http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/mysterious-gabriel-stone-displayed-in-jerusalem-exhibit-1.1260552
Mysterious 'Gabriel Stone' displayed in Jerusalem exhibit 
A
museum worker looks at the 'Gabriel Stone' as it is displayed at the
Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Tuesday, April 30, 2013. (AP / Sebastian
Scheiner)
Share: Text: Daniel Estrin, The Associated Press
Published Tuesday, April 30, 2013 2:27PM EDT
Last Updated Tuesday, April 30, 2013 10:29PM EDT
JERUSALEM — An ancient limestone tablet covered with a mysterious
Hebrew text that features the archangel Gabriel is at the center of a
new exhibit in Jerusalem, even as scholars continue to argue about what
it means.
The so-called Gabriel Stone, a metre-tall tablet said to have been
found 13 years ago on the banks of the Dead Sea, features 87 lines of an
unknown prophetic text dated as early as the first century BC, at the
time of the Second Jewish Temple.
Scholars see it as a portal into the religious ideas circulating in the
Holy Land in the era when was Jesus was born. Its form is also unique —
it is ink written on stone, not carved — and no other such religious
text has been found in the region.
Curators at the Israel Museum, where the first exhibit dedicated to the
stone is opening Wednesday, say it is the most important document found
in the area since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
"The Gabriel Stone is in a way a Dead Sea Scroll written on stone,"
said James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum. The writing dates to
the same period, and uses the same tidy calligraphic Hebrew script, as
some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of documents that include the
earliest known surviving manuscripts of Hebrew Bible texts.
The Gabriel Stone made a splash in 2008 when Israeli Bible scholar
Israel Knohl offered a daring theory that the stone's faded writing
would revolutionize the understanding of early Christianity, claiming it
included a concept of messianic resurrection that predated Jesus. He
based his theory on one hazy line, translating it as "in three days you
shall live."
His interpretation caused a storm in the world of Bible studies, with
scholars convening at an international conference the following year to
debate readings of the text, and a National Geographic documentary crew
featuring his theory. An American team of experts using high resolution
scanning technologies tried — but failed — to detect more of the faded
writing.
Knohl, a professor of Bible at Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
eventually scaled back from his original bombshell theory but the fierce
scholarly debate he sparked continued to reverberate across the
academic world, bringing international attention to the stone. Over the
last few years it went on display alongside other Bible-era antiquities
in Rome, Houston and Dallas.
Bible experts are still debating the writing's meaning, largely because
much of the ink has eroded in crucial spots in the passage and the
tablet has two diagonal cracks the slice the text into three pieces.
Museum curators say only 40 percent of the 87 lines are legible, many of
those only barely. The interpretation of the text featured in the
Israel Museum's exhibit is just one of five readings put forth by
scholars.
All agree that the passage describes an apocalyptic vision of an attack
on Jerusalem in which God appears with angels on chariots to save the
city. The central angelic character is Gabriel, the first angel to
appear in the Hebrew Bible. "I am Gabriel," the writing declares.
The stone inscription is one of the oldest passages featuring the
archangel, and represents an "explosion of angels in Second Temple
Judaism," at a time of great spiritual angst for Jews in Jerusalem
looking for divine connection, said Adolfo Roitman, a curator of the
exhibit.
The exhibit traces the development of the archangel Gabriel in the
three monotheistic religions, displaying a Dead Sea Scroll fragment
which mentions the angel's name; the 13th century Damascus Codex, one of
the oldest illustrated manuscripts of the complete Hebrew Bible; a 10th
century New Testament manuscript from Brittany, in which Gabriel
predicts the birth of John the Baptist and appears to the Virgin Mary;
and an Iranian Quran manuscript dated to the 15th or 16th century, in
which the angel, called Jibril in Arabic, reveals the word of God to the
prophet Mohammad.
"Gabriel is not archaeology. He is still relevant for millions of
people on earth who believe that angels are heavenly beings on earth,"
said Roitman. The Gabriel Stone, he said, is "the starting point of an
ongoing tradition that still is relevant today."
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Subject: Mysterious 'Gabriel Stone' displayed in Jerusalem exhibit 
Wed May 01, 2013 9:27 am
