Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

The title-linked New York Times article published July 6, 2008, and written by Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem does not "ignite debate" as claimed. The article begins, "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."

There is no need to "re-evaluate popular and scholarly views of Jesus," since the entire Old Testament points to Him, even to the detail of death and resurrection after three days. The author of this article implies that, prior to the discovery and evaluation of this tablet, this idea of resurrection was unique to Jesus and His followers, and ultimately Christianity, a statement that is simply untrue. The author continues:

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.

Of course Jesus is "best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of His day." He was a real, live Jew! He wasn't some mystical, mythological, or magical figure; neither was He a figment of the disciples' imagination. I don't know why any Christians would find this archaeological find "shocking." At least the author acknowledges that "others will be comforted." While this stone in no way overrides or equals the authority and divine inspiration of the Bible, it, like apocryphal literature and other real-life archaeological discoveries, help us to better understand the Bible. The article goes on:

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. 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...

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... 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.” ...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.”

That's a big chunk of the article, but Mr. Knohl, as far as I'm concerned, is the crucial figure in the 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." This is a strange sentence; Isaiah describes the suffering servant in numerous places and in great detail. Of course the idea of a suffering servant was reality in Jewish culture prior to Jesus. That's the point of the New Testament, that the Jews missed their Messiah when he came due to their stubbornness. Knohl ignores the plain Old Testament and digs into a variety of other, non-authoritative and less-clear texts to find what Isaiah says in perfect clarity.

But Knohl's final remarks reveal the deeper problems with his hypothesis. Speaking of the Messiah (not Jesus, in Krohl's eyes), he says, "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." So far, so good. But he concludes, "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." Sadly, Knohl can't accept that shedding blood for the sins of the people and bringing redemption to Israel are one in the same. Jesus did both of these things, and much more. He knew He was doing just that. Knohl is a great example of the foolishness of the wise. He takes the text of the stone and, completely denying that Biblical Christianity could possibly be true, tries to refute it anyway. A blind man tries to show sighted people that there is no such thing as sight.