Messiahs and Resurrection in 'The Gabriel Revelation'

by Israel Knohl

'Knohl's convincing reconstruction of the text of new inscriptions opens new ways to understand some seminal elements in early Christianity, and has the promise of a break-through in the history of Jewish and Christian messianism.' Moshe Idel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

This book offers the first discussion of the recently discovered text 'The Gabriel Revelation' - an apocalyptic text written on stone at the turn of the Common Era - providing revolutionary paths to the understanding of the historical Jesus and the birth of Christianity. The book explores the formation of the conception of "catastrophic messianism" in the Gabriel Revelation. According to this conception, the death of a messianic leader and his resurrection by the angel Gabriel after three days is an essential part of the redemptive process. This conception is a new key which enables us for the first time to understand the messianic vision of the historical Jesus.

This important and fascinating book will thus shed new and revolutionary light on our basic view of Christianity.

Israel Knohl is Yhezkel Kaufmann Professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Israel.

122 pages, Paperback

First published May 7, 2009

Reviews

[Christian Proano · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is worth reading because the author is able to demonstrate through the archeological findings that the idea of a suffering Messiah that dies and resurrects on the third day is neither foreign to first century BC and AD Judaism nor started by the Christian "tradition."
The book is a good resource for keeping up with current archeological findings in the Jordan / Transjordan area. The reader will encounter ground breaking material in this book.