Does ‘Israel’ have a divine right to the land? part 2
In my previous post, looking at the function of the land in the OT, I concluded that the land is the arena in which the people of God both receive God'southward blessings, and take on the responsibleness of obedience to God's commands. How is this thought developed and adapted in the New Testament?
At that place are pregnant indications that the gospels are located in the context of some sort of expectation of restoration of the land with the coming of messiah (though it is now broadly agreed that at that place were a variety of expectations in the offset century, and a variety of ideas about who the messiah was, what he would do, or whether in fact ane was needed). We can see this in Zechariah's prophetic poem now known every bit the Benedictus (from the showtime word in the Latin Vulgate):
Praise exist to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a horn of conservancy for us in the house of his retainer David
(equally he said through his holy prophets of long agone),
salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate u.s.—
to prove mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath he swore to our begetter Abraham:
to rescue the states from the manus of our enemies,
and to enable usa to serve him without fearfulness
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. (Luke 1.68–75)
In context, the master 'enemy' is of course Rome, and it is oppression by Rome that is preventing State of israel from 'serving him without fear in holiness.' And so implicit in this expectation is the hope of restoration of the sovereignty of Israel as a nation, inhabiting the promised country. To brand this even clearer, Zechariah goes on to allude to Is twoscore's proclamation of the one who will 'go earlier the Lord to prepare his style', which is besides used in Mark's introduction in Mark 1.2–3. These verses (from Isaiah and Micah) are all about the people returning from exile and being restored to the land in fulfilment of God's hope of faithfulness. This is ane part of a complex of expectations, which Tom Wright characterises under the headings render from exile, restoration of Temple, renewed covenant, giving of Spirit, keeping of Constabulary, no king but God, and God'due south anointed amanuensis (Heb messiach Greek christos) (Northward T Wright The New Testament and the People of God affiliate 10 'The Hope of State of israel').
But from the very beginning of Jesus' ministry, these expectations are starting to be transformed. Even the well-nigh sceptical commentator agrees that the proclamation of the nearness of 'the kingdom of God' was a core part of the pedagogy of the historical Jesus. This phrase, which hardly occurs at all in the OT, shifts the focus from theland in which the people occupy to thereign or authority nether which they live. The separation between the free occupation of the country and obedience to God, withal held together in the Benedictus, is most decisively cleaved in Jesus' respond to the question well-nigh taxes:
"Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, "Whose image is this? And whose inscription?" "Caesar'due south," they replied.Then he said to them, "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." (Matt 22.xix–xx)
The shock of this is not to practice with the separation of the 'political' from the 'religious' every bit such, just the overturning of the expectation that the restoration of the state is tied in with the coming of God's kingdom. Living freely in the land is not the prerequisite to forgiveness of sins and living in holiness.
Consequently, the New Attestation strikingly shows no interest in the further question of the country itself, and instead focus on theother elements in Wright's list. This is shown clearly in the responses of gospel writers to the devastation of the temple in 70 Advertising. Mark's gospel, probably written in the 60s earlier the temple was destroyed, shows most interest in the firsthand events and Jesus' predictions well-nigh them (Mark 13). Matthew's similar account, most likely writtenafterwards 70, includes like details to Mark, but then goes on to focus on Jesus' words virtually theparousia,Jesus' second coming to complete the work begun in the first. John'due south gospel goes fifty-fifty farther, and does something quite distinct. With the temple gone, and the tension between the at present exiled Jews and Jesus' Jewish-and-gentile followers mounting, John makes clear that Jesusis the temple for those who follow him.
The Jews then responded to him, "What sign can you bear witness us to show your authority to do all this?"Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it once again in three days."
They replied, "It has taken 40–six years to build this temple, and you are going to enhance it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. (John 2.eighteen–22)
This is non and then much about Jesusreplacing the temple, but Jesus being the fulfilment of the purpose of the temple—and with it the state. (Note that this is not an idea made up by John and read dorsum into the story about Jesus; reference is fabricated to it in the trial of Jesus in Mark 14.58. This is good example of one of many 'undesigned' historical connections between the gospels.) This again is why John's gospel is so 'Jewish', in focussing on Jewish habits of eating, washing, and attention the pilgrim festivals, all the major festivals occurring in John'due south narrative. They all discover their fulfilment and truthful pregnant in Jesus.
Nosotros come across in Acts 2.46 that the kickoff generation of believers continued to visit the temple, though of course now with new understanding. While the temple was standing, then Jewish followers of Jesus would go along to worship there. Merely once the temple was gone, there was no demand to long for its restoration, since its meaning was embodied in the person of Jesus. If the land was the loonshit for knowing the blessing of God and taking on the responsibilities of obedience, that role was now fulfilled in Jesus. So, as with the temple, in that location is now no need to long for physical return from exile and occupying the territory of the land—all this was now bachelor to those not 'in Israel' just 'in Christ'. I think this is why the phrase is so important in Paul. Where, in the OT, both Jew and gentile 'resident alien' enjoy God's reign when they are 'in State of israel', now for Paul the (theological) space where this happens for both Jew and gentile is 'in Christ.'
That is why Peter, writing to an audience containing at least some gentiles, tin address the whole grouping as the 'diaspora', the term previously used of Jews scattered and pending (at least in principle) a return from exile to the land (1 Peter 1.1). The scattered followers of Jesus are awaiting not their return from physical exile but the render of Jesus to restore all things. Even more explicitly, in the book of Revelation, John sees the fulfilment of the gathering of God's people from all the nations (Deut 30.3, Jeremiah 32.37, Ezekiel eleven.17, twenty.34, 36.24) in this uncountable, Jewish-gentile people redeemed past the blood of the lamb (Rev 7.nine, also in Rev 5.9, 11.9, 13.7 and 14.6). This is just the way Matthew has understood Jesus' teaching in Matt 24.31.
Note that reading the NT in this way is not 'supersessionism', where 'The Church building' replaces 'The Jews' as the people of God; this only happens where the Jesus motion is discrete from its Jewish historical context and expression. Instead it is a redefinition of what information technology means to exist the people of Godbeyond ethnic boundaries, simply equally happened in the Council of Jerusalem in Acts xv and as Paul starts to do in his argument in Romans ii.28–29.
So the New Testament holds out no expectation that indigenous Jews will return to the territory of the country of State of israel as part of the fulfilment of the promises of God. All those promises are fulfilled in Jesus, who now becomes the place of God's approving and his people's obedience.
(It is perhaps worth noting that those who fence that the mod state of israel is the fulfilment of prophecy have to appeal to OT texts alone, and ignore what the NT does with such texts.)
This leaves the 1 'bogie' text of Romans 11.26: 'All State of israel volition exist saved'. There is a massive literature on this, some following the view expressed by Tom Wright that 'all State of israel' refers to all those who are part of God's new Israel i.eastward. all those now redeemed through Jesus, and others believing that 'all Israel' hither refers to ethnic Jewish people, indicating that there will be an 'cease times' turning of Jews to faith in Jesus. For at present, I annotation some key points in the discussion:
1. At that place is no reference whatsoever to the thought of Jews returning to the state of Israel. And so to fit these two ideas together is an artifice.
ii. Verse 26 doesnot say 'And and then all Israel will be saved' only 'and in this way all Israel will be saved.' And so Paul is talking almost the hardening of the Jews and the incoming of the gentiles as themeans by which God'south purposes of salvation are accomplished, not as something that happens prior to this. I think this strongly supports Wright's reading.
3. Paul then cites texts from Isaiah and Jeremiah, which he clearly sees fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus: the deliverer from Zion who establishes a (new) covenant and takes abroad sins.
4. It has been objected that Paul merely ever uses 'State of israel' to mean those who are ethnically Jewish. But Gal six.16 is a counter-instance to this, and Paul certainly uses the language of 'Jew' in literal and metaphorical ways earlier in Romans.
5. It seems very odd to me to call up that Paul would depict an 'finish-times' turning of the last generation of Jews to organized religion in Jesus with the term 'all State of israel.' This leaves all the (not believing in Jesus) Jews of all the intermediate generations excluded from this, and then at the most it could mean 'all those Jews alive when Jesus returns'. This hardly makes sense of the phrase.
Because of all this, I do not believe that, remarkable though it is, the establishment of the State of israel in 1947 is a 'fulfilment' of 'end times' 'prophecies.' Neither do I believe that Israel has a divine right to the land which trumps all other rights. Ipractise want to defend the right of State of israel to exist, and to be a item homeland for Jews around the world, and to use reasonable forcefulness to defend itself—like any other nations. Only I practise this on grounds other than 'divine right' or 'prophecy.'
In the electric current disharmonize betwixt Israel and Gaza, we demand to entreatment to other grounds to support whatsoever view we have on the matter.
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