“Was Jesus’ Resurrection a Sequel?”
The New York Times is reporting that a tablet entitled Gabriel’s Revelation, which dates from around the time of the birth of Jesus, contains an account of a three-day resurrection . The story, which has the needlessly sensationalistic title “Was Jesus’ Resurrection a Sequel?”, reports an interpretation by Israel Knohl that suggests the text predicts the resurrection of an individual after being dead for three days. As is always the case, the crux of the reading occurs in a break in the text.
The Times then states:
This, in turn, undermines one of the strongest literary arguments employed by Christians over centuries to support the historicity of the Resurrection (in which they believe on faith): the specificity and novelty of the idea that the Messiah would die on a Friday and rise on a Sunday.
Such a statement over-reaches the evidence by quite a bit. Even if Knohl’s reading is correct — and that is far from certain — all it shows is that someone else thought that a resurrection would occur after three days. It is not news that resurrection was a pre-Christian idea, and the fact that someone would connect it with a three day period is hardly surprising. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days, and if the author of Matthew could make that connection (Matt 12:40) I am sure others could too.
Despite what the title of the article might suggest, the text in question does not report that a resurrection happened. It is merely predicted in the text. Although Knohl connects the text with Simon (a Jewish rebel known from Josephus), he doesn’t claim that the author of the text thought that Simon actually did rise from the dead. And the followers of Simon were certainly not willing to proclaim that message and change the world the way the followers of Christ did.
Obviously, the Times is follow the age old dictum: “If it sheds blood for your sins, it leads” (it rhymes in the original Greek). And of course they point to the Talpiot tomb and other ideas that they suggest challenge the truth claims of Christianity. But while the text sounds interesting (they don’t provide the full text) and certainly will add to our ideas about the thought-world in which Christianity emerged, it certainly doesn’t drive the final nail into Jesus’ coffin. (And even if it did, he could still get out.)
On July 11th, 2008 at 7:43 am
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