The Jesus Plan

I was reading about the Gabriel Revelation and one scholar said it was evidence that Jesus and His Apostles planned out His Death and Resurrection in advance to trick people into thinking He's the Messiah.

I'm just wondering what you all think of the "Jesus Plan". Is it rational or irrational? Why or why not? Also, tell me what you think about the Gabriel Revelations if you want.

My own two cents about the "Jesus Plan":

This is, I suppose, one hypothesis. Another one goes as follows: Jesus is the Messiah for real. Given the fact that Jesus died because people didn't believe He was the Messiah, I would think the "Jesus Plan" backfired from day one. Given the fact that no one could fulfill the prophecy of the resurrection of the Messiah without dying first, I would think if Jesus wasn't the Messiah He wouldn't have risen. The "Jesus Plan" seems to work only if you believe Jesus hadn't died on the Cross. I've written about the four hypothesises of the Resurrection before (link).

What is the "Gabriel Revelation"?

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It is a messanic prophecy that says the Messiah will rise from the dead on the third day. Learn more here: A New Dead Sea Scroll in Stone? | Daily Bible and Archaeology News

Assuming for a second that the Dead Sea Stone is talking about the messiah dying a rising, the most you could conclude from that is that some Jews before Jesus (in the first century BC) believed one of the messiahs would die and rise. This doesn't show that this view was widespread around Judea and Galilee. In fact, if this is even what the text is saying, it seems to be an extreme minority view. Most people did not expect a dying and rising messiah. There is no evidence whatsoever that this text was in widespread circulation or known by anyone apart from whoever wrote it and read it.There is also no evidence that Jesus' apostles knew of it. Interestingly, the disciples do not declare that Jesus resurrection was cause by Gabriel speaking to Jesus to rise, which is in contrast to the DS Stone. There is no inkling of a hint that Jesus' disciples used this stone to fabricate the Jesus story.

There is another problem with building any conclusions at all off of this stone. It's not even clear who the speaker is (is it Gabriel? MIchael? The messiah? God? Israel?), who the speaker is talking to (is Gabriel being spoken to? the davidic messsiah? The messiah of Ephraim? Israel? Michael?) and it's not even clear if he is commanding a resurrection of an individual. Maybe he's proclaiming the restoration of Israel? The rebuilding of the temple?

Here's the portion of text in question. I would like to see any solid conclusions built off of it: (Brackets with dots indicate a portion that is untranslatable; brackets with letters in them are the scholar's reconstruction of what he is very sure is the tranlstaion; question marks indicate that the translation is in question)

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M.S. in Economics

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." - JM Keynes

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I'm going to run with this a bit further. Considering Judaism circa 100BC- AD 0 (the timeframe of the stone), what would cause anyone to think that the/a messiah was coming who would suffer, die and rise from the dead? Considering the Jewish worldivew at the time being shaped and driven by the Jewish scriptures, I find it almost certain that places such as Isaiah 53, Ezekiel 36-37, Daniel 7, and Hosea 6 are likely to be the source of such a belief. In those passsages there is a tension between a corporate Israel who suffers, dies and rises from the dead and an individual who suffers dies and rises from the dead (the "suffering servant" and the "son of man"). It doesn't take a huge leap at all to say that the/a messiah, an individual, is coming who will be Israel's chosen representative and would be identified with Israel through suffering, death, and resurrection. In fact, we see such an identity already present in the OT where the king in the OT is called God's son (2 Sam 7:14 and it's parallels in the Chronicles, Psalm 89, Psalm 2) and Israel as a whole is called God's son (Ex 4:22, Hos 11:1, Deut 32). It's not a leap to say that what's true for Israel will be true for the messiah and vice versa since the two are intimately identified with each other in the OT already.

There is a sociological aspect here of coporate/collective identity here that needs to be taken into account. In that anceint worldview, the identity of an individual was found in their social/cultura/kin/family group, unlike us today who dig down deep withing ourselves to discover our identity. We tend to operate as individual units; they tended to operate as a social unit; the smallest unit would be the family. Once you have that in mind, you can easily see that the king of Israel is identified not as a sole individual with his own identity, but as the designated representative of all of Israel - he is identified with Israel and Israel is identified with him. This is why it's possible to call the both the king of Israel and Israel as a whole "God's son". This is why when the king goes astray in the OT all of Israel manages to get in trouble.

So, even if the Gabriel Stone presented an idea about a dying and rising messiah, it's almost certain, if not certain, that this idea came from the Jewish scriptures. But crap! Christians have been appealing to those very scriptures since the New Testament and Church Fathers! If someone is bent on saying Christians fabricated the entire Jesus story, they might as well say it was made up after reflection on Isaiah 53, Hos 6, Eze 36-37, and Daniel 7 since that's what the christian sources will appeal to!

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M.S. in Economics

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." - JM Keynes

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Good news, I'm not the only one who thinks this.

See what a Professor of Biblical Studies at Rice University:
The Forbidden Gospels: National Geographic and the Apocalypse of Gabriel

and Dr. Michael Heiser have to say:
More Media PaleoBabble on the Gabriel Stone | PaleoBabble

It's pretty much what I just said.

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M.S. in Economics

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." - JM Keynes

semper reformada

Thanks for the links Yekcidmij! Good posts too