Biblical Stone Causes Stir

[shamaal]

The link is in the #3 post.

This is a headline from the Drudge Report, unfortunately there is no link associated with it.

Anyone have a clue what the real story is?

[glfredrick]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/wo...nt&oref=slogin

A stone, found about a decade ago, and supposedly aged to just prior to AD 1 (I say "supposedly" because the stone has not been subjected to scholarly review and testing as yet) stipulates a national Jewish Messiah who will die and raise from the dead in three days. They are calling it a "Dead Sea Scroll" in stone.

Because this is a breaking story, we'll see much to do about it in the press, but not so much scholarly evidence for a bit. Same deal as the James ossuary, the Gospel of Judas, etc.

The good news is that there are new discoveries being made on almost a daily basis in Israel, and that all helps us to better understand the Bible and the culture of the early 1st century or so.

I'll reserve further comment for now until I investigate further, with one caveat -- it would not be impossible to deduce a suffering Savior or Messiah from the OT texts. That line is plainly there for anyone to see. Especially in Isaiah, where it is made most clear.

[shamaal]

Great it's been sitting in some Swiss guy's house who didn't know what it is. Now it's the missing link between Judaism and Christianity.

There's an article on chemical authenticity submitted to a peer review journal, I suspect this is part of some publicity runup. I bet there's a Discovery Channel program somewhere in the mix.

This is an IHT link that doesn't require registration to read. Even if it turn's into a circus like the James ossuary, there will be entertainment value in the experts positioning themselves to claim they were correct in their biblical interpretations all along.

Tablet ignites debate on messiah and resurrection - International Herald Tribune

[glfredrick]

The positioning is typical following biblical archaeological discoveries, and more so in this age of secularism, where attempts are made at every turn to somehow uproot belief in God or Christ (or the Bible that makes both known).

I'd wait at least a year or so before getting real excited about any new "breakthrough" discovery of this nature. And you are probably right -- Discovery, National Geographic, et al, will probably already have a feature in the can, citing such "expert scholars" as Spong and company... One would think that getting proven wrong a few times would slow their need to take sides, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Guess the ratings and advertising dollars are more important.

In particular, the dating is suspect for me. I know of no way to date anything within a "couple decades" one way or another. If I'm out of the loop, I'd love to get up to speed on that issue, but so far, I can't see any dating scheme that accurate.