Blue Cord

The New York Times is reporting that a tablet entitled Gabriel’s Revelation, which dates from around the time of the birth of Jesus, contains an account of a three-day resurrection . The story, which has the needlessly sensationalistic title “Was Jesus’ Resurrection a Sequel?”, reports an interpretation by Israel Knohl that suggests the text predicts the resurrection of an individual after being dead for three days. As is always the case, the crux of the reading occurs in a break in the text.

The Times then states:

This, in turn, undermines one of the strongest literary arguments employed by Christians over centuries to support the historicity of the Resurrection (in which they believe on faith): the specificity and novelty of the idea that the Messiah would die on a Friday and rise on a Sunday.

Such a statement over-reaches the evidence by quite a bit. Even if Knohl’s reading is correct — and that is far from certain — all it shows is that someone else thought that a resurrection would occur after three days. It is not news that resurrection was a pre-Christian idea, and the fact that someone would connect it with a three day period is hardly surprising. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days, and if the author of Matthew could make that connection (Matt 12:40) I am sure others could too.

Despite what the title of the article might suggest, the text in question does not report that a resurrection happened. It is merely predicted in the text. Although Knohl connects the text with Simon (a Jewish rebel known from Josephus), he doesn’t claim that the author of the text thought that Simon actually did rise from the dead. And the followers of Simon were certainly not willing to proclaim that message and change the world the way the followers of Christ did.

Obviously, the Times is follow the age old dictum: “If it sheds blood for your sins, it leads” (it rhymes in the original Greek). And of course they point to the Talpiot tomb and other ideas that they suggest challenge the truth claims of Christianity. But while the text sounds interesting (they don’t provide the full text) and certainly will add to our ideas about the thought-world in which Christianity emerged, it certainly doesn’t drive the final nail into Jesus’ coffin. (And even if it did, he could still get out.)

No, this is not a post about Scriptural underwear.

I am pleased to announce that a small booklet I wrote for the Bible Briefs series is out today. The series, which is published by Forward Movement Publications in partnership with Virginia Theological Seminary, is intended to provide short introductions to books of the Bible. My contribution to the series is Leviticus. The booklet is available free of charge as a PDF file at the Virginia Theological Seminary website. I am also scheduled to write the “volume” on  Numbers.

Steve Cook of Biblische Ausbildung is the editor for the series. Here are his gracious comments on the new booklet:

Recent scholarship is revitalizing interest in priestly literature of the Hebrew Bible such as Leviticus, rediscovering it as life-giving tradition that informed and complimented the prophetic word. To read Dr. Wilson’s new introduction to Leviticus is to appreciate anew God’s gifts of holiness, ritual, and wholeness. Wilson’s booklet gives the church an easy entree into scholars’ new regard for the Bible’s priestly theologies.

Just think – in one small booklet that takes about ten minutes to read you will learn more than most people ever want to know about Leviticus.

The New York Times has an article today entitled “Churches Retool Mission Trips”. It discusses the rise in popularity of short-term mission trips as well as some of the problems with such trips. It is well worth a read, especially if you are a member of a church that sponsors trips like these.

I have often wondered about the effectiveness of these trips, especially those that involve building projects. It costs a great deal to reach some of these destinations, and often we are flying in unskilled labor. The article addresses both of these issues. On the one hand, it notes that sometimes missionaries have paid as much as $30,000 to fly a team to Mexico to build a house that could have been built by locals for $2,000. On the other hand, some structures have had to be torn down after the missionaries left because they were of substandard construction. In one case, a missionary-built building collapsed in a storm, killing two children. The article also raised the question of how culturally sensitive missionaries are being when show up in poor villages with lots of expensive digital cameras. If we want to help people, perhaps it would be better to send the $30,000 to the village to pay for them to build their own churches and houses. They would get better buildings and the influx of money would help the economy. We wouldn’t get the first-hand cultural experience, but it seems to me that missions work is supposed to be about enriching the lives of others, not about our own personal growth.

In the interest of full disclosure, I participated in one of these trip twenty years ago. I went to Jamaica for ten days to run Vacation Bible Schools in inner city Kingston. I enjoyed the trip, but I wonder how much any of the Jamaicans got out of it. I have always felt that the Spring Break trip I took to help clean up Charleston, SC, after Hurricane Hugo was a much better use of resources. Since serving in Lithuania for 2.5 years as a missionary, my ideas of what missions work is all about have changed quite a bit.

Update: Adam Couturier linked to this post and pointed to an entry on his own blog entitled “The Problem of Missions and Monetary Contributions in the Missions Field” from last month. It is well worth reading. Adam is a student at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. I presume he found my blog through my friend Calvin Park at Random Bloggings, who is also at Gordon Conwell.

The Biblical Studies Blog Carnival for May was delayed a bit, but Tyler Williams now has it up and running at Codex. A few hours later, the carnival for June was ready to go at Ketuvim. I know you are probably too busy to go to two carnivals in one day, but the weekend is coming up soon. Toss your tent in the trunk and shove the kids in the car and make a two day trip of it!

I have been tagged in the Binary Biblical Studies Carnival 11111 meme by Jim at Idle musings of a bookseller. Although Jim changed the number from 31 to 63 through the addition of a digit, I still feel compelled to play along.

The rules are as follows:

1. Tag five Biblical studies bloggers.
2. Invent fictional posts that they might have written over the last month.
3. Link to the original meme post at Lingamish.

Here is my offering for the meme:

1. Christian Brady at Targuman: “The Study of the Targumim Matters. No, Really!”
2. Steve Cook at Biblische Ausbildung: “Why So-Called ‘Second Isaiah’ is Actually the Work of the 8th Century Prophet.”
3. Jin Yang Kim at Old Testament Story: “Daniel the Wise-Guy: Interpreting the Book of Daniel as a Marx Brother’s Routine.”
4. Calvin Park at Random Bloggings: “How to Get Your Church Youth Group Interested in Learning Akkadian.”
5. Chris Heard at Higgaion: ” Simcha Jacobovici Has Asked Me to Write His Next Script!”