Sometimes I come across something that makes me wish I’d named this blog PaleoDiarrhea. I usually have that thought when the popular media dips its toe into archaeology and biblical studies (or ancient astronauts). Here’s another example brought to my attention by April DeConick over at Forbidden Gospels.1
It seems that the media is hyping the Gabriel Stone (“Apocalypse of Gabriel”) again. Now National Geographic (NG) is at the helm. The same people (ask April) who screwed up the Gospel of Judas. Now the claim is that the Gabriel Stone will destroy the heart of Christianity since it is an earlier reference to a third day resurrection.2 Let’s tip a glass of Kaopectate to NG for that one.
Guess what, NG? There’s an even earlier reference to a third day resurrection than the Gabriel Stone. Ha! Scooped you, did I? I’ll try and write in a whisper . . . it’s . . . in . . . the Old Testament . . . yeah, over at Hosea 6:1-3 . . . April found it too . . . drat!
So, let me see if I understand your claim, NG. The fact that there is an earlier reference to a third day resurrection undermines Christian theology . . . when that same idea is in the Old Testament . . . which is the Jewish Bible . . . and Christianity came out of Judaism . . . huh?
What dopes.
It’s easy (for anyone who isn’t an NG journalist) how Hosea 6:1-3 and its third day resurrection would be applied to the messiah. In Hosea, the thrid day resurrection is corporate, speaking of national Israel. Israel in the Old Testament is at times referred to as the son of God (Exod 4:23; Hosea 11:1). The messiah has a variety of titles in the OT, one of which is “the Servant.” The Servant is one who would redeem Israel. This is where the idea of a suffering messiah comes from — Isaiah 53, the description of the “Suffering Servant.” But in that same book of Isaiah, most of the time the Servant is actually corporate Israel! My point: the messiah (in the OLD Testament – that thing that is earlier than the Gabriel Stone and the NT) and national Israel are identified with each other. A third day resurrection of the nation could easily be applied (and was, in the NT) to the personal messiah, the son of God.
But never mind all that factual detail from the text, NG. Just go your merry way and unleash more verbal diarrhea on the public.
Cheers!
