The New York Times posted a piece over the weekend about the discovery of a tablet with some possibly unique significance:
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.
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.
It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to
columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is
faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.
Still,
its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping
to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political
crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.
Daniel
Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of
California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body
of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a
close reading of the Jewish history of his day.
“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.
The discovery of this stone is not recent. Apparently its existence has been known for nearly a decade.
Oddly, the stone is not really a new discovery. 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. When an Israeli
scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it
last year, interest began to rise. There is now a spate of scholarly
articles on the stone, with several due to be published in the coming
months.
“I couldn’t make much out of it when I got it,” said
David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. “I
didn’t realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni,
who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was
overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”
Much
of the text, a vision of the apocalypse transmitted by the angel
Gabriel, draws on the Old Testament, especially the prophets Daniel,
Zechariah and Haggai.
Ms. Yardeni, who analyzed the stone along
with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the
era of King Herod, who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long
analysis of the stone more than a year ago in Cathedra, a
Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of
Israel, and said that, based on the shape of the script and the
language, the text dated from the late first century B.C.
It appears that the authenticity of the stone has not been met with any challenge, at least at this juncture. The possible ramifications are quite fascinating. If this stone is truly authentic and [this is the key] the interpretation correct, it shows that contrary to what some scholars have thought, there was at least some concept of a slain and risen messiah that was embraced by a form of early Judaism in the Second Temple Period prior to Jesus. Again, how mainstream a thought this would have been is hard to tell. Most likely it was not a dominant motif, but still the possibility would be that the idea at least floated around before the time of Jesus is intriguing.
While the stone appears to be authentic, as for the import that is being given to it so far - appropriate caution, and a deep breath, in needed. The reality that the stone itself is quite fragmentary, with critical portions of text either illegible or missing in crucial places. It is important to note that what is being reported that it "says" is again an interpretation based upon a fragmentary text. [As a side note, this is not the first time sensational messianic claims have been inferred upon a text from the Dead Sea Scrolls. There was the "Son of God" text, 4Q246, a controversial Aramaic fragment of text which was purported to link the title "Son of God" with the coming messiah. While much was made about the connection early on, scholarly opinion has cooled considerably to this interpretation.]
If you're interested, you can find a transcription of the Hebrew or an English translation of the stone here. It will be interesting to see what comes of this "Messiah Stone." The article is most definitely worth the read. You can check it out here.
, pp. 209-210]
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