July 9, 2008
Archaeology is in the news again. An interesting juxtaposition of news stories concerns what might be the boyhood home of George Washington on the Rappahannock River and the claim that a collector has revealed an ancient stone tablet from Israel that might -- hold that thought -- speak of a resurrection just years before the time of Jesus.
The news about the home of the first president hit the media just in time for the Fourth of July. As The Los Angeles Times reported the story:
After years of searching, archaeologists have identified and excavated the boyhood home of George Washington, site of such legendary -- if perhaps apocryphal -- events as chopping down the cherry tree and throwing a coin across the Rappahannock River. The find indicates that the Washington family lived in a spacious eight-room home -- a sign that the family was well-off for its day -- and provides new information about George's childhood, a period that has remained largely obscured in the mists of history.
The account is interesting, as is the ruin of the home. It turns out that the property had been basically known and preserved. The discovery of the foundation and ruin of the home came as that property was more thoroughly studied. The most significant aspect of the discovery seems to be the fact that George Washington's father, Augustine Washington, was evidently a man of wealth. The eight-room home would have been a sign of exceptional wealth in that era of colonial Virginia. The discovery changes nothing of importance in our understanding of George Washington, but is obviously a site of significant historical interest.
The media attention devoted to what some call "Gabriel's Revelation" is a matter of greater controversy.
Here is the issue as reported by David Van Biema and Tim McGirk of TIME:
A 3-ft.-high tablet romantically dubbed "Gabriel's Revelation" could challenge the uniqueness of the idea of the Christian Resurrection. The tablet appears to date authentically to the years just before the birth of Jesus and yet -- at least according to one Israeli scholar -- it announces the raising of a messiah after three days in the grave. If true, this could mean that Jesus' followers had access to a well-established paradigm when they decreed that Christ himself rose on the third day -- and it might even hint that they could have applied it in their grief after their master was crucified. However, such a contentious reading of the 87-line tablet depends on creative interpretation of a smudged passage, making it the latest entry in the woulda/coulda/shoulda category of possible New Testament artifacts; they are useful to prove less-spectacular points and to stir discussion on the big ones, but probably not to settle them nor shake anyone's faith.
The tablet is owned by a Swiss-Israeli collector and it "came to light" about a decade ago. The tablet itself is interesting, but as Professor Ben Witherington of Asbury Theological Seminary argues in the story, the reading of the ink-on-stone text is contentious at best. As for the text itself, even if correctly dated to years just before Jesus, the text at the crucial line is smudged and the wording is unclear.
TIME's story concludes with this:
It remains to be seen whether Gabriel's Revelation, and especially Knohl's [Israel Knohl of Hebrew University in Jerusalem] interpretation, will weather the hot lights of fame. Even the authors of its initial research seem a little dubious about his claims that it is a dry run for the Easter story. But, as often happens in such cases, they seem better disposed to a slightly toned-down assertion: in this case, that the Gabriel tablet does indicate a very rare instance of the idea that a messiah might suffer -- a notion introduced in Judaic thought centuries before by the prophet Isaiah but which supposedly went out of style by Jesus' time. If that more modest theory gains traction, it will forge a link between a trend in first-century Judaism and one of Christianity's galvanizing thoughts -- that God might throw in his lot with a suffering or even murdered man -- that could contribute to a growing mutual understanding.
