A tablet containing over 80 lines of Hebrew was uncovered. Standing 3ft tall, the tablet dates from right before Yeshua’s birth and seems to be stirring up the archeological and Biblical worlds because it may talk of a messiah who will rise form the dead after three day. If this message is confirmed, it will cause a re-evaluation of the popular and scholarly views of the role of Yeshua and his crucifixion, death and resurrection.

This new tablet is really not new at all. It was found about a 10 years agao near the Dead Sea and was bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. When an Israeli scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it last year, interest began to rise. David Jeselsohn, unaware of the tablet’s contents, recently purchase the ancient stone.

The neat 2-column writings on the stone are not etched in, but rather written in ink, making the tablet essentially a Dead Sea Scroll on stone. With portions of the text illegible, making the message unclear at this time, it is fully unknown the impact this tablet will play. Still, the authenticity of the tablet so far has faced no challenge.

“I couldn’t make much out of it when I got it,” said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. “I didn’t realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”

One proposed interpretation of the tablet has been that the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to the first-century historian Josephus. The writers of the stone’s passages were probably Simon’s followers. The slaying of Simon, or any case of the suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation, referring to lines 19 through 21 of the tablet — “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice."

For more information on this story, please visit:
http://young-anglican-thoughts.blogspot.com/2008/09/ancient-tablet-ignites-debate-on.html