Messianism Before Christ: Gabriel's Revelation

I've received many emails asking me what I think about all the recent buzz on "The Vision of Gabriel," the stone tablet from (purportedly) the first century BCE that appears (according to Dr. Israel Knohl) to speak of a dying and resurrecting messiah (click here, and here, and here, and here, and here). Knohl reconstructs lines 80-81 of the text to read: "By three days, live, I Gabriel, command you, prince of the princes." Let me make a few initial observations and comments about this fascinating artifact.

First, the stone was not found as part of a scientific dig, so its authenticity may never be assured. Second, the text is very fragmentary, so the reconstruction of its meaning will be open to debate. Indeed, reading the text through quickly, it is not immediately obvious that it refers to a suffering and dying messiah. That said, reading the text also quickly reveals a lot of verbal echoes of the books of Haggai and Zechariah, which do include the idea of a humble, suffering Messiah at places such as Zech 9:9-10; 12:10-13:1; and 13:7-9.

I have long been a fan of the bold and innovative scholar Israel Knohl who is one of those popularizing the "Gabriel's Revelation" artifact. Knohl has already written a book discussing the expectation of a suffering, atoning messiah as it appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I referenced this work in my Abingdon/IBT book, The Apocalyptic Literature. I argued there that for Christianity---the religion that claims the Christ/Messiah has come---to be meaningful and valid, there must have been a longstanding hope for just the sort of Christ/Messiah that Jesus became (i.e., a humble, suffering Messiah). This is nothing new---the point goes back to the famous Enlightenment debate between Collins and Sherlock. So, when journalists now look at "Gabriel's Revelation" and ask, "What impact would a pre-Christian reference to suffering, death and resurrection have on Christian scholarship?" (MSNBC), the answer is clear: This would be another piece of evidence showing that the idea of Christianity is a meaningful and valid idea. I.e., there were relevant messianic expectations around for Jesus to fulfill.

It is hardly any sort of challenge to Christianity that the idea of a resurrection after three-days was around before Christ. Again, the Christian claim is that Christ fulfilled longstanding messianic expectation. Across religions, three days of death is a motif common to the archetypal theme of death and rebirth. It is a symbolic reference to transformation. Think of the three days and nights that Jonah spent in the belly of the whale and the three days Inanna hung dead in the underworld "like a piece of rotting meat" in the Summerian story, "The Descent of Inanna." Perhaps more to the point, see me annotation to Hosea 6:2 in the Harper Collins Study Bible.