Ancient tablet ignites debate on resurrection

Last updated on: July 7, 2008 at 11:46 pm by Lynn Hayes

Ancient tablet ignites debate on resurrection 2008-07-07T23:46:00-04:00 Lynn Hayes

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The timing of the dissemination of information about this tablet at this time when Pluto makes its last pass through Sagittarius, dredging up (Pluto) the beliefs that give our lives meaning (Sagittarius) is very interesting:

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.

Given the highly charged atmosphere surrounding all Jesus-era artifacts and writings, both in the general public and in the fractured and fiercely competitive scholarly community, as well as the concern over forgery and charlatanism, it will probably be some time before the tablet’s contribution is fully assessed. It has been around 60 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered, and they continue to generate enormous controversy regarding their authors and meaning. . . .

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.

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Ever since Pluto entered Sagittarius in 1995 the tenets of Christianity, the world’s largest religion, have been called into question as never before. Whether Jesus was married and had children; whether the resurrection was literal or allegorical — all of these things have been argued and reinterpreted in works for the masses such as the DaVinci Code.

When Pluto moves into Capricorn the transformation of the religion (Sagittarius) begins to translate itself into transformation of the religious structures (Capricorn). Then things will really get interesting!!

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