The Gabriel Revelation and the Birth of ChristianityOn Tuesday, Feb. 11, Matthias Henze has organized a seminar to discuss the Gabriel Stone. I will be presenting my thoughts on it, along with Israel Knohl, Matthias Henze, and Kelly Bautch. We hope to use this time as a workshop and make some progress in terms of understanding what exactly this stone is. It is not news that I don't agree with Professor Knohl's interpretation, and now I have my own to offer. I will keep track of theses of the papers and provide a summary on my blog following the seminar on Tuesday.
Presented by Israel Knohl, Ph. D., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
With Comments by Matthias Henze, Ph. D., Rice University
Museum of Natural Science, Houston
Monday, February 9, 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Israel Knohl to speak in Houston on the Gabriel Stone
This is a reminder of the special event organized by my colleague at Rice University, Matthias Henze. Israel Knohl is going to be speaking at the Houston Museum of Natural Science on Monday evening about his thoughts on the Gabriel Stone. Matthias Henze will respond. This is part of a bigger lecture series that goes along with the exhibit "The Birth of Christianity: A Jewish Story," where the Gabriel Stone is on display. Lecture information HERE.
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The "earliest christianity" was prophetic, not messianic. Knohl's idea that the DSS or even the Gabriel Stone had anything to do with the "earliest christianity" are completely wrong.
Yes at some stage in their early history the writers of the DSS were on the receiving end from their rulers, probably from the likes of Alexander Jannaeus, who in my view was a supporter of the prophets through all his reign which was longer than most folk think, going up to the time of Pompey - there are no coins of his wife Alexandra. And both Agrippa I and Agrippa II were supporters of prophets and protected them.
The writers of the DSS were undoubtedly messianic and sought messianic rule as distinct from rule by non-priestly monarchs. But those very same writers were the fathers of the powerful first century high priests who persecuted the first century prophets - dummed-down to Essenes by the Flavian editors of the writings attributed to Josephus.
Some of those aristocratic high priests were taken prisoner and survived the war started in 66. One prisoner was possibly Jonathan, taken at Qumran. The Flavian editors changed that story to Josephus being captured at Jotapata - propagandist inversion. High priests, out of a job, were instrumental in assisting the Flavians to start the new cult of Jesus. This is why we see messianic overtones in the NT. The NT documents were originally prophetic documents of the Spirit.
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