VISION OF GABRIEL WATCH: Messianic Jews enter the fray:

Headline News
Friday, July 11, 2008 Ryan Jones (Israel Today)

Messianic leaders say Hebrew tablet validates Jesus' claims

Israeli Jewish believers in Jesus say the recently publicized Hebrew tablet describing the death and resurrection of a messianic figure challenges centuries of teachings by rabbinic Judaism that the redemptive process of Jesus was a departure from biblical Jewish understanding.

[...]

But Gershon Nirel, a prominent Israeli historian and Jewish believer in Jesus, has a different take. He says the tablet is further evidence that Jesus was the kind of messiah Israel was waiting for, even if the rabbis now teach that Jesus failed to meet the biblical messianic criteria.

"Judaism is coming closer to the idea of redemption through the cleansing blood of Messiah, an idea that had been abandoned throughout the last centuries," said Nirel.

Israeli theologian and fellow Messianic Jew Tsvi Sadan added that even if Knohl's conclusions rub some believers in Jesus the wrong way, they still represent a step in the right direction.

"One can agree or disagree with Knohl’s conclusion, but the persistence of one of the leading Old Testament scholars in Israel today to prove that the death of the Messiah for Israel’s sake is not a Christian innovation is commendable in light of the tenuous relationship between the Jewish people and Jesus," explained Sadan.

Please don't get too excited yet. If the inscription turns out to be genuine and if it actually says what Professor Knohl thinks it says, then we can start debating what it means. For my part, it would not particularly surprise me if there were Jewish circles in the first century BCE who were anticipating a dying and rising messiah. The Myth and Ritual School, drawing mostly on evidence from the Psalms, has long argued that the death and resurrection of the Davidic king was an element of the cultic drama associated with the royal autumn (re-)enthronement festival in the First Temple period. This seems plausible to me, although it involves a lot of inference and lateral reading. But it remains to be seen whether older royal traditions of this sort are actually relevant to this particular text.

Background here and keep following the links back.

UPDATE (14 July): More here.