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| Ancient stone artifact containing the Hebrew text (photo: Telegraph) |
JERUSALEM-An ancient stones with Hebrew writing on display in Jerusalem. Reportedly,
the ancient stone called the Gabriel Stone is revealing the prediction
of the existence of the Messiah (Savior) before Jesus.
Reported
by Dailymail, Monday (3/5/2013), named after Gabriel Stone (stone,
Gabriel), the stone was discovered 13 years ago in Jordan. The
controversial rock in 2008, when Israel scientists theorized that this
inscription revolutionized the understanding of the early Christian.
Scientists
named Israel Knohl's claim that the intent of the writing on the stone
indicate that Messiah first comes before the advent of Jesus. Its
interpretation led to a "hurricane" in the world of biblical studies,
where scholars convene an International Conference to discuss the text
of the readings in the ancient stone.
To
date, the Telegraph reported that Israel's website Khohl, which is a
Bible scholar in Hebrew University in Jerusalem said, fragments of
stone, Gabriel is still to be found. This marks not just one stone artifacts were found, but archaeologists could find Gabriel.
This brings back the Gabriel stone statues of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Second Temple. Khohl
revealed its interpretation that might be forgotten by other academics,
in which God calls upon his "son" to "back to life".
"It's
very likely that the text is written in two stone, mainly because of
language includes references to the New Testament or the Convention,"
said Khohl. Further, he explained, there are
posts made in tablet form to imitate the ideas of the two tablets
containing the ten commandments were given to Moses on Mount Sinai.
He was not convinced that the ancient stones have been found to have the full composition. So, there is a section or other pieces of stone, Gabriel has not been found.
He
hopes in the future, archaeologists could use advanced technology in
the field of photography with a display of high definition (HD) that can
reveal the origins of both message from ancient stones. "If anyone can think of a new technology or idea to add information to us, please come and tell us. This will be a major contribution to the study of Judaism and Christianity, "he said.
The
so-called Gabriel Stone, a metre (three-foot)-tall tablet said to have
been found 13 years ago on the banks of the Dead Sea, features 87 lines
of an unknown prophetic text dated as early as the first century BC, at
the time of the Second Jewish Temple.
Scholars see it as a portal into the religious ideas circulating in the Holy Land in the era when was Jesus was born. Its
form is also unique – it is ink written on stone, not carved – and no
other such religious text has been found in the region.
Curators
at the Israel Museum, where the first exhibit dedicated to the stone is
opening Wednesday, say it is the most important document found in the
area since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
"The Gabriel Stone is in a way a Dead Sea Scroll written on stone," said James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum. The
writing dates to the same period, and uses the same Hebrew calligraphic
script, tidy as some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of documents
that include the earliest known surviving manuscripts of the Hebrew
Bible texts.
The
Gabriel Stone made a splash in 2008 when Israeli Bible scholar Israel
Knohl offered a daring theory that the stone's faded writing would
revolutionize the understanding of early Christianity, claiming it
included a concept of messianic resurrection that predated Jesus. He based his theory on one hazy line, translating it as "in three days you shall live."
His
interpretation the caused a storm in the world of Bible studies, with
scholars at convening an international conference the following year to
debate readings of the text, and a National Geographic documentary crew
featuring his theory. An American team of experts using high resolution scanning technologies tried--but failed--to detect more of the faded writing.
Knohl,
a professor of Bible at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, eventually
scaled back from original bombshell his theory but the fierce scholarly
debate he sparked continued to reverberate across the academic world,
bringing international attention to the stone. Over the last few years it went on display alongside other Bible-era antiquities in Rome, Houston and Dallas.
Bible
experts are still debating the writing's meaning, largely because much
of the ink has eroded in crucial spots in the passage and the tablet has
two diagonal cracks the slice the text into three pieces. Museum curators say only 40 percent of the 87 lines are legible, many of those only barely. The interpretation of the text featured in the Israel Museum's exhibit is just one of five readings put forth by scholars.
All agree that the passage
describes an apocalyptic vision of an attack on Jerusalem in which God
"with angels on chariots to save the city. The central angelic character is Gabriel, the first angel to appear in the Hebrew Bible. "I am Gabriel," the writing declares.
The
stone inscription is one of the oldest passages featuring the
archangel, and represents an "explosion of angels in Second Temple
Judaism," at a time of great spiritual angst for Jews in Jerusalem
looking for divine connection, said Adolfo Roitman, curator of the
exhibit.
The
exhibit traces the development of the archangel Gabriel in the three
monotheistic religions, displaying a Dead Sea Scroll fragments which
mentions the Angel's name; the 13th century Damascus Codex, one of the oldest illustrated manuscripts of the complete Hebrew Bible; a
10th century New Testament manuscript from Brittany, in which Gabriel
predicts the birth of John the Baptist and "appears to the Virgin Mary; and
an Iranian Koran manuscript dated to the 15th or 16th century, in which
the angel Gabriel, called in Arabic, reveals the word of God to the
prophet Mohammad.
"Gabriel is not archaeology. He is still relevant for millions of people on earth who believe that angels are heavenly beings on earth, "said Roitman. The Gabriel Stone, he said, is "the starting point of an ongoing tradition that is still relevant today."
The story of how the stone was discovered is just as murky as its meaning. A Bedouin man is said to have found it in Jordan on the eastern banks of the Dead Sea around the year 2000, Knohl said. An
Israeli university professor later examined a piece of earth stuck to
the stone and found a composition of minerals found only in that region
of the Dead Sea.
The
stone eventually made it into the hands of Ghassan Rihani, a Jordanian
antiquities dealer based in Jordan and London, who in turn sold the
stone to Switzerland-Israeli collector David Jeselsohn in Zurich for an
unspecified amount. Rihani has since died. The
Bible scholar traveled to Jordan multiple times to look for more
potential stones, but was unable to find the stone's original location.
(fmh)
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