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.
These are the kinds of wiggle words that bug me to no end. People will read the article and overlook the fact that nothing has been proven regarding the tablet. They'll announce it to their friends and no one will ever follow up on it whether it's authenticity is confirmed or disproved.
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
“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.
Who on earth could have made that evaluation? Shocking? They've got to be joking. Most Christians believe that the story of Christ was foretold and alluded to in the Old Testament. Who writes this stuff?
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
Jersey Girl wrote:From the intro paragraph of the article:
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.
These are the kinds of wiggle words that bug me to no end. People will read the article and overlook the fact that nothing has been proven regarding the tablet. They'll announce it to their friends and no one will ever follow up on it whether it's authenticity is confirmed or disproved.
I think you are overreacting. These words are appropriate when absolute conclusions cannot be drawn from available data. As the article concedes... this recent find is hardly proof of anything (at least, as of yet). But it may indeed be evidence of something. This article gives readers a "heads up" for further developments... and doesn't (in my view) suggest that readers should form any conclusions yet.
“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.
Who on earth could have made that evaluation? Shocking? They've got to be joking.
The quote says "Some" and "Others", not "All".
Most Christians believe that the story of Christ was foretold and alluded to in the Old Testament.
And these Christians would fit the "OTHER" category.
Who writes this stuff?
The author's name is Ethan Bronner, but he is quoting Daniel Boyarin, "a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley."
Christians might be gratified that a Jewish document contains a prophecy about a messiah rising from the dead much like others later claimed Jesus did. They might also be concerned that Jesus could be seen as more derivative than before. If it was predicted that Simon would rise from the dead after three days, and that this event would lead to the liberation of Israel, what is so special about Jesus?
My guess is that people will take from this what they are looking to take from it. I am excited by the find (perhaps for different reasons than others here; it actually bears on my research), and I look forward to reading more about it.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
Trevor wrote:Christians might be gratified that a Jewish document contains a prophecy about a messiah rising from the dead much like others later claimed Jesus did. They might also be concerned that Jesus could be seen as more derivative than before. If it was predicted that Simon would rise from the dead after three days, and that this event would lead to the liberation of Israel, what is so special about Jesus?
My guess is that people will take from this what they are looking to take from it. I am excited by the find (perhaps for different reasons than others here; it actually bears on my research), and I look forward to reading more about it.
If you don't mind me asking, Trevor... what research is that?
“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.
Who on earth could have made that evaluation? Shocking? They've got to be joking. Most Christians believe that the story of Christ was foretold and alluded to in the Old Testament. Who writes this stuff?
Here's one clue:
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.
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.
To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says "Sar hasarin," or prince of princes. Because 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, a messianic figure, whom the stone also mentions along with 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 and 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.".......
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.
In other words, if this is shown to be true, it's possible the gospel writers borrowed from this tradition, and it's also clear how they borrowed from the Old Testament, having Jesus "fulfill" the prophecies after the fact.
Mike Reed wrote:If you don't mind me asking, Trevor... what research is that?
My research concerns prophecy and monarchy in the late Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
Does the whole "Messiah" thing strike anyone else as Asimov-ish?
Couldn't we all say that Asimov predicted many of the modern technologies we have today?
Or, did the modern technologies come because those who read Asimov remembered something of his creative genius and applied it?
Couldn't the same thing be said about Jesus? Tales had been told for centuries about a savior that would rise after 3 days. A group of religionists get together and solidify these tales into a book of scripture and give the character the name of Jesus who mysteriously rises after 3 days.
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