mens_sana

It is not so much that a Jesus account might be modeled on Isaac, the model is the concept of "Beloved Son." The "Beloved Son" was around and could pickup any number of candidates.

By the way, the Levenson book cited by Neil Godfrey has a superb section on human sacrifice in the First Temple period — and it fits very neatly into the context of Ziony Zevit's The Religions of Ancient Israel (or via: amazon.co.uk).

mg01

Was he actually sentenced to serve time? I seem to recall a documentary after the whole affair that interviewed him in his home.

gstafleu

In order to have a resurrection the presumed resurrectee first has to die. Is there any evidence of that in the text? Given the heavy occurrence of "three days" in the text, I can't say I am impressed by just the combination of "three" and "live." I suspect that if you are a Christian (or a biblical scholar) you may be programmed to automatically think "resurrection" in that context, but I doubt if the (rather large) rest of the world would take it that way. (There may also be a "forty" in the text: are we now going to look for parallels to the Temptation or to the Wandering in the Desert?)

Anyway, I gather from the little I have read about how Sumerian and Babylonian myths are reconstructed from tablets, one rarely gets the whole story from one (set) of tablets. They are always damaged like the current one is. So you usually need to wait for the discovery of other tablets that have the same myth in order to reconstruct the whole story. I suspect this tablet is in the same boat.

Gerard Stafleu

Toto

I think the trial is still going on.

April this year

Oded Golan still on trial.

No Robots

A pro-Christ rabbi's take on the tablet:

This is incredibly important. Not only was the idea of a messiah who would be killed by Israel’s enemies part of Jewish thinking, the detail that he would be resurrected after three days was also well known. Further, the messianic idea associated with the death and resurrection of the messiah had nothing to do with “dying for the sins of humanity,” and everything to do with redeeming the Jewish people....

If Jesus saw himself as one of a line of messianic figures awaiting the right time for God to fulfill His promises to the Jewish people; if he provoked the powers that be to bring about his death; if he believed he would be resurrected after three days; and if he believed that resurrection would announce the redemption of Israel, then he was a Jew through and through, and needs to be honored as a great teacher and martyr not unlike Rabbi Akiba whom the Romans tortured to death some six decades later for his involvement in the messianic rebellion of Bar Kochbah.

andrewcriddle

Very hesitantly I think the text may be referring to the resurrection of Jewish martyrs in general rather than to a specific individual.

See Daniel 12:2 Andrew Criddle

ksen

Yeah, the movement was such a failure that it has billions of followers 2,000 years after he existed on the earth.

I wish I could start a business that would fail as spectacularly.

ksen

How so? :huh:

vid

errmmm... "Ressurection after three days" tradition right before Jesus time? Ascribing feats of older "heroes" to our ones, again? IMO if this tablet really speaks of ressurection of someone else than jesus after three days, then most evident conclusion is that this was one of traditions later ascribed to Jesus. Together with 4Q521 it seems that Jesus was ascribed common Messiah characteristics of his time, just like any other purpoted messiah of any time. Is that not a problem for christian tradition, the one claiming that his feats were unique and unheard of?

ksen

I'm unaware of a Christian tradition that says resurrection stories were unique.

I still fail to see how proof that Jews did believe the Messiah would rise from the dead in three days would have any bearing one way or the other as to the reality or myth of Jesus' resurrection.

I mean, my daughter told me her grandmother fed her green eggs and ham one St. Patrick's day. Does the fact that I find green eggs and ham in a Dr. Seuss story have any bearing on her claim?