Monday, July 14, 2008

VISION OF GABRIEL WATCH: James Carroll has thoughts in the Boston Globe. Excerpt:
The "Gabriel Revelation" may be hard evidence of such expectation, but it builds on even older strands of Jewish faith. "In two days He will make us whole again," the prophet Hosea had declared. "On the third day He will raise us up." (Hosea 6:2) Resurrection defined a Jewish hope. Without reference to the controversial Gabriel tablet, the Jewish and Christian scholars Jon D. Levenson and Kevin J. Madigan, in their recent book "Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews," write, "In fact, not only the notion of the resurrection of the dead, but the expression of God's vindication of Jesus in the language of resurrection, owes its origin to its parent religion, Judaism."

That Christianity defined itself as the polar opposite of Judaism was an accident of history, with lethal consequences. The two religions are and will remain distinct, but it is urgently important that Christians, especially, correct the mistake that saw Jesus in radical opposition to his own people. He remained a devoted Jew to the end, and his first followers understood him, after his death, in fully Jewish terms. If Christians had continued to do so, the tradition of anti-Judaism, which spawned anti-Semitism, would not have developed.
Background here.