'Dead Sea Scrolls on Stone'
A 2,000-year-old inscription, written in ink on a stone, is being called "a Dead Sea Scroll on stone." But New Testament scholars scoff at the idea that the inscription "should shake our basic view of Christianity," as one scholar told The New York Times.
The inscription has been dubbed "Gabriel's Vision" since the phrase, "I, Gabriel," appears several times in the broken text. It was apparently discovered somewhere in Jordan about a decade ago, and was more recently purchased by an Israeli-Swiss businessman from an antiquities dealer. The legible parts of the Hebrew text are stylistically similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and so far no scholar has raised doubts about its authenticity despite its murky provenance.
An analysis of the inscription appeared in the Hebrew journal Cathedra a year ago and in Biblical Archaeology Review earlier this year. But few people outside the scholarly world paid attention until The New York Times featured an interview with Hebrew University professor Israel Knohl, who claims additional insight into some of the hard-to-read areas of the text.
Knohl says one illegible word is the Hebrew word for "live," which led him to translate one sentence as, "In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you." He concludes the inscription is about a leader of the Jews who will die and be resurrected after three days.
That's in contrast to the typical Jewish image of a triumphant messiah, who is usually seen as a powerful leader like his ancestor King David. It suggests there were other perspectives on messianism in the first-century Jewish world from which Christianity sprang.
Darrell Bock, a professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, says Knohl may be reaching too far with his translation. ...
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Nance
The actual inscription doesn't reveal much--I read a transcription of the legible parts recently, and you can't make heads or tails of it. The CT poll this week makes it sound as if the one prominent, unlikely reading of the tablet is also the definitive one. It's a bit misleading.
Francis H. Geis
An interesting article, about an interesting archaeological discovery, that perhaps gives some further insight into the varieties of Jewish messianism? Certainly. But is this artifact a threat to the historicity of the NT, or of the resurrection of Christ? Hardly. After all, Paul makes clear in 1 Cor. 15:1-11 that the resurrection of Christ was a historical event confirmed by a large number of eyewitnesses; it was not an object of mere messianic speculations. And so if the New Testament is historically reliable, and if the Risen Christ is truly dwelling among and in his people, there can be no "historical" discovery that can ever actually unravel our faith in our Living Lord.
John
A "myth" is not necessarily a false story. In particular, religious "myths" (of all cultures) usually contain truth and insight based upon God's general revelation to Mankind. The historical Jesus fulfilled the pagan "myth" of a savior, born of a virgin, who would resurrect from the dead on the third day. Why, then, would God not also give His chosen people, Israel, prophecies that proclaimed the same truth? Whether the majority believed or understood them is beside the point. Mankind has always known, through revelation, that God would send a Savior, born of a Virgin, to redeem us from sin and the Devil. It's written in the constellations, pagan religions such as Mithraism, and in the Holy Old Testament. Wake up people! Jesus Christ is the universal Savior of Mankind - Jew and Gentile.