Tablet Ignites Debate On Messiah and Resurrection

Tablet Ignites Debate On Messiah and Resurrection

www.nytimes.com

JERUSALEM — 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.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Oh boy...This may open a huge can of worms, and stir some extremely heated debate. I try to stay out of the dogmatic arguments and semantics as much as possible, but basically what these people are insinuating is that this finding may shake up christianity and the new testament...I'll leave the debating to our religious experts here...Thoughts?

“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.”

www.nytimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I'm not religious etc.. but what does this mean exactly?

dont know...probably means jesus isnt real and was a fictitous story...doh! silly me! really though,if religious folks cant use common sense to approach their views...i doubt this will do much...apart from the theologians etc...they will get their panties in a twist over this probably....

[edit on 5-7-2008 by Lethil]

reply to post by mirageofdeceit


Well, from what I can gather, this finding (or at least what they're interpreting from it) is pointing towards the messiah prophecy as being pre-Christ, and spoken of in Judaism circles, prior to Christ's inception. Meaning that the Messiah prophecy wasn't unique to Christ or his followers.

The thing is that the Israeli Messiah was predicted from a long time, but the problem is not about Jesus been or not the right Messiah the problem is that the Jews didn't recognized him as the one.

Christianity gave the Jesus all the glory, using the foretold propehcies of the Jews.

Well, the Jewish messiah was forcaste long, long time before Jesus came.... so a stone saying a messiah came and would rise from the dead is a bit of a silly reason to start an argument.

The jews didn't like him because he didn't do what they wanted how they wanted. So they plotted and killed him.

Bit like modern times really.

It could still all be part of some ancient TABloid journalism. It could have also actually been a twin or look alike. Back then it could have been easy to mistake someone just from their beard and clothes. Remember Judas supposedly had to kiss christ for them to know which one he was. He could have kissed someone else just as well. "Will you die fro me?"

It may have all been an act or a play as in theater.

And if aliens were cloning people back then as if some sort of back up or to blend in, than this still doesn't necessarily mean anything supernatural as much as extraterrestrial advanced technologies. It wasn't that long ago they claimed to have found his families tomb as well with 'scratched' writings on them also.

Messianic prophecy starts in Genesis and runs throughout the OT. There are some 425 instances. The Pharisees believed in the Resurrection, the Saducees did not.

It seems this article is concerned with the "three days" claim. I don't know of any OT references that specifically state Christ would be dead for three days prior to His resurrection. Christ said this Himself, as recorded in Scripture. That's good enough for me. That there may be a reference to a three day period of death prior to the Resurrection from before Christ walked the earth in human form in no way refutes Christ. I think it actually supports Him.

It is true the Jews were looking for a physical deliverance from the Romans in their Messiah. Christ brought spiritual deliverance in His First Coming. This is clear from His recitation of Scripture announcing Himself at Nazareth.

Luke 4

17 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,

18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

20 And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

21 And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.

Verse 19 is the key here. Christ only proclaimed the first half of Isaiah 61.

Isaiah 61

2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;

He will come again to fulfill the rest. The Jews are still waiting to recognize Him for the first time. It is not surprising they would be promoting evidence attempting to discredit His First Coming. To me it is all part of the Great Deception.

What these tablets bring into light is the issue of: Did Jesus fulfill the prophecies or did the prophecies fulfill him? That is, did Jesus make a deliberate attempt to conform, in words and actions, with prophetic deeds that were expected from him, from people at the time? And further, were there others who were trying to follow the “Complete Guide to Being a Messiah”, just as legitimate, but just not as successful?

The way it will pan out is this: The True Believers will still continue to claim that, while their may have been other false claimants to the throne, Jesus was the only one that remained - thus the True Messiah. The Eternally Damned (myself amongst them) will see this as just more evidence that shows that Jesus was only one of many claimants - albeit the only really successful one.

In that sense, this dusty old rocks really won’t change anything much; because people haven’t changed that much either.

One of the most notable instances of prophetic fulfillment for me is Palm Sunday. Daniel prophesied that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem on this day and Christ fulfilled that prophesy to the day over 500 years later.

reply to post by Icarus Rising


Yeah, I don't get what the N.Y. Times is trying to say because this only means that Jesus fulfilled prophecy one that everyone knew about. The prophecy of the messiah was told long before Jesus came.

The elder Jews denied him because if they excepted him that would mean that they lose their power over the people, Because thats what they were power hungry Jews that were loyal to Rome and not the Church.

reply to post by Icarus Rising


The O.T. gave us many "types" before the reality of those types. Christ, referring to his death and resurrection, spoke of Jonah being in the belly of the "whale" 3 days.

I'm not getting why we would be upset. To me it's just more proof of Jesus being here and resurrecting for me. More proof of Angels and Heaven and hell and The Bible. All Christians should be saying this is more proof.

Am I missing something that was suppose to make me upset?

reply to post by Shar


hello Shah

ive not read the article

it could be the trigger for the house of Judah where God opens their eyes?

i dont know, but im with you. no concern for me

david

The Psalms have a couple of direct references to "The Holy One" not being left dead nor His body being allowed to decay.

Seriously, I think this is an outstanding example of the NYT trying to stir the pot thanks to the fact that there are scores of "Christians" in the world today who don't know their Bible from their elbow. The number one problem here is they're completely disregarding the presence of prophecy in their analysis. By calling it "Judaic tradition" they have relegated it to nothing more than a story and openly seem to expect all Christians to do the same. Any Christian that denies prophecy cannot call themselves a true Christian because the gift of prophecy is clearly named as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Corrinthians 12: 8-10). In fact, one of the surest signs of the accuracy of any prophecy is whether it agrees with scripture while glorifying the Lord. Clearly in this case both of these tests pass with flying colors.

“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.

This man sounds like a fool. No Christian should find this in the least bit shocking because it does NOT challenge the "uniqueness" of the story of Christ. Rather it upholds the uniqueness because nowhere else in recorded time has anyone fulfilled the criteria set out by it as the identifiers of the true Messiah... except when you examine Jesus. Likewise, any Christian who recieves comfort from this "discovery" should do so not because of any connection with the so-called "traditions" of Judaism, but rather because it came to pass and is, therefore, fullfilled prophecy.

Good find, DD. Mind boggling in the ignorance (or possible denial?) demonstrated by the supposed "experts" cited in the article, but still a good find. Scratch that, a great find, actually.

Christians (myself included) believe that at the time of Jesus the Jews were looking for a Messiah who would be a warrior king. That's one of the reasons that they did not accept Jesus as the Messiah.

This article is saying that this stone now shows that there were stories of a Messiah who would suffer, die and be resurrected before Jesus was born, throwing into confusion the part of Christian theology mentioned above. However, this is not true. Not only were there prophecies of the Messiah that said he would deliver Israel and be their king (Christians believe Jesus will do this in the future), there were also numerous prophecies in Isaiah and throughout the Old Testament that said that the Messiah would die and resurrect. In Jesus' time, the Israelites were being subjugated by the Roman empire, so they were looking for the warrior part. This is why they they they worshiped Him at the Triumphal Entry when He rode into Jerusalem. Then, when He didn't try to take power, they turned against Him. (I am just explaining Christian beliefs relating to the stone, I don't want to start a religious debate here.)

Other than that, which pretty much makes the "controversy" around the stone nonexistent, the article itself is lacking. It isn't clear what exactly the stone says. Sure, it quotes three lines, but what is the context? Is the text narrative, prophecy, or something else? Also, why is the stone just now surfacing? If it was really found ten years ago, wouldn't whoever found it have thought, "Hey, this is an ancient stone, and it has Hebrew writing written on it. I wonder what it says?" Also, what kind of ink is it written in? I'm no expert on things like this, but is it even plausible for something written, not carved, on stone like this to have survived for 2000 years?

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective

Tablet Ignites Debate On Messiah and Resurrection

www.nytimes.com

JERUSALEM — 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.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Wow. Those are some scholars. Apparently, they missed Isaiah, as it spoke of the same thing, and was written HUNDREDS of years before Jesus' birth.

Basically the Jews have evidence, including evidence in the dead sea scrolls that the new testament was just a re writing of what had already been written re: Jesus and stuff so they use it to blackmail christianity. Basically the eucharist, baptism etc were Jewish things and not christian things, they were around before Jesus's alleged days. Further these stories like the story of the floods and noah have been found to predate the bible itself. And to top it up the Koran actually says that this is wat happened and that therefore muslims must not listen to what christians and Jews say because they plagiarized the bible and killed the prophets that came with the truthy. So any story that invalidates the Jesus story could actually invalidate christianity and help islam. The dead sea scrolls show that many christian beliefs pre date christianity...The jews can destroy christianity especially so because they own the majority of the press and publishing houses. It is just a threat because they are being made to give back stolen land to Lebanon and syria and they don't want a two state soution they want to make life impossible for palestinians so that they leave for good. So they are threatening to discredit christianity once and for all.

reply to post by whitewave


That's true, and thanks for bringing it up. I was referencing prophecy, not typology, but it is certainly relevant to the discussion.