Pre-christian Stone Tablet Foretells Resurrection

[White Knight]

[b][url="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,378523,00.html"]Pre-Christian Stone Tablet Foretells Resurrection[/url][/b]

[quote][i][b]The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has been called into question by a radical new interpretation of a tablet found on the eastern bank of the Dead Sea.

The three-foot stone tablet appears to refer to a Messiah who rises from the grave three days after his death — even though it was written decades before the birth of Jesus.

The ink is badly faded on much of the tablet, known as Gabriel's Vision of Revelation, which was written rather than engraved in the 1st century B.C. This has led some experts to claim that the inscription has been overinterpreted.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Archaeology Center.

A previous paper published by the scholars Ada Yardeni and Binyamin Elitzur concluded that the most controversial lines were indecipherable.

Israel Knohl, a biblical studies professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argued Monday that line 80 of the text revealed Gabriel telling an historic Jewish rebel named Simon, who was killed by the Romans four years before the birth of Christ: "In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you."

Professor Knohl contends that the tablet proves that messianic followers possessed the paradigm of their leader rising from the grave before Jesus was born.

He said that the text "could be the missing link between Judaism and Christianity in so far as it roots the Christian belief in the resurrection of the Messiah in Jewish tradition[/b][/i][/quote]



Whats the scoop? Discuss.

White Knight

May the Holy Blessed Trinity, pour out His grace upon all creation, Amen.

Edited July 10, 2008 by White Knight

[mortify]

Well, it seems it's too early to really analyze this but here are some points to consider:

i) "The ink is badly faded on much of the tablet"
ii) Therefore: "This has led some experts to claim that the inscription has been overinterpreted"
iii) Israel Knohl, the scholar who claims a part of the tablet talks about a resurrection, has long held that the Jews expected a resurrected messiah: "Several participants of the conference accused him of using the tablet to rehash a theory that he had presented in his 2002 book, The Messiah Before Jesus." This is reason to believe there is bias and money involved.

I think in time this will be another sensational story that turns out to be false.

[Apotheoun]

I don't really see how the "discovery" of this tablet calls into question the resurrection of Christ.

[Archaeology cat]

From what I've read, many of the key parts of the text are practically illegible, and this person has inserted his own reconstruction. There are a lot of assumptions being made with the text. But I've not seen the actual stone, or an image of it.

[Apotheoun]

Even if Dr. Knohl's interpretation of the tablet is correct, which remains unproven, I do not see how that effects the doctrine of Christ's resurrection; any more than the fact that the Messiah is portrayed as divine in the Book of Enoch invalidates the doctrine of the incarnation.