http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/05/africa/06stone.php?page=1
- - -
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.
...
It was in Cathedra that Israel Knohl, an iconoclastic professor of Bible
studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, first heard of the stone, which
Yardeni and Elitzur dubbed "Gabriel's Revelation," also the title of their
article. 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.
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 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, 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, 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
Yardeni and Elitzur, but 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 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," 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."
...
Regarding Knohl's thesis, 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."
...
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," 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."
- - -
So a text comes along that shakes up established "scholarship" about Jesus
-- and the scholars think that Christians are the ones who got it wrong.
That's typical.
Having read this three times, trying to find where the tablet in any way
contradicts what Jesus did, or why he did it, I am unable to find what has
these "scholars" so excited that they found something that should "rock"
Christianity.
That last line about the shedding of blood being for Israel's redemption and
not the sins of people is about the most illogical conclusion one can
possibly draw from the stone, at least if you look at it in the context of
other Scripture, and the actual words of Jesus, as recorded in the gospels.
Traditionally the Jewish people expected a kick-ass, take-no-prisoners
warrior messiah. They got a carpenter who was the son of God and healed
people and confronted established "theology" (not to mention "scholarship")
of the day, so much so that it got him killed. But that was God's plan, not
Israel's, and through the resurrection God did reconcile himself to man and
provide free atonement of sin, and Israel was not redeemed (of its own
choice, actually), but rather salvation was opened to all mankind.
To say it another way: Jesus never claimed that his promise of his imminent
death and resurrection after three days was anything but the exact and
complete fulfillment of Scripture. He never said "Look this is my unique
theology" (modern scholars say that) but rather said, "search the Scripture,
for they speak of me."
So some more Scripture comes along (for the sake of argument, let's assume
it's canonical, which it isn't), saying the same thing he said, in much the
same terms as other canonical text did, only with more explicit reference to
resurrection after three days being dead. And? OK, Christians did not
"insert" those words into Jesus' mouth later, as "scholars" apparently
thought, but rather he really said them, and there was cultural context for
the Jews to understand what he was claiming.
This changes what, precisely? There are so many promises of scripture that
Jesus' life, death and resurrection fulfill, and the specific point about
being dead three days has other Scriptural references that Jesus himself
alluded to ("and no sign will be given them except the sign of Jonah").
I don't know maybe I'm missing something (and will gladly receive
enlightenment on what that is) but this strikes me as a pre-emptive
misinterpretation to make something that actually gives greater and more
specific Scriptural credence to Jesus as the Christ appear to do the
opposite, or somehow dilute the claim.
- Bob
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