christ. Evidence of it is right there in the New Testament. The various factions of Judean culture had a variety of views on what or who the Christ was. They're constantly coming up with new findings. The media usually responds with excitement, and after a time the excitement fades. (Gospel of Judas, grave markers with the Aramaic name, Yeshua, on them, things of that nature).
Personally, as a Christian, I get excited about these things. I love to better understand the time of the Incarnation and the cultural circumstances surrounding it.

[Rouger2]

Why did they block the entrance to his grave wasn't so nobody could say he rose from the dead because it had been phophesied.

[MagytheKat]

Me too Libertaire, as a Catholic Christian, we are asked and expected to believe many things that have their roots in the Jewish faith..also things such as the literal appearing of the Blessed virgin mother at different times and places. I feel great knowing that this belief of a Messiah and his crucifixtion, and rising is an ancient Jewish belief. Hey, IMO, where there is smoke, there is fire, right?

[joedoakes]

So!,YAHWEH was with them after all.Amazing what some scholars discover,who knows,they may even discover the sun causes global warming.

[up|dn]

Originally Posted by 7960

this is bad for christianity.

I don't think so, actually. It might be bad for current Christian scholarship (if this proves to be true), but I think a stronger link to Judaism could actually be a good thing. Christians have always looked for prophetic words regarding Jesus, and I don't see how these prophetic words could be anything but a good thing. "See, the Messiah was supposed to suffer and die and resurrect!"

For the rest of us, who don't believe in prophets and things, it seems like more evidence that Christianity was simply an evolution of ideas born out of apocalyptic Judaism.

ie: people see what they want to see when shown "evidence".

[7960]

Originally Posted by up|dn

I don't think so, actually. It might be bad for current Christian scholarship (if this proves to be true), but I think a stronger link to Judaism could actually be a good thing.

but if it's true then he WASN'T resurrected, which would be bad for the christian story.

[up|dn]

Originally Posted by 7960

but if it's true then he WASN'T resurrected, which would be bad for the christian story.

I don't see the connection. An ancient tablet which states that a 3-day resurrection was a motif in Judaism before the time of Jesus doesn't preclude the resurrection of Jesus -- it might simply mean that Jesus followed what was prophecied (which is pretty much what Jesus says about himself in the gospels too, when he predicts his own resurrection (Matthew 20:17-19)).

My personal theory (as a non-believer) about Christian origins and its links to the Qumran groups has also been written about by Israel Knohl (the same guy who's been "interpreting" this tablet). One of his previous books is "the Messiah before Jesus", which elucidates a theory that there was a messianic figure behind the Dead Sea Scroll writings, decades before Jesus is supposed to have lived. It is a theory that I find plausible, especially considering that I think Christianity was first and foremost born out of a Jewish apocalyptic (end of the world) movement. At the same time, I realize the author's bias and how it is likely to affect his interpretation of the tablet.

[up|dn]

Here's a link to Knohl's article: ftp://tichonadmin:tichonadmin@80.179...on_Gabriel.pdf

[7960]

Originally Posted by up|dn

I don't see the connection. An ancient tablet which states that a 3-day resurrection was a motif in Judaism before the time of Jesus doesn't preclude the resurrection of Jesus -- it might simply mean that Jesus followed what was prophecied

when trying to decide if something is true and/or happened, a story about it having happened is much more solid evidence than a story saying "it will happen in the future." if this tablet is real then it talks about a prediction.

(which is pretty much what Jesus says about himself in the gospels too, when he predicts his own resurrection (Matthew 20:17-19)).

him saying he'll follow the "established concept at the time" is a lot different than him making the proclamation without any historical precedent.

but then again I don't believe he was resurrected in either case so I might be biased.

[redwards]

Originally Posted by 7960

when trying to decide if something is true and/or happened, a story about it having happened is much more solid evidence than a story saying "it will happen in the future." if this tablet is real then it talks about a prediction.

him saying he'll follow the "established concept at the time" is a lot different than him making the proclamation without any historical precedent.

but then again I don't believe he was resurrected in either case so I might be biased.

It was always the case that Jesus was fulfilling Jewish prophecy. I'm not sure that it's particularly good or bad if the case becomes that he was fulfilling some prophecies to the letter.

[up|dn]

I love this person's blog.. allow me to post her views:

Although I remain skeptical about the authenticity of the Apocalypse of Gabriel because we do not know its provenance, and ink on stone for a literary text seems odd, I am very curious about the three day resurrection reference found on the stone.

There is a hymn embedded in Hosea (6:1-3) that has relevance to this discussion:

Come, let us return to Yahweh,
for he has torn, and he will heal us;
he has stricken, and he will bind us up,
will preserve our life.
After two days, on the third day
he will raise us up, that we may
live in his presence.
Let us know, yes, let us strive,
to know Yahweh.
As the dawn (breaks, so) certain is
his going forth.
He comes to us as surely as the rain,
as the spring rain that waters the land.

Originally this priestly (?) poem from 8th c. BCE or earlier, addresses Israel's expectations that the nation has become ill but that God will heal it in as shortest time as possible. It was similar in content with the priestly psalms in which the wounded are raised up from their sickbeds (cf. Ps. 41:3, 10) and statements that God wounds and heals, kills and enlivens (Deut. 23:39; Ezek. 30:21; Job 5:18). In this old context, it had nothing to do with resurrection from the dead.

However, once resurrection doctrines came into existence in the Maccabean period, could Hosea 6:1-3 have been read as a post-mortem expectation, that the dead would be raised by God on the third day after their deaths? Could the Christians have understood or framed Jesus' resurrection along these expectations?

The earliest blatant reference to this is made by Tertullian (Against Marcion 4.43.1ff.; An Answer to the Jews 13.23). There is an old scholarly article written on the scriptural basis for the three day expectation in the Journal of Biblical Literature 48 (1929) pp. 124-137, by S.V. McCarland, "The Scripture Basis of 'On the Third Day.'"

So it is quite possible, that in Judaism at the time of Jesus there was an expectation that after death, God would resurrect those who died "on the third day" after they had died, using Hosea 6:1-3 as the proof-text. I can imagine the first Christian Jews relying on this expectation as they told stories about Jesus' resurrection. This expectation happened to get connected with Messianic beliefs through association with the Jesus stories.

But what the Apocalypse of Gabriel suggests, if it is authentic and should be read in the way that Knobl insists, is that in Judaism there was also the expectation that the MESSIAH would die and be raised on the third day. Again, I am very hesitant about this since so much of the early Christian literature is open apology for the Messiah's death (and suffering and resurrection) which Jews apparently did not expect. I'm not sure how to reconcile this with the Apocalypse of Gabriel.

Posted by April DeConick