Before y'all abandon Christianity because of "Gabriel's Revelation"...

... take a deep breath and repeat after me, "Where's the beef?" Or, "Where's the angel food?"

Catholic News Agency provides the basic story of a  recent archeological find, which you've probably heard about by now:

The three-foot tall tablet bears 87 lines of Hebrew which speak of a messiah who will suffer and rise from the dead after three days. The tablet was probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan and has been characterized as a “Dead Sea Scroll in Stone,” the International Herald-Tribune reports.

David Jeselsohn, an Israeli-Swiss collector, discovered and purchased the tablet about a decade ago from a Jordanian antiquities dealer.

"I couldn't make much out of it when I got it," said Jeselsohn, who reportedly 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."

That's an interesting comparison, although I bet it is seriously overblown. I wasn't around in the late 1940s, but I know that many people thought that the Dead Sea Scrolls—which were a very significant discovery—were going to either undermine Christianity or seriously revise what people thought about it. In fact, the Scrolls have helped shed much light on various aspects of Judaism as it existed prior to the time of Christ; the Dead Sea Scrolls contain hundreds of copies of texts (mostly Old Testament books) written prior to the first century.

Most news reports are, of course, playing up the "could this mean the Christians made up the Resurrection based on this older story" angle. And, to be fair, it's a legitimate angle. In fact, it's good that it came up because it opens the door to some (hopefully) sane and serious discussion about the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus, for the Resurrection, and such. One voice of sanity is Dr. Tim Gray, professor of Biblical Studies at the Augustine Institute in Denver, who was interviewed by CNA:

The interpretations of scholars reported in the International Herald Tribune, Gray said, was “very striking” for its insistence that any evidence must undermine Christianity.

“On the one hand, scholars argue no Jewish tradition about a messiah suffering shows that the Church added this idea. And once you show a document, an ancient document to point to, showing that they did interpret a prophet like Daniel to expect a suffering messiah, well then people say ‘Well this proves Christianity can’t be true.’”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Gray said.

“The point is that our people in modern media and modern scholars will use any evidence as disproof of Christianity, even if it illustrates the evidence of Christian belief. And this evidence clearly points to the historical probability of Christianity, to the historical Jesus.

“‘No evidence of a suffering messiah in the Jewish tradition, therefore the Church invented these things,’” Gray summarized. “Now we find out there is evidence, and instead we find the historical portrait of the Gospels is more probable than we thought, the response is ‘well, see, this disproves Christianity.’”

The inconsistent media and scholarly reaction to the discovery of “Gabriel’s Revelation,” Gray thought, was comparable to Jesus’ description in Luke 7 of the “people of this generation,” who were like the children in the marketplace saying “We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.”

Dr. Gray is also Professor of Sacred Scripture at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary and Director of the Denver Catholic Biblical School. He is one of the biblical scholars who appears on the Lost Gospels or False Gospels and Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? DVDs.

Evangelical scholar Dr. Ben Witherington III (mentioned recently on this blog) said this to TIME magazine:

"It is certainly not perfectly clear that the tablet is talking about a crucified and risen savior figure called Simon," says Ben Witherington, an early-Christianity expert at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. The verb that Knohl translates as "rise!," Witherington says, could also mean "there arose," and so one can ask "does it mean 'he comes to life,' i.e., a resurrection, or that he just 'shows up?' " Witherington also points out that gospel texts are far less reliant on the observed fact of the Resurrection (there is no angelic command in them like the line in the Gabriel stone) than on the testimony of eyewitnesses to Jesus' post-Resurrection self. Finally, Witherington notes that if he is wrong and Knohl's reading is right, it at least sets to rest the notion that the various gospel quotes attributed to Christ foreshadowing his death and Resurrection were textual retrojections put in his mouth by later believers — Jesus the Messianic Jew, as Knohl sees him, would have been familiar with the vocabulary for his own fate.

Michael Barber, Professor of Theology, Scripture and Catholic Thought at John Paul the Great Catholic University in San Diego, makes this observation on the Singing In the Reign blog:

I've known about this for sometime, but it looks like it now is finally hitting the mainstream media.

For the record, it should be pointed out that the idea of a resurrection on the third day flows from Hosea 6:2:

"After two days he will revive us;on the third day he will raise us up,that we may live before him."

Indeed, Jesus explains to the disciples that his resurrection on the third day would take place in order to fulfill Scripture.

"Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead" (Luke 24:46). In fact, the New Testament is clear that Jesus came to fulfill the hopes of ancient Israel.

Exactly right. Which means that this latest discovery, if authentic (as it appears to be), simply reinforces what many biblical scholars have been emphasizing for several decades now: that in order to better understand and appreciate Jesus' teachings and actions, we need to have a better understanding of ancient Judaism and its beliefs, literature, and theologies.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles and Book Excerpts:              
      
• The Truth of the Resurrection | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger | From Introduction to Christianity
• Seeing Jesus in the Gospel of John | Excerpts from On The Way to Jesus Christ | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• A Jesus Worth Dying For | A Review of On The Way to Jesus Christ | Justin Nickelsen
• Encountering Christ in the Gospel | Excerpt from My Jesus | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• The Divinity of Christ | Peter Kreeft
• Easter: The Defiant Feast | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Jesus Is Catholic | Hans Urs von Balthasar
• The Religion of Jesus | Blessed Columba Marmion | From Christ, The Ideal of the Priest

Comments

[Augustine]

Is 53:7 + Hos 6:2 = Lk 24:46

QED

Now, now, nothing new here, just move on.

[Richard Pinion]

Kind of like Dr. Hahn says "the old reveals the new, and the new fulfils the old". I hope I got that right.

[Mark Brumley]

I've been waiting to post something on this. I won't get a chance to write up something more detailed so here goes.

Some points.

1. This is an important discovery for a variety of reasons. One of them is not the undermining of Christianity, although it might weaken N.T. Wright's argument in THE RESURRECTION OF THE SON OF GOD--which of course is not the same thing as undermining Christianity.

2. So far Knohl's interpretation has not been confirmed. The reports regarding the text are such that it could bear a range of interpretations, including the one that Dr. Witherington mentions. We'll have to wait and see.

3. In the context of a hyper-exploitive media and pseudoscholarship such as THE DA VINCI CODE and JESUS WAS A SPACE ALIEN, we should expect this sort of thing.

4. It is widely held in NT studies that there was no general expectation of a dying and rising Messiah. This discovery has not altered that insofar as it does not show a general expectation. Thus far, asssuming the text says what is claimed for it, it would show only that someone else, before Christian times, held such an expectation. It would not demonstrate that it was widespread.

5. Nevertheless, Jesus is quoted in the gospels as seeing his passion, death and resurrection as prophesied in Scripture. The NT depicts at least one first-century pre-Christian Jew (Jesus counts as a pre-Christian) as understanding the OT to prophecy a suffering, dying and rising Messiah. Many NT scholars assume that statements reflecting such an interpretation by Jesus has been retrojected back onto the lips of Jesus by Christians. Why we should assume that that is what happened is hard to see. The claim is made that because no pre-Christian Jew understood the OT to predict a dying and rising Messiah this must have been a later, Christian, post facto development attributed to Jesus. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise, but this is a view that is widely held.

6. The so-called Gabriel Prophecy, if it says what Knohl claims it says, would make it more difficult to claim that the Gospels retroject the idea back to Jesus on the grounds that no pre-Christian Jew believed that there would be a dying and rising Messiah. It would mean that at least some Jews thought this.

7. Whether one agrees that the Christian interpretation of the OT re: a dying and rising Messiah is the best interpretation, it is hard to argue that it is fanciful or absurd. Let's suppose the followers of a messianic claimant named Simon saw their leaders death as fulfilling, say, Is 53. Let's further suppose they expected based on a variety of texts, including Hos 6:2, their leader to be "raised"--that does not necessarily mean "resurrected" but that's another story. We have no evidence that "Simon" was "raised". How is Christianity undermined by the above? If it has any relation to Christianity, it is a relation that seems to tend to confirm it.

[Richard Pinion]

If there is a desire to disprove a religion why don't they pick on Islam. That would be much more fruitful, but probably unhealthy.

[Telemachus]

One thought: it's really, REALLY hard to have a legitimate prophecy, isn't it? If people are expecting something to happen, somebody will probably make it happen. If something happens, people can connect the past to make it look like it was foretold.

Off the top of my head, the discovery of this tablet may be key if we can cut through the MSM bull----. As Mr. Brumley noted, people say "Well, Jesus was the only one who interpreted scripture in such a 'unique' fashion." And yet, doesn't that make Him MORE legit: if people were expecting the Crucifixion and Resurrection, they could have planned things appropriately. It was because His words didn't make sense until later that they were deemed genuine.

Then there's the counter-argument: "Oh wait, people *were* expecting these things." But that brings up another problem, that is, why wasn't this belief more well known? Why do we have almost no record of anything existing like this? Surely if there had been evidence like this, the Church Councils would have snatched it up and said "See!? This was foretold to happen!" Thus, as said before, the belief was not widespread, but SOMEBODY may have come to the same conclusion, right as IT was happening (so to speak). What are the implications of that?

I'm interested to see further developments in this. Why do people glob on to every new "discovery" of supposed ancient sources that claim to refute the Church, yet they refuse to believe the one ancient source that has been preserved -- i.e. the Bible? Everything established is suspect, and everything that's new is swallowed indiscriminately. What does one call this phenomenon? Seriously, I can't think of a proper term. "Rebellious gullibility"? "Wanton frivolousness"?