Knohl on a Roll: TIME Magazine Story on Gabriel Text
David Van Biema, one of the best religion writers in the business, has just published a major story in this week’s issue of Time, titled “Was Jesus’ Resurrection a Sequel?” He dives right into the thick of it by pairing off Knohl’s interpretation of a pre-Christian Messiah, raised from the dead, “on the third day,” with the assumption of many Christian believers that the Good Friday/Easter Sunday tradition is uniquely Christian. Such is surely not the case, since the “raised on the 3rd day” tradition is actually embedded in the Hebrew Prophet Hosea:
Come, let us return to the LORD;
for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him (6:1-2)
This, along with the Jonah tradition, of the “three days and three nights” (Jonah 1:17; Matthew 12:40) are clearly the texts that Mark builds upon as he introduces the “after three days” and “on the third day” tradition into his narrative (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; 14:58).
The way these texts were woven together is complex, but in late 2nd Temple Jewish sectarian/messianic groups such exegesis was common and obviously fed into this new “Gabriel” text as well. It is not so much a matter of Christians borrowing from the Gabriel text, but that the diverse Messianic movements within Judaism before 70 AD were drawing from these sorts of eschatological texts to develop and give life to their expectations, as well as their disappointments when their “Messiahs” were slain. There are other texts as well, such as the “pierced one” of Zechariah 12:10, as well as the “strike the Shepherd” passage Mark quotes in the mouth of Jesus the night he was betrayed (Zechariah 13:7; Mark 14:27).