More about the so called tablet controversy

There is further discussion on the Ignatius Insight blog, so I composed and added this comment.

While the resurrection of Jesus was “a surprise” to everyone, even though he prophesied it several times to the Apostles, there is extensive evidence and detail within King David’s psalm 21 so much that this psalm, in my 1962 Confraternity-Douay version of the Bible it is labeled as “Passion and Triumph of the Messiah.” The footnotes read, “Psalm 21 is one of the most important of the Messianic psalms. Our Lord Himself on the cross repeated its first line.” [That line is, to refresh everyone’s memory “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”] The footnote continues, “…and several other verses are directly quoted, or at least alluded to, in the New Testament as pertaining to His Passion. Of no other person is this touching description of spiritual and physical suffering so eminently true as it is of Jesus Christ. Hence, the entire psalm has been traditionally interpreted in the Catholic Church as referring to Him. The psalmist, therefore, speaks in Christ’s name when in the first section (2-22) he describes the Messiah’s dereliction (2-6), opprobrium (7-9); and physical sufferings (18-19), together with his unshakable confidence I the heavenly Father (10-12; 20-22); and in the second part, the fruits of His Redemption: the grateful praise of the redeemed (23-27), the conversion of the Gentiles (28-30), and the glory of God and His beloved Son (30-32)."

Psalm 21 is understood by all Catholic scholars to be the phrase by phrase “Messianic psalm.” Jesus quotes from it as he is dying on the cross, Matthew 27:46 so, um, clearly Jesus “got the idea” to “say that” from this psalm, which was written before the exile to Babylon and hence at least five hundred years before Jesus. Psalm 21:17-18 prophesies “Indeed, many dogs surround me, a pack of evil doers closes in upon me; they have pierced my hands and my feet; I can count all my bones. They look on and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my vesture they cast lots.” That precisely happened on Cavalry. I say prophesies because clearly no one crucified King David and in fact there were no crucifying Romans in sight when this psalm was written, so he was not writing about himself. King David, and I gaze on one of my favorite pictures depicting this, was the pre-eminent prophesier of the Messiah, from the details quoted above of the crucifixion to the conversion of “all the ends of the earth” (the Gentiles), which no one could have made up as a scenario in 500 BC. Psalm 21, referenced by Jesus Christ himself on the cross, is the step by step validated description of the passion of the Messiah and his ultimate triumph. The only thing not in that psalm is to state literally that he would rise from the dead after three days and remain on earth another forty.

But if one thinks about it, the passion is described in the lines up to and including line 22, where the Messiah appeals to God to “hasten to aid” and “save” him. Line 23 then states, “I will proclaim your name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will praise you.” The psalm has been entirely sequential in “order,” and so after “they have pierced my hands and my feet” the prophesied Messiah appeals to God and next he will “proclaim” the name of God “in the midst of the assembly.” Any Jewish scholar would have had an expectation of a miraculous return, if not literally as soon as rising from the dead after three days. This psalm was hardly unknown to anyone and in fact, Jesus quotes its first line as he is dying on the cross. So it would be entirely consistent that Jewish scholars would interpret this psalm as having been the disbelief in and then triumphant return of the Messiah, envisioning something like Elias returning in glory. In fact, that is the first thing that those who hear Jesus appeal on the cross believe he is calling for, Elias to come. Jewish Messianic expectations would be entirely consistent with believing the Messiah would be disbelieved and mocked (certainly they would expect that from the Romans), and then a sudden glorious intervention by God. It would not have occurred to them that the Messiah would allow his own death, and then resurrect in the body within a matter of days, bearing the actual wounds, but in a glorified body that could appear through walls into the gathering’s midst.

So the dialogue about the tablet has been very strange and forces two artificial sides to quarrel with each other. One side I guess is supposed to think that early Christians just put together a Jesus fiction based on prophecy and common beliefs, and then conspiracy theory-like they would have made up the whole resurrection event. So that side would think finding some words seeming to “prophesy” or “record a belief” that a Messiah would resurrect in three days a “good thing” because they must have been bothered by where Jesus’ followers “got the resurrection idea from” if it’s not in Psalm 21 explicitly or in Isaiah. So that side is supposed to be gleeful that they found the place that Jesus’ followers “got the idea from” to fill in the “missing link” in the “fictionalized” account of Jesus’ life. Then the other artificial side is supposed to be, I guess, Christians who are supposed to be dismayed that some average Joe “heard from Gabriel” and had “expectations” of “dying and rising again in three days.” That’s kind of like saying that the “been there done that” T-shirt had already been worn, and therefore Christians are only supposed to believe in the truth of the Gospel only because “no one ever thought of those ideas before.” Both “sides” are constructs of the same agenda, which are poor faith, sensationalism and faulty logic and scholarship (if any). There is no proof of the goods authenticity and yet an artificial “debate” has already been framed. I hope this comment helps readers who might not have been taught the significance of the Davidic Messiah prophecies.

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Some additional thoughts for my readers. As I, and many before me have explained, you have to use faith and reason. Faith is not the suspension of logic and intelligence. Faith is the belief that there is a God, who has a plan, and the plan is benevolent toward all life, including human beings. So if you believe and have faith, even as general a faith statement as that, it permits you to see all the aspects of a problem, debate or scholarly development from the confidence that God is "doing something."

Reasoning is essential because people are so used to sound bytes and responding to being baited, often just for reasons of meanness, jealousy and entertainment, that they lose their heads and don't think things through one step at a time. So on the one hand you have even the most general faith that a benevolent and all knowing, all powerful God has an interest in the welfare of humans, even if that way cannot always be understood. On the other hand you have the testimony of many people who paid the ultimate price for their beliefs, and obviously were not doing so in order to "fool" unimaginable generations after them. With faith and reason, therefore, one can sift through what is false, what is real, what is implied, and what is unknowable or unprovable. And THAT is a lot to accomplish and all for the greater good of the individual and humanity as a whole.