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The Uniqueness of the Resurrection
(August Newsletter Article)
In the Sunday July 6th front page edition of The San Diego Union Tribune (less affectionately known as “the Onion Tribune”)there was an article with this eye-catching headline: “Ancient table with Hebrew writing spurs messiah, resurrection debate.” That juicy title promised readers some shocking bit of news that was supposed to rock the Christian world and render the uniqueness of Jesus’ resurrection, well, pedestrian. Christianity, therefore, looses its foundational doctrine (1 Cor. 15), and is exposed as a merely an uninspired, parasitical religion.
Here’s the substance of the article. From the New York Times News Service, dateline Jerusalem, an authentic three-foot tall monolith tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew text was found near the Dead Sea. Scholars are dating the text to the first century BCE (“before the common era,” i.e., before Christ (BC)). Now, what is supposedly causing a noteworthy stir in the circles of biblical and archeological scholarship are lines in the text that speak of a messiah who’ll rise from the dead after three days. Media culture exclaims that this is an earth-shaking find because if such a messianic description is in fact there, then it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views on Jesus because “it suggests the story of his death and resurrection wasn’t unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.”
Put differently, the Christian story about Jesus the Messiah’s untimely death and resurrection is really taken from Judaism! It turns out that the resurrection of the messiah is really a Jewish story at heart. Imagine that! Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said the tablet was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could best be understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day, adding: “Some Christians will find it shocking—a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology … by it being a part of Judaism.”
When I read this article, indeed, I was shocked. I was shocked and amazed that such an asinine article ever made it to print. Who are the editors at the UT and the New York Times News Service—Manny, Moe, and Jack? The article is pure, unadulterated sensationalism. It was set on the front page for no other reason than to provide brain-candy to the brain-dead. What is more, I found myself flabbergasted that a Cal Berkeley professor would made such a dumb comment. Mind you, I’m no professor of Jewish history at one of the world’s finest academic institutions, but don’t even our Sunday School kids know that Jesus was Jewish and that his life, death, and resurrection are fulfillments of the Hebrew Bible, that messianic prophecies abounded, even ones about resurrection, in the centuries that proceeded the Virgin Birth of Jesus?
One does not have to look far in the Old Testament to find prophecies, allusions, and metaphors of messianic resurrection, as well as references to the resurrection of all bodies. Take, for instance, the explicit passage of Isaiah 26.19: “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.” Elsewhere, for example, in Job 19.25-26 (possibly the oldest book in the Old Testament)the promise of a bodily resurrection is evidenced: “I know that the redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And … in my flesh shall I see God.” So well established was this doctrine that even the most skeptical dating of the book of Daniel has this doctrine be attested to at least two centuries before the Advent. Daniel 12.2 affirms: “Many Old Testament them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Passages like these, and several others, evidence that the doctrine of a resurrection—especially the messiah’s resurrection as told by Ps. 2.7; 16.8-11; 118.21-24; Isa. 53.9-10 and 55.3—as part of a standing Jewish interpretation of Scripture and worldview concerning the composition of humanity, as well as how God would vindicate the Messiah. For the Christian, the Union Tribune brought no new news.
However, the article did bring a new irony because the usual accusation against Christian orthodoxy is that the doctrine of a bodily resurrection really was unknown to the Israelites prior to the time of Jesus. Now the newspapers are saying that the doctrine of the resurrection and a messianic resurrection are surprisingly upsetting to Christianity precisely because they were known to the Israelites prior to the time of Jesus. Those who once denied this possibility in their maligning of Christianity are now the ones in fact affirming it in their maligning of Christianity. This tune-changing is tantamount to saying that the prevailing thought of Judaism and insipient Christianity as altogether discontinuous needs to be rethought in the Christian community as essentially continuous and, moreover, this continuity with Judaism undercuts New Testament theology. But so far from engendering apoplexy in its readers with such an inference, the Union Tribune article elicits a yawn and a waving of the hand as passé from baptized readers with a pulse. Why? Because the article, while trying to say that this would be disconcerting for the Christian and his Gospel, actually fortifies what Christianity has been saying that Judaism has affirmed since as far back as Job, Moses and David, to say nothing of important segments of Second Temple Judaism leading up to the time of Jesus. Christianity does not see doctrines concerning the Messiah and his resurrection as essentially discontinuous with Old Testament Judaism—quite the opposite. This is why the article is a non-starter for any supposed controversy or debate, be it among the popular or scholarly understandings of Jesus. The article could have equally been tagged with this “shocking” headline: “Jesus does something Jewish.”
Notwithstanding the queer position that article attempts to peddle, it is right about this: Something discontinuous did in fact happen, which in turn renders Christianity and Judaism faiths of a different kind. Pointedly, Jesus of Nazareth actually rose from the dead after being crucified by professionals (Matt. 27.52-53). This was and is perfectly unique. Jesus got out of the tomb. And that simple little fact changes everything. Judaism simply doesn’t recognize a resurrected Messiah that they worship and adore, as Christianity does, though this earth-shaking event is ever present in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves and, as this 87-line tablet from Jordan evidences, is found scribed on archeological artifacts found in Israel’s own backyard
Pastor John
Pentecost 2008
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