DARK SKIES BLOG

I have been scouring the news for any follow-up articles on the “Stone Scroll” or “Gabriel’s Revelation” as it has been called and haven’t found much that advances the arguments that have already been made.

I did, however, stumble across this piece this morning in IsraelToday.com and thought it worth posting.

Messianic leaders say Hebrew tablet validates Jesus’ claims

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This morning I found one article (in the Times UK) on this subject but it was so one-sided it could have been written by Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens (it offered elaboration of only Israel Knohl’s theory). Here’s its thrust…

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

After a little bit of digging, I came across an article that presents both Professor Knohl’s point of view and the opposing POV–that the information so far provided by the “tablet” is supportive of and consistent with the Christian view of the Resurrection. The Christian point of view is presented by Dr Timothy Gray, a professor of Biblical Studies at the Augustine Institute in Denver.

Here’s a link to that article (in the Catholic News Agency)…

Scholars divided on interpretation of ‘Gabriel’s Revelation’ tablet

(excerpt)

The interpretations of scholars reported in the International Herald Tribune, Gray said, was “very striking” for its insistence that any evidence must undermine Christianity.

“On the one hand, scholars argue no Jewish tradition about a messiah suffering shows that the Church added this idea. And once you show a document, an ancient document to point to, showing that they did interpret a prophet like Daniel to expect a suffering messiah, well then people say ‘Well this proves Christianity can’t be true.’”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Gray said.

[UPDATE: See comments below for a reposting of a line by line English translation of the script on the stone--Source.]

Before the NY Times article on the Stone Scroll appeared on Sunday, Ada Yardeni herself (the specialist in Hebrew writing who recognized the importance of Jeselsohn ‘s stone tablet) published an article in the Jan/Feb 2008 Biblical Archaeology Review entitled “A New Dead Sea Scroll in Stone?”.

Here’s an excerpt. Read the whole thing, it’s quite interesting!

(…)

And the letters that have survived are often very hard to read. The back of the stone is rough and unfinished, unlike the polished side with script. This suggests that the stone was once mounted in a wall. Whether it was inscribed with the stone already mounted in the wall or lying flat on the floor, it must have been very inconvenient to write on the polished side and this may well account for the rather careless look of the script, which was nevertheless the work of a professional scribe.

The text has not been identified, but it is clearly a literary composition, similar to Biblical prophecies. It is written in the first person, perhaps by someone named Gabriel (“I Gabriel,” line 77), so I have named the text “Gabriel’s Vision.” It is apparently a collection of short prophecies addressed to someone in the second person.

Like the prophets of old, whoever wrote this composition proclaims the “word of Yahweh,” the personal name of the Hebrew God. And, again like the Bible, many of the prophecies open with the words “Thus (or therefore) said the Lord [that is, Yahweh and sometimes the more generic Elohim] of Hosts.” Sometimes the text uses Elohei Yisrael, “God of Israel.” There are also numerous references to Yahweh’s kavod, or glory, familiar to all students of the Hebrew Bible.

(…)

Here’s a photo at Ada Yardeni’s article…

UPDATE 7/7/2008 at 2:28pm EST: Here is a link to an English translation of the “Gabriel’s Revelation” stone at the Biblical Archaeology Review—English translation (in Microsoft Word). I have also posted the English translation (from Biblical Archaeology Review) in comments below.

This stone tablet, which contains writings dated to the decades before the birth of Christ, is thought by serious scholars of the subject to be a significant discovery.

The tablet itself is not a new discovery–it was purchased 10 years ago from a Jordanian dealer in antiquities by an Israeli/Swiss collector who, while himself an expert on Hebrew antiquities, was unaware of its importance until recently when it was shown to Ada Yardeni, a specialist in Hebrew writing.

“She (Ms Yardeni) was overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”

Read the article in today’s NY Times or in the Times Argus (Montpelier/Barre, Vermont).

David Jeselsohn and the tablet.