Posted on 08/07/2008 8:57:37 AM PDT by francke
The New York Times ran a feature story on July 6th, 2008 about the discovery of a stone tablet found near the Dead Sea in Jordan that apparently contains some reference to a “Prince of Princes” (ie. The Jewish Messiah) who would be slain and rise from the dead after three days. (Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection”, July 6, 2008)
The essence of the article and the opinion of the scholars quoted is that somehow, the credibility of Christianity is at stake, on the grounds that this pre-Christian inscription, also known in scholastic circles as “Gabriel’s Revelation”, robs Christianity of its “uniqueness” and novelty.
(Excerpt) Read more at letsaskgod.com ...
Sheesh. I can understand doubting that Yeshua is the Messiah or that He rose from the dead, but only an idiot would try to pretend that He didn't exist at all. As Ravi Zacharias once coyly pointed out (quoting someone else, I'm sure), "It would take a Jesus to invent a Jesus."
But getting back to the article, the only aspect of Christianity that the stone forces a reconsideration of is the "uniqueness apologetic"--that is, the idea that Christianity must be true since it is so "un-Jewish," so the original Jewish disciples would have had some incredible experience to explain their new views.
This stone simply proves that long before Yeshua was born, there were indeed those within Judaism who understood from the prophecies that the Messiah would die and rise again after three days.
Shalom.
“Dr. Israel Knohl, a Bible professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem states it as thus: “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship.
LOL, I have no idea what ‘scholarship’ they are talking about, but it doesn’t contradict the Bible which prophesied Jesus’s coming all along. “
Dr. Knohl is probably referring to Jewish scholarship and in that sense he would be correct.
Nobody needs to find "absolute proof of Jesus' existence" because nobody but obtusely ignorant numbskulls doubt that He existed. No credible historian doubts it. Even atheistic historians like Robin Lane Fox think that doubting Jesus' existed is pure dunderheadery, even if they don't hold to the Christian view of what Jesus did or meant.
The article argues it does not.
Yes, I guess from a Jewish scholarship perspective that Jesus is not the Messiah, it might throw a wrench into things. Of course it took the Jews 40 years of wondering around the desert to find the promise land which was only a few days walk, so I suppose taking 2000 years to figure out who the Messiah is, might be about right.
Can someone post some Old Testament prophecies that would suggest a messiah would raise from the dead after 3 days?
Thanks in advance.
Mark 14:58. New testament, I know, but it is a rather specific prediction.
There is a whole cottage industry out there among atheist/skeptic/"freethinker" circles that revolves around the notion that Jesus never existed. Of course, all of the literature produced by this crowd is written by people who have no credentials whatsoever in the relevant scholarly fields of study, and all of it relies upon long-debunked 19th century arguments that no serious historian would even bother to waste the energy to smirk at today.
If you haven't already read them, N.T.Wright's "What Paul Really Said" and "The Resurrection of the Son of God" are brilliant and very readable descriptions of early Christian Theology. In particular, he grounds early Christians (especially Paul who has been accused of Hellenism or making up a new religion) firmly into covenential, Second Temple Judaism.
The big problem was due to the fact that a resurrected Messiah in a still fallen world goofed up the time-lines believed by the Second Temple Jews. They thought the Messiah and New Jerusalem would come as one event and the Messiah would rule as a worldly king. Clearly, Jesus and the Resurrection, coupled with the second coming He prophecied, threw some serious sand into those gears. The Messiah had come but not in the way expected.
So Paul spends much time and energy working out the meaning of the actual coming of the Messiah and how he actually came and how that fit into the existing scripture. Turned out, He fit in pretty well to what was written but not so well into how it had been interpreted previously.
There are Roman records from shortly after the crucifixion that refer to a Hebrew named Jesus who claimed to be king of the Jews and who was crucified in the reign of Herod.
Combined with the four biographies written 50-60 years after His death and Paul's writings, some only 10-20 years after His death, there really is no serious dispute that He existed, even amongst anti-Christian theologians or historians. The only dispute is about the answer to the question He asked his apostles, "Who do you say that I am?"
What the stone may indicate is that like other religious story tellers, Christians claimed earlier stories as their own. The book of Esther is often cited as an example of the Jews appropriating Babylonian mythology as their own.
For instance, Buddhist stories have walking on the water and a wedding miracle as part of their tradition centuries before Jesus was supposedly born.
The slaughter of the innocents under Herod is mentioned nowhere in any official record of the time and no contemporaneous source. Josephus, a Jew, who chronicled the Jewish revolt that led to the destruction of the second temple doesn't mention it.
It is obviously a retelling of the story of Pharaoh ordering the killing of the newborn of the Hebrews to get to Moses. Jesus even flees to Egypt.
To an objective observer,this would mean that Jesus' birth story borrowed from early Jewish stories and his resurrection story was a retelling of the Simon story on the stone. Borrowing is just another form of embellishment
Embellishment happened with Buddha and Muhammad too. In the Early Buddhist tradition, Gautama was born in the traditional way. Later he was born from the side of a white elephant and it rained flowers. During Muhammad's life he was a prophet. Later tradition added:
"In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad's night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem prior to his famous trip to heaven is called Isra'. As alluded to in the Qur'an (17:1), a journey was made by a servant of God, in a single night, from the “sacred place of worship” (al-masjid al-haram) to the “further place of worship” (al-masjid al-aqsa).
Traditionally, there was general agreement that the servant of God was Muhammad and that the “sacred place of worship” was Mecca. Early commentators, however, interpreted the “further place of worship” as heaven, and the entire verse was considered a reference to the Prophet's ascension into heaven (Mi'raj), an ascension which also originated in Mecca. In the period of the Umayyad caliphate (661–750), the “further place of worship” was read as Jerusalem. The two versions were eventually reconciled by regarding the Isra' simply as the night journey and relocating the point of Muhammad's ascension from Mecca to Jerusalem to avoid confusion. Some commentators also suggested that the Isra' was a vision sent to Muhammad in his sleep and not an actual journey at all; but orthodox sentiment has emphatically preserved the physical, thus miraculous, nature of the trip.
The Isra' story, greatly elaborated by tradition, relates that Muhammad made the journey astride Buraq (q.v.), a mythical winged creature, in the company of the archangel Gabriel. Muhammad meets Abraham, Moses, and Jesus in Jerusalem; he then officiates as leader (imam) of the ritual prayer (salat) for all the prophets assembled and establishes his primacy among God's messengers."
http://www.geocities.com/khola_mon/myth/Miraj.html
The synotic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are from a single source. John was smoking rope.
I don’t deny his existence, just the validity of the stories about him.
The story of Jonah, who was spit out of the whale after three days (Jonah 1:17).
JESUS DID NOT FULFILL THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES
What is the Messiah supposed to accomplish? The Bible says that he will:
A. Build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28).
B. Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6).
C. Usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. As it says: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)
D. Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one. As it says: “God will be King over all the world — on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One” (Zechariah 14:9).
The historical fact is that Jesus fulfilled none of these messianic prophecies.
Christians counter that Jesus will fulfill these in the Second Coming, but Jewish sources show that the Messiah will fulfill the prophecies outright, and no concept of a second coming exists.
http://judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_o/bl_simmons_messiah3.htm
Well, not yet anyway. :)
Additionally, I guess you forgot about all those comments in the Targumim and other writings about the Messiah ben Joseph and the Messiah ben David (i.e. two messianic comings) which various Jewish theologians arrived at from a plain reading of the Hebrew scriptures.
Well, that's you're business, and it's your right to disregard four different biographies all written within a generation of the events they describe, substantiated by the testimonies of scads of first-hand observers, and which could easily have been debunked by thousands of people still alive at the time if they weren't true.
Sorry, but there's more actual evidence for the life and works of Jesus Christ than there is for those of Aristotle and Julius Caesar.
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