It is a three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew containing a collection of short prophecies written in the first person. One of them allegedly tells the story of a man who was killed by the Romans and resurrected in three days. The stone is expected to alter scholarly interpretations related to the prevelance of the messiah story at the time of Christ, as the stone is believed to pre-date the birth of Christ. This will suggest that the story of a savior's death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.So what? A story of a messianic freedom fighter who was killed by the Romans and resurrected three days later quite possibly circulated years before Jesus. Does that really change anything? For the Christian, no. It may even strengthen the position that Jesus' life, death, and resurrection (aka the Christ Event) was all foretold.
But for non-Christians and fellow Shruggists, it is huge.
People respond to the story of the Christ Event in one of two ways: Belief or skepticism. The skeptic view, while perhaps more natural, raises a very serious and complex problem. If the Christ Event never actually happened, how do you account for the overwhelming success of a movement entirely based on belief that the story is true? Christianity (and much of history) must find basis in either one or two things: A big mistake or an intentional hoax.
Watch the Discovery channel for a few hours, and chances are you'll see something to do with the "Big Mistake" theory. For instance, maybe Jesus didn't really die. He passed out due to fluid pressure building up because of the crucifixion and agony, and piercing his side let out all that pressure. A few days of peace and quiet down in the tomb, and he was as good as new. Other explanations exist along that continuum of plausibility. Unfortunately, they always suffers from the inability to explain what happened next. If Jesus just came back from a near death experience, where did he go? He would have died again (for real), gotten sick, stubbed his toe and bled -- something would eventually clue everyone in on the fact that he was just an ordinary Joseph who cheated death.
So it must have been an intentional hoax, right? Okay. You can easily enough come up with some good reasons why the apostles would make up the story about the resurrection. And any of those reasons would make sense if a few weeks later they all admitted to it and everyone had a good laugh. But not only did they stick to their story, the did so under extreme duress. Admittedly, this is one of the last greatest stumbling blocks I've dealt with myself in my post-Christan Shruggism. Real men and women faced tortuous, unimaginable deaths never giving up their claim to have witnessed the resurrected Jesus. Why? If it was one or two, maybe you could chalk it up to pride. There were enough, however, that nothing so far has made sense to me. Enough people claimed to have witnessed the resurrection, and enough died for that witness, to create the critical mass necessary for launching an entire religion. Why?
And why this particular storyline? That's what makes it even stranger. It might make some sense if they staged a hoax that clearly and methodically followed some prophecy. But the Christ Event story never cleanly followed the expected prophecies for the messiah. Part of it's power resides in the fact that it fulfills prophecy in unexpected ways, re-interpreting the very meaning of many of the prophetic writings. If Jesus and the apostles made it all up, they surely would have stuck more closely to expectations. And you wouldn't expect many people to believe such an incredible story unless it was a story they were some how expecting to play out.
But what if the people were expecting exactly this storyline? What if, floating around in the cultural milieu, there was a story about a great messianic freedom fighter who was killed by the Romans and resurrected three days later? What if more than one such story existed? Then the people wouldn't be surprised by a crucified messiah. They would expect it.
Now, for the first time, we have a real motive. Remember that in Jesus' day, it wasn't all walking peacefully in the garden. It was a time of occupation. Politically, religiously, and culturally, the Jewish people were on the brink of extinction. And for the Jew, politics, religion, and culture were all the same thing. Whether Jesus and his followers sought to incite a full-scale revolution or to revolutionize Judaism into a form that transcended the nation of Israel, it was a cause worth dying for. More importantly, it was a cause worth planning to die for.
Now we have a plausible image of Jesus as the activist. Jesus, a student of the Torah and dynamic leader, latches on to a story (or maybe even group of stories) about crucified and risen messianic freedom fighter. He spends three years identifying a select group of insiders and carefully training them to implement a plan for change based on these stories. Through public preaching, he subtly weaves a framework of expectations in the minds of the greater population. Through key teachings and carefully planned run-ins with the establishment, he sets in place a series of events specifically engineered to lead to his inevitable crucifixion. After his death, his followers know what to do. They possess the script provided by Jesus and Gabriel's Revelation, and the burning spirit to withstand death and torture to see it through.
If all of this is true, it's up to the individual, of course, to determine what kind of person this makes Jesus. A lying scumbag? An over-zealous fanatic? Consider this: Rome (and other empires following it) spent a great deal to completely destroy the Hebrew people and Hebrew culture. Monotheistic religion itself very easily could have been obliterated by the Romans, had Jerusalem gone quietly into that good night. But Jesus and his followers sparked a movement that revitalized Judaic theology. More importantly, it separated for the first time the Hebrew religion from the nation of Israel. When Israel fell to the Romans in 72 AD, a new religion was already taking hold -- a religion that would encapsulate and transport Hebrew legacy and culture down to the present age.
And for the Shruggist, the evolution of religion took a huge step forward.
