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BIBLICAL TABLET FINDING-DEBUNKS MESSIAH/RESURRECTION
-A COMMON ‘DEVICE’ FOR MESSIAHS TO CLAIM ‘RISING’ AFTER DEATH-
*Edited/Summarized by ‘Sweeps’ Fox
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A three-foot-tall tablet…with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars date from the decades just before the birth of Jesus…is causing Quite a ‘QUAKE’ and stir in biblical and archaeological circles. The found Tablet…speaks of ANOTHER messiah who was ‘designated’ to rise from the dead…after three days.
Such a messianic description will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus…since it MORE THAN 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 the scholars who have studied it…is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era. So…in essence…it’s a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.
It is written…thus not engraved…across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. However…the stone is SLIGHTLY broken…and some of the text is faded. This does not SOFTEN the blow to Christianity.
Its AUTHENTICITY has NOT faced any significant 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.
He said…’Christians will find it shocking…a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology’. Maybe others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism’.
There is…of course. A highly charged atmosphere surrounding all Jesus-era artifacts and writings.
It has been about 60 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered, and even 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.
For example…a question arises as to whether the authors of the scrolls were members of a monastic sect or in fact more 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 will also will be discussed.
STRANGELY…the stone is not really a new discovery. It was actually 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…BIG interest began to rise. There is now a whole collection of scholarly articles on the stone…with several due to be published in the coming months.
David Jeselsohn…the owner of the stone Tablet… related that ‘I couldn’t make much out of it when I got it’. He is also 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…and stated… ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone’.
Much of the text…unravels as a vision of the apocalypse, transmitted by the angel Gabriel…which draws on the Old Testament and especially the prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Haggai.
Ms. Yardeni…analyzed the stone along with Binyamin Elitzur…an expert on Hebrew script He especially deal with the era of King Herod…who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long analysis of the stone over a year ago in ‘Cathedra’ That is a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of Israel. They had concluded…that based on the shape of the script and the language…the text dated from the late first century B.C.
Also…a chemical examination by Yuval Goren, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University who specializes in the verification of ancient artifacts…had been submitted to a peer-review journal. He declined to give details of his analysis until publication…but NOW says…that he knows of no reason to doubt the stone’s authenticity.
It was through ‘Cathedra’ that Israel Knohl…an iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem…first heard of the stone. Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur had called the Tablet ‘Gabriel’s Revelation’. This was 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. His theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped. This was partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.
BUT…when he read ‘Gabriel’s Revelation’…he said, he now believed he saw what he needed to solidify his thesis. Subsequently…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.
He notes…that 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.
Mr. Knohl’s interpretation…provides that the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon…who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army. This is 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 involving the suffering of a messiah…is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation. Mr. Knohl points to the lines 19 through 21 of the tablet…which illustrate his points. These lines state…’In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice’. Other of the lines …speak of blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.
To make his case about the importance of the stone…Mr. Knohl looks especially at line 80…which begins clearly with the words ‘L’shloshet yamin’. This literally translates as…’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’. This word means…’live’, in the imperative sense.
Two more hard-to-read words come later…but Mr. Knohl said he believes that he has also deciphered them as well. That line reads…’In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you’.
But to whom is the archangel allegedly speaking? The next line says ;Sar hasarin’…or prince of princes. The Book of Daniel…one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text…speaks of Gabriel and ALSO 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 THE 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 Christian scholarship of course.
What happens in the New Testament by ‘The Christians’…was an adopting/using…by Jesus and his followers, which was based on an earlier Jewish messiah story.
Ms. Yardeni said she was impressed with the interpretation…considering it MOST likely that the key illegible word was ‘hayeh’ or ‘live’.
Moshe Bar-Asher…president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University…said that he had spent a long time studying the text, and considered it authentic. He says that it must date from no later than the first century B.C. He has a 25-page paper on the stone will be published in the coming months.
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… that the Tablet deserved serious attention. ‘Here we have a real stone with a real text’…he said. He added…’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, it has been suggested, 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 is a prescedent…he said, and ‘Gabriel’s Revelation’ shows it.
Mr. Knohl said…’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’. ‘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’.
This will ‘Knock Sideways’….the Christian ‘putting together’ of their ‘Biblical New Testament.
Hello All, 
