If I had a dime for every “discovery” by the New York Times that threatens to “shake our basic view of Christianity” I would be one wealthy dude. This story is merely a warmed over replica of last years burial ossuary story. The entire story hinges upon what might be a word on the stone and what that word, if it were there, could be interpreted to mean by those who don’t believe in Jesus in the first place.
The latest discovery, similar to last years ossuary story, isn’t a new discovery at all. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. Then years later, a scholar wrote a paper on the stone and it was read by an author of a book.
Israel Knohl, an professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, saw the article on the stone and decided that this was the PROOF of a theory he had published in a book that had been widely ignored. His book posited the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
To make his case about the importance of the stone, Mr. 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 Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur, but Mr. 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 Mr. 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.”
So almost the entire line is based upon supposition about what Knohl thinks he sees written on the stone. One of them is so clearly off, that he makes the case for an unusual spelling. Silly.
Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, said …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, undaunted by reality, cries eureka!
“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.”
Let’s say that for one instance that the stone says what Knohl pretends it does, why would that shake the foundations of Christianity? While the “mainstream” idea of the messiah at the time may have been a political one, why would the idea that some people had interpreted the scriptures to refer to a suffering messiah that would rise after three days shake the foundation? They were right after all.
This fatuous story bears remarkable similarity to last years discredited ossuary story. Artifact discovered years ago sits in someones garage until a “scholar” reads into it things that are not there and then jumps to wildly implausible conclusions based on nothing. Throw in a compliant media, and presto! The yearly “shake the foundations of Christianity” story.
Don’t they ever get tired of this?
July 5, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Here’s an interesting line from the NYT: “The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it.”
So they don’t even know the history of this thing! Yet it still shakes the foundation of Christianity.
July 6, 2008 at 12:41 am
Things get pretty dull over at the New York Times, what with their regular stable of plagiarists and fictional news writers getting caught.
And after paying homage to Senator Obama with ten gadzillion obsequious words in the last nine months, the editors needed something to spice up that moribund gray lady. So even though it’s not Advent or Lent, why not try and rattle a few Christians.
With the increasing spread of pagan depravity in this country abetted by the NYT itself, in another couple of decades, and if the NYT is still around, they can cover the news on just how many orthodox Christians were eaten by lions over the weekend.
July 6, 2008 at 2:06 am
The yearly “shake the foundations of Christianity” story
The gray lady doth protest too much, methinks.
July 6, 2008 at 7:25 pm
‘Scuse me while I nip out to my garage to see if there’s something there I can use to shake up Christianity (or the naysayers who deny it). Gotta be some way to make a quick buck off this.
July 6, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I read my NYTs story early this morning and I started w/the same apprehension, but by the end I held a different perspective. It is either the cup half empty, or half full. The operative phrase is, “if the tablet is authentic”, it will pretty cool news if so, especially for Christians who hold on to traditions.
Like most stories covering Christianity, Christiansof all sorts are thrown in the pot together. But I would say that there will be some Christians today upset with this information …. Christians that deny miracles or even the resurrection or deny the bible as inspired works. You know those Christians.
Towards the end of this article you hear a Jewish scholar saying that Jews might have to look at Christianity a little differently … now that might be a good thing! Since Christians are not practicing some far fetched belief so distant from Jewish traditions. (of course, no surprise to Catholics who know their faith and history).
In this article I heard the sounds of another door opening, despite the Simon theory. I say another because last year, Rabbi Sherwin of the Spertus Institute wrote an article clearing up a misbelief held by many modern day Jews about the afterlife. The article touched on the “resurrection” of the body which he states Reform Judaism sort of denied in the late 1800’s and stated it had no place in Judaism. Rabbi Sherwin clearly shows how this belief of a resurrected body does have history in Jewish teachings. So it makes me wonder if the research on these tablets prompted this Rabbi to write the article, or was this a coincidence?
Of course, you also have the Shroud of Turin Conference held in 2005 or ’06 with their latest findings which is again wonderful scientific news.
The Jewish photographer, Barrie Schwortz, who worked for decades as the official photographer for a scientific team working on the Shroud, has stated on his website that he believes the Shroud is of the “man” Jesus who had been crucified.
The WSJ a year back had an article on several prominent Jews quietly embracing Catholicism. Given all this and some other items, I see this, “if” authentic, could be in God’s plan. Today’s reading had me chuckling a bit w/delight too:
“Thus says the Lord:
Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion,
shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king shall come to you;
a just savior is he,
meek, and riding on an ass,
on a colt, the foal of an ass.
… His dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.”
But, again, it all depends on “if” … stay tune …
July 7, 2008 at 1:05 am
I would submit that this “ancient tablet” is probably another sensationalist scam, as is clearly indicated by the facts
(1) that no specific information (apart from a vague 3rd-party rumor) is available on its provenance and
(2) that no details are provided on carbon dating of the ink.
As such, this “news” brings to mind the faked Lost-Tomb-of-Jesus “documentary” designed to make a profit off of people’s fascination with the “real” Jesus, as well as the larger scandal of the biased and misleading way the Dead Sea scrolls are being presented in museum exhibits around the world, with an antisemitic expression appearing on a government-run North Carolina museum’s website. See, e.g.,
http://spinozaslens.com/libet/articles/dworkin_ethicsofexhibition.htm
and
http://blog.news-record.com/staff/frontpew/archives/2008/06/dead_sea_scroll.shtml.