Move over, Indiana Jones…
Fascinating story just moved by The New York Times about the recovery of a stone tablet which apparently came from the Dead Sea area and speaks of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days…and it is dated to decades before the time of Jesus.
Many questions to be sure, but this doesn’t sound like Gospel of Judas hype, nor is it positing anything that should be all that unsettling to either Christians or Jews. Here’s the money quote from a scholar quoted by the Times:
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.
Or is he wrong? Given all we now know of the historical context of Jesus and early Christianity, along with the NT writers’ use of the Hebrew scriptures to interpret the Christ story, this discovery strikes me as fascinating rather than unnerving. Such a find might also perhaps prompt a continued refocus on Jewish traditions of the resurrection of the dead.
Tags: Biblical archeology
For me, the best evidence of the resurrection is the lives of those who dedicated themselves for decades to spreading the word of their experience of truth, even sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Somehow, I think their actions speak to something more than a theological trope. So, upshot for me, this stone is not a matter of real concern. But then again, I already think that we need to be much more willing to suspect even the gospels, not to mention the churches, when it comes to truly discerning the history and meaning of Jesus. We will always at best have traditions and communities. If knowing the truth is prerequisite for faith, then I think we are fooling ourselves. If seeking the truth is a prerequisite for faith, then this tablet can only assist the life of faith.
The truth I intended to reference in the second line is the truth of the resurrection of Jesus. Now, off to bed.
“On the third day” always had the feel of a traditional formula, as does the Jonah-influenced “so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mt 12:40).
Did Jesus himself use any such formula?
The experience alluded to in Paul’s list of appearances of the risen Christ may not have been referrable, in historical reality, to a given day. Yet Paul has the phrase “on the third day” (1 Cor 15:4) and he mentions Christ’s burial just before that. So the proclamation of a resurrection from the grave on the third day seems well-established in the mid 50s.
The narration of an empty tomb is first found in Mark. It could be a theologoumenon arguing back from the proclamation we find in Paul.
Whatever the actual facts their impact was clearly so strong as to instill in believers a conviction of the exaltation/resurrection of Christ — they found that the traditional language of messianic exaltation or resurrection fitted their overwhelming experience that the crucified lived in their midst.
Serious scholars will proceed cautiously on this report. Of course, it is “news” because it is in the NYT, but what is reported is not all that new. Situating Jesus and early Christianity in relation to the Judaisms of the day is always welcome, and in the case of this inscription (if correctly interpreted) any information regarding the belief in resurrection among ancient Jews is especially welcome. A clarification of the belief in resurrection in the first century CE or earlier can only be good news for Christianity
It should be noted that the inscription has been known for a while, and it has only recently garnered some interest. The article by Israel Knohl is in the April, 2008 issue of The Journal of Religion, not in the most recent one (July, 2008) as the NYT story indicates. It is a fascinating study of the inscription, but it is not without its problems.
In my opinion, Knohl’s work is more important for understanding ancient Judaism than for the notion of the death and resurrection of a messiah in early Christianity. One thing that raises a question for me is Knohl’s identification of the figure of Ephraim in the inscription as the “Messiah, son of Joseph,” a notion that is known only in late Jewish sources like the Babylonian Talmud and the Apocalypse of Zerubbabel. The text of line 16 in the inscription reads: “My servant David, ask of Ephraim (that he) place the sign; (this) I ask of you.” The translation is Knohl’s. The Hebrew can also be translated to read that God is recounting that David has requested a sign of Ephraim. Knohl interprets these references to David and Ephraim as two eschatological figures, but it should be noted that the term “messiah” does not appear in the inscription. Of course, Ephraim in the Hebrew Bible refers to Northern Israel. A third “messianic” figure is a type of anti-messiah identified as “the wicked branch” (lines 21-22). If Knohl is correct in his interpretation, he may have found evidence for the notion of two messiahs in ancient Judaism, something already known from the Dead Sea Scrolls. But that his interpretation is correct is not a foregone conclusion.
Of course, a lot rests on the early dating of the inscription, which he believes to be late first century BCE to early first century CE. Dating inscriptions is a difficult enterprise and the range of dates in this case is significant. Knohl has a preference for dating things earlier than many scholars would. His theory on the early dating of the P source of the Pentateuch has not been widely accepted.
Does Knohl have a vested interest in this interpretation and in the early dating of the inscription? Yes. As the NYT article notes he wrote a book, The Messiah before Jesus, that was not well received because he had no pre-Christian evidence to prove his case. Now he can claim to have the missing link.
There is also the possibility that the inscription is a forgery. Inscriptions written in ink on stone are rare. One has also to remember the famous ossuary of James discovered several years ago. Serious Aramaic scholars pored over it and declared the inscription on it referring to James the son of Joseph brother of Jesus as an authentic first century Aramaic inscription. The ossuary was hyped by the media as the “bone box of Jesus’ brother.” It was later declared a forgery. I suspect this new “discovery” will be met with a measure of caution.
Alan Mitchell, many thanks for the in-depth analysis. There are clearly so many agendas at work here, and so much room for a hoax, given the public appetite for anything related to the Jesus-era, as the writer of the piece called it. The ink-on-stone aspect of the writing struck me as odd, and too-easily forged or difficult to date. But I am a dilettante here. I worked on a documentary about the James ossuary, and had strong doubts then, as now. What seems likely is that the critical part of the ossuary inscription may not even have been a modern “forgery,” but a medieval (or earlier) work. Similarly for the Shroud of Turin. Who knows for this tablet.
What is troubling (to me) is what people read into these discoveries, or take out of them, even if they are legit. E.g., the story’s walkaway quote:
“His [the messiah's] mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said. “This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel.”
Hmmm…
David,
You are welcome. There are several “give aways” in the NYT article. First, the usual suspects were not interviewed. Second, those who were tend towards extreme views. When I was an undergraduate at Fordham, I took a course in the the historical grammar of Aramaic offered by Fr. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., one of the leading Aramaic scholars in the world. Daniel Boyarin, a then student at Jewish Theological Seminary, was also in the course. He frequently opted for textual readings that reflected influence from a later time, Mishnaic or Talmudic readings. Fr. Fitzmyer was forever cautioning him that he was adopting secondary readings of the texts that we studied, which means he was importing derivative readings into the text. He seems still to be doing that. Third, there is no mention in the article that the term “messiah” does not appear in the inscription, and that the messianic connotations are interpretative. These anomalies raise red flags for me, and when viewed in relation to Knohl’s JR article, they are enough to cause me to doubt that his interpretation of the inscription is correct.
“There are several “give aways” in the NYT article. First, the usual suspects were not interviewed. Second, those who were tend towards extreme views. ”
This brings to mind a question that frequently pops into my head when I run across religion stories in the mainstream media: is the reporter expected to be well-versed enough in the subject to know who the “usual suspects” are, and to go to them for quotes? (I’m assuming by “usual suspects”, Prof. Mitchell, you meant “those likely to give the mainstream view of things”?)
My recollection of the ossuary furor is that the story was touted by the publisher of a presumably well-regarded magazine on biblical archeology. My vague impression is that his advocacy lended a sort of imprimatur of respectability to the story – it provided assurance to the secular press that this ossuary was, possibly, the real deal. That the ossuary subsequently was discredited was something I learned only a good deal later, in passing, and unaccompanied by any fanfare.
Similarly, when reporting on local religious news in my market (Chicago), our local papers occasionally turn to what seem to me to be odd or eccentric (but quotable) sources for comments to fill out a story. E.g. if the cardinal is embroiled in some controversial topic, there seem to be a handful of priests who can be counted on to provide some salty or dissenting quotes. Whether they speak for a large contingent or a closetful of cranks is an open question, but by sheer dint of having their quote side-by-side with the archdiocesan spokesperson’s, the impression left by the story is that they are somehow representative of a large body of opinion.
Just speaking as a consumer of the news, my usual assumption is that these are good reporters who regularly, or irregularly, cover the “religion beat” and are doing their best but who can’t reasonably be expected to know all the players in every field of human endeavor.
Thanks to Prof. Mitchell for the very helpful background. Anyone who wants to check out the Knohl Article can download it for a small fee from the U of Chicago website.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/action/registration
Find Israel Knohl for free on the Shalom Hartman Institute website. http://hartman.org.il/