Gabriel's Revelation

Today's New York Times contains an article by Ethan Bronner, Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection :

"A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days."

According to a translation of the tablet by Israel Knohl, the text relates a vision of the archangel Gabriel who speaks of the resurrection of a messiah after three days, a motif previously not attested prior to Jesus.
See Knohl's article: Israel Knohl, "'By Three Days, Live': Messiahs, Resurrection, and Ascent to Heaven in Hazon Gabriel," Journal of Religion 88, no. 2 (April 2008):147-158.

Here's a summary of some of the discussion and links to articles, posted by Jim Lauer:

Hershel Shanks noted that the first English publication of the tablet appeared in an article “A New Dead Sea Scroll in Stone?” by Dr. Ada Yardeni in the January/February 2008 BAR. The Hebrew and English texts of the tablet are linked at the BAS website at http://bib-arch.org/news/dss-in-stone-news.asp .

In addition, as also circulated on Dr. Jack Sasson’s Agade list, in that article, Dr. Yardeni described the 3-foot-by 1-foot stone inscribed with a lengthy text that she would refer to as a Dead Sea Scroll had it been written on leather. A photo of the stone appears in the issue; for the transcription of the Hebrew text go to
< http://bib-arch.org/news/dssinstone_hebrew.doc >; for an English translation, go to < http://bib-arch.org/news/dssinstone_english.doc >.
Yitzhak Sapir noted that an April 4, 2007 Nfc Hebrew-language article about the Cathedra article mentioned by the Times (in which Ada Yardeni and Binyamin Elitzur analyzed the tablet), could be read at http://www.nfc.co.il/Archive/001-D-127652-00.html?tag=11-28-43 (or http://www.nfc.co.il/Archive/001-D-127652-00.html ). He also noted that through links in the Nfc article a PDF of the Yardeni/Elitzur Cathedra Hebrew article (no. 123, Nisan 5767, pp. 155-166) could be read at http://www.nfc.co.il/uploadFiles/138240993022919.pdf and a drawing and a Hebrew transcription of the tablet could be viewed at http://www.nfc.co.il/uploadFiles/848324000835419.pdf . See

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ANE-2/message/8651 and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biblical-studies/message/18003

As some may remember, I circulated an April 20, 2007 Ha’aretz article by Prof. Israel Knohl (”In three days, you shall live”) in which he discussed the tablet and his book and his theory, mentioned in the Times article. The article may be read at

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=850657 [English]
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=850111 [Hebrew]

Henry Chadwick - Historian of Early Christianity

Henry Chadwick, a British historian of early Christianity died last month on June 17. See his obituary in the New York Times. The church was (and continues to be) well-served by his work. The quotation attributed to him in the Times obituary is worth noting:
“Nothing is sadder than someone who has lost his memory, and the church which has lost its memory is in the same state of senility.”

WorldCat Collection Analysis, John Calvin, and ATLA

I'm back from a few days in Ottawa at the ATLA (American Theological Library Association) Annual Meeting. Ottawa is a great city, with good public transportation and a tremendous network of bike paths along rivers and canals and throughout the city. I rented a bike and managed to ride about 80 miles during the four days I was there.

This has little to do with theological reference, but my presentation (with Terry Robertson from Andrews University) was an introduction to and analysis of WorldCat Collection Analysis, a tool designed to help librarians evaluate library collections. I'm posting a link to my PowerPoint (creatively entitled WorldCat Collection Analysis) for the benefit of those who attended the session and may have dozed off during the presentation.

While we're distributing our PowerPoint Presentations, a couple of years ago my colleague Paul Fields and I gave a presentation at the same conference with the engaging title: Bibliographic Resources for the Study of John Calvin. More interesting presentation, I thought, but not nearly as well-attended as the WorldCat Collection Analysis session this year.