I suppose the great purpose of news magazines like
Time and
Newsweek is to sell as many copies and ad space as possible. Informing people seems to be a means to an end, and even the information is processed through the lenses of scandal or entertainment.
Each year, at Christmas and Easter, Time and Newsweek can be reliably counted on to publish some scandal of history, or some "new" archaeological find that sheds "light" on the "true" origins of Christianity. Normally, these are not very favorable to the faith nor the faithful. And typically, these "finds" are not new at all, but just recycled for a new generation of biblically and historically illiterate folks who will fall for the ruse, and have their faith destroyed. (This doesn't sound cynical, does it?)
So imagine my surprise the other day to find an article in
Time concerning "Gabriel's Revelation." Essentially, a stone tablet from the Middle East was bought many years ago, and stored away. Having recently come to light, the tablet references a death and resurrection of one claiming to have been the messiah. According to Time:
But what may make the Gabriel tablet unique is its 80th line, which begins with the words "In three days" and includes some form of the verb "to live." Israel Knohl, an expert in Talmudic and biblical language at Jerusalem's Hebrew University who was not involved in the first research on the artifact, claims that it refers to a historic 1st-century Jewish rebel named Simon who was killed by the Romans in 4 B.C., and should read "In three days, you shall live. I Gabriel command you." If so, Jesus-era Judaism had begun to explore the idea of a three-day resurrection before Jesus was born.
So, the implication is that because there is a claim of death and resurrection before the time of Jesus, this somehow calls into question the resurrection of Jesus?
This, in turn, undermines one of the strongest literary arguments employed by Christians over centuries to support the historicity of the Resurrection (in which they believe on faith): the specificity and novelty of the idea that the Messiah would die on a Friday and rise on a Sunday. Who could make such stuff up? But, as Knohl told TIME, maybe the Christians had a model to work from. The idea of a "dying and rising messiah appears in some Jewish texts, but until now, everyone thought that was the impact of Christianity on Judaism," he says. "But for the first time, we have proof that it was the other way around. The concept was there before Jesus." If so, he goes on, "this should shake our basic view of Christianity. ... What happens in the New Testament [could have been] adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story."
Thank you, Time, for exposing the Christian faith for what it truly is, an unoriginal fraud perpetrated by power hungry men who betrayed the teachings of their master and founded a powerful religion that oppressed and has oppressed many people on the planet. Uh-huh.
Well, the Christian responses have come out. Chuck Colson has written a nice little summary of the non-scandal
here.
Ben Witherington, who is cited in the article, has
this to say in response.
I take quite seriously the authenticity of this stone, since Ada Yardeni has weighed in on it, and found it genuine. So let us suppose it is genuine-- let's ask the question, So what?
If you read the article you will discover that one eclectic Jewish scholar is now suggesting that the Christians got the idea from this stone or its source, and then predicated the idea of Jesus. It would be just as simple to argue that Jesus knew of this idea, and predicated of himself. What this stone then would show is that there was in early Judaism some concept of a suffering messiah whom God might vindicate by resurrection before the time of Jesus.
This is not entirely surprising in view of Isaiah 53 in any case. But the real implication of this for Jesus' studies should not be missed. Most radical Jesus scholars have argued that the passion and resurrection predictions by Jesus found in the Gospels were not actually made by Jesus-- they reflect the later notions and theologizing of the Evangelists.
But now, if this stone is genuine there is no reason to argue this way. One can show that Jesus, just as well as the author of this stone, could have spoken about a dying and rising messiah. There is in any case a reference to a messiah who dies in the late first century A.D. document called 4 Ezra.
Long story short-- this stone certainly does not demonstrate that the Gospel passion stories are created on the basis of this stone text, which appears to be a Dead Sea text. For one thing the text is hard to read at crucial junctures, and it is not absolutely clear it is talking about a risen messiah. BUT what it does do is make plausible that Jesus could have said some of the things credited to him in Mk. 8.31, 9,31, and 10.33-34. I will have more to say about the relevance of early Jewish material for the study of the historical Jesus shortly, in a lengthy review of David Flusser's final and interesting Jesus book The Sage from Galilee.
Besides, Christian belief in the resurrection is based not upon ancient texts, but upon eyewitness accounts of the risen Jesus. The ancient texts in Isaiah and Hosea and Job and the Psalms all help us interpret the event of Jesus' resurrection, but they are not the sole basis for the belief.
Reformed Chicks Babbling has another take on this, and is not ready to give up the faith quite yet.
I guess this was a slow news week. There really is nothing to see here, folks, just move along. As Kenneth Bailey likes to say, "The Bible is an anvil that has broken many hammers." The same can be said of the Christian faith.
Well, another earthquake in Southern California. Ho hum. This one centered in Chino Hills (see map), about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The magnitude estimates vary from 5.4 to 5.8.
