Undermining the Faith

Although I'm not a believer in any particular flavor of religious woo, I'm interested in those belief systems and their histories. Which is why I find stories like this one intriguing. Seems that someone discovered (a while ago) a tablet dating back to before the birth of Jesus that tells a familiar story: messianic figure rises, is killed, then rises from the dead three days later.

So, what, exactly?

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.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

Of course, being centuries old and written (not carved) in an ancient language means there's lots of interpreting that needs to be done. Still, depending on how it turns out, it could have wide ranging repercussions:

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,' [Israel Knohl, an 'iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem'], 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.'

Not that such a conclusion would shake the faiths of most people - they'd find a way to work around it, I'm sure.