Tag: Israel

Palestine / state of Israel… where to?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Posting any comment on the above is a challenge. The history, back through the Zionist movement, the anti-Semitism of the West and then add in the Bible, or at least what we term the Old Testament adds layers upon layers. Is there a way forward? In Jesus there is always a way forward. I do not like the term ‘the better of two evils’ as an ethical frame but I do understand what is being proposed by that term. I rather would operate with ‘the most redemptive path’. It is not easy to always advocate the right response in an absolute sense, but we can consider the most redemptive route and then look at it again later and respond with a further response. I think we see that in Scripture and that is the whole basis of a theology of sanctification – ongoing, from glory to glory.

It is not possible to look at the current scenarios in the Middle East without referring to the political powers (Imperialistic colonisers) and such agreements as the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916. A secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from Russia and Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire. The land of Palestine was to be controlled by Britain, and then further lands carved out with no respect to ethnicity nor (flavour of) religion. Follow this up with the Balfour Declaration (1917) with the promise to work toward a Jewish state in Palestine (a land with people already within it, a people that were mainly Muslim but included Christians and a small Jewish community). A land with people living within it – who had lived there for centuries – this is so common with regard to colonisation. The common argument has been there were no people living there, or (maybe worse, but really the same) the people were not significant / less than human. Common… And wrong. Wrong historically and wrong ethically, and a blatant trespassing. Anglo-Saxon ‘christians’ going to church Sunday morning then hunting first-nation people (wrongly termed ‘aborigines’) post-church in Australia – such stories can be repeated over and over. (For a year Gayle and I tracked the horrific expulsion of Muslims from Spain; here in ever-so-kind Oliva the church records of Muslims being marched to church on Sunday and ‘converted’ then killed as they were marched out again with the proclamation of a two-fold outcome in that ‘we raised their souls to heaven and filled our own pockets’.)

I am sure that the Palestinians were the offering of appeasement on the altar for the anti-Semitism that had gone on with the pogroms of Europe that aligned with the bloodshed that went before and after with the holocaust.

In the two years following the state of Israel being established (1948) 400 cities and villages were destroyed with some 1 million people being driven violently from their homes (this was not an ’empty land’) with many of those people forced into Gaza. Such activity is in direct conflict to international law.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Palestinians continue to live in an apartheid context and that there is ongoing genocidal activity. (I am not making comments about Israeli citizens of Israel, but of the state of Israel, and I am certainly not condoning any violence that originates from Hamas. More below on that…)

Yesh Din, an Israeli organisation registered with the government in a report in 2020 (58 pages entitled ‘The Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid: Legal Opinion’) concluded,

That the Israeli regime in its entirety is an apartheid regime. That Israel is an Apartheid state.

It does so sadly and as an Israeli registered organisation.Thank God for the many Israeli Jews who see others as their equal and as human. (The report is found here.)

In response to the Hamas attack of October 2023 Israel’s defence minister said,

I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.

Such state responses and statements abound and cannot be justified under the heading of the right of self-defence. Genocide is an appropriate term. Omer Bartov, a former Israeli soldier and a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies wrote in the Guardian that he had become convinced that,

At least since the attack by the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] on Rafah on May 6, 2024, it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions .

But the Bible?

Netanyahu has positioned himself as a ‘secular Jew’ but has been willing to use Scripture as justification. The ‘Amalekites’ need to be wiped out and the land promised by God restored to those to whom God gave it. Weaponising the Bible is so common by colonising powers, what greater justification does one have but being the anointed of God?

Christian Zionists such as Tim Walberg (and many, many others could be quoted) who trained at two evangelical seminaries in a town hall meeting (he is now in politics) said that bombs should be dropped on Gaza like Nagasaki and Hiroshima to get it all over with quickly. When asked about humanitarian aid he replied with ‘we should not be spending a dime on humanitarian aid’. (When he replied with those words the UN had already warned that 70% of the population was suffering from catastrophic levels of hunger.)

Random thoughts:

  • Two peoples corporately traumatised rarely find a solution.
  • If we dig into the OT we find the lex talionis (eye for an eye) – a restrictive law on how revenge is taken, so that any response is equal to what was committed. This is not what is governing the response.
  • Jesus advocated a love response that embraced the enemy; he blessed the peacemakers. We have to read from the NT back into the OT. Any apparent change of ethical instruction does not mean that there was a different God in the OT (Marcion’s conclusion), but as followers of Jesus we insist there is no other God than a Jesus-like God. And yes for sure we have to read the OT critically – that is a huge hermeneutical task, but we cannot make God into an image that is not seen in Jesus. (In certain places it seems that Christians vote for a bully who knows how to support their agenda as their God is also a bully who forces an agenda.) ‘You have heard it say, but…’
  • Paul said ‘do good to all’ and added ‘especially to the household of faith’. Do good to all… and in Palestine, and currently in Iran where there are so many coming to faith, there are ‘many of the household of faith’ being starved, tortured and killed – with the full backing and indeed encouragement of evangelical ‘Bible-believing’ people. Something is wrong!
  • I do not read of any expectation of the land being restored to ‘Israel’ nor of some end-time opening of eyes with regard to the land in the NT. (I date most books prior to AD70 and Revelation late 90s – so neither before nor after the fall of Jerusalem do I find such an expectation.)
  • What do I make of 1948 and ‘Israel’? If a return to the land was an act of God it was to be preceded by repentance. Repentance is not what provoked a return. I am told that statistically more Jews come to Christ outside of Israel than inside. The return to the land is a Zionist persuasion – and to be anti-Zionist is NOT to be anti-Semitic. Most Palestinians are not anti-Jews (some of course are) but they are anti-Zionist. Is God at work… for sure but I see no basis to suggest the ‘return’ is something initiated by God. I have been struck by the convivencia that was present for centuries in Palestine. Those from the 3 Abrahamic faiths lived together. That term, convivencia, is a term used of Spain prior to the Reconquista by the Christians. Prior to that the three faiths lived respecting one another in the same space. We have prayed into this often.
  • God is present in every situation that we create and works ‘for good’; but the Satan is also at work. If there was one land where reconciliation would be a sign on the earth above all others it would be that piece of land in the Middle East that is in conflict. Jesus was clear that those who murder are not descended from heaven but from the devil who was a murderer from the beginning.
  • I do not have answers but do not sleep easily and I long for there to be a Jesus-aligned people who are not looking for an end that is provoked by some made-up Armageddon scenario but a beginning that is in response to an empty tomb.

Gayle has many dreams. The short version of a very long and profound dream she had prior to the current genocide is of a gathering inside a marquee. Support for Palestine becomes central; two groups find commonality – those of Christian faith and those who expressed faith for humanity (humanists)and one group exited – Zionists. Many aspects followed including the appearance of flamingos (now present in Albania) which then ended with an appeal to the banking system to get rid of the professional clothing and play with the children in the grass. We have to see a major shift in the economic realm (war enriches the few) as it is willing to sacrifice the next generation for blessing now (condemned as the sin of Moloch in the OT).

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All Israel – all?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Romans 9-11 definitely stands as a section within the whole book but is not simply unrelated to the remainder of the book. The latter chapters address the inter-relationship of the people from the former covenant who have responded to Jesus as Messiah and those from the Graeco-Roman world who have acknowledged the God of Israel and the work of the cross (deeply practical – a people who are Torah obedient and a people of faith to whom the Torah was not given). And the earlier part of the book has all people have fallen short of the glory of God (of course we read this individualistically but Paul is writing it collectively), with the fullness of salvation available for all. Then these middle chapters are in answer to the faithfulness of God with Paul insisting that ‘It is not as though the word of God has failed’ (Rom. 9:6).

Never one that is easy to follow, but Paul having laid out his case concludes with ‘In this way all Israel will be saved‘. The chapters are dense and that sentence is somewhat dense too!

  • He is not predicting some future turning of all Jews to Jesus as Messiah. His language is ‘in this way’ not ‘and then…’ He is not seeking to give a timeline. His slow to build (though dense) argument is to present an ongoing process of a faithful God.
  • He is not saying ‘all Jews’ but ‘all Israel’. That is a vital part to note. The term ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ are not synonymous. Outside of these chapters in the Pauline corpus his usual language is ‘Jew’; inside these chapters his language is ‘Israel’.
  • This distinction of ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ is consistent with other authors such as Josephus or Philo. (Josephus (37-100AD), for example, wrote the Jewish Antiquites (a history of Israel) and refers to Israel/Israelites 188 times in the first 11 volumes but does not use those words outside of those 11 volumes; and conversely he uses the term ‘Jew’ only 26 times in the first 10 volumes, but in the remaining 9 volumes he only refers to the term ‘Jew’ (1162 times)).
  • ‘Jew’ refers to those who returned from the exile in Babylon, consisting of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin; ‘Israel’ is a larger term relating to the whole 12 tribes, who did not return to the land but were scattered among the nations. Paul expresses the hope of the 12 tribes when he stands before Agrippa – the hope of Israel, and if that hope is to be fulfilled then God has to be faithful. If he has abandoned his people then he will prove to be unfaithful.
  • Thus Paul is writing of an ongoing process through which all Israel will be saved, not some ‘end-time’ event.
  • Further he has argued (as Scripture does consistently) that Israel is a faith term more than an ethnic term. Those who are not ‘of Abraham’ can become descendants of Abraham, while ‘not all (ethnically) descendants of Abraham’ are of Israel. ‘Israel’ is a term larger than ethnic Israel and at the same time smaller than ethnic Israel!
  • The global mission is the means by which all Israel will be saved. All Israel, not simply those living in the land of Israel (those whose designated term was ‘Jews’), but those from among the nations whose ethnicity is rooted in Abraham (those from the tribes who never returned); all Israel in that those who have no ethnic roots in Abraham but are adopted from among the gentiles (ta ethne – gentiles of nations as it was a term used to describe those who are not ethnically descended from Abraham).

The above is a summary of part of my reading of this ‘all Israel’ use in the context of Romans 9-11 and the fuller text is here.

In seeking to narrow down as to what Paul is arguing and thereby exclude certain other meanings I plan to jump to some perspectives on the situation in Palestine / Israel.

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Christian humanism

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Some of you will have read the pdf on the theology behind Paul’s statement that ‘All Israel will be saved’ (available here via the menu under ‘Journals‘) and since then I have read Munther Isaac’s book ‘Christ in the Rubble’. He is a Palestinian Christian pastor (and much more!) living in the West Bank. Deeply informative of the history and sensitive to the issues but very clear. Two aspects remain with me constantly that the creation of the state of Israel by the colonial powers used the Palestinians as the atoning offering for the anti-Semitic history of those colonising powers and the history of the land prior to the modern state was one of convivencia.

Some years back Gayle and I took a year to research then travel throughout the whole of mainland Spain to pray into the years that culminated in the brutal expulsion of the Muslims (1609). With a measure of rose-tinted lenses and a significant measure of reality under the rule of the Muslims there was what was termed convivencia in Spain – those of the three Abrahamic faiths (Christian, Muslim and Jew) co-habited space. We see Spain as the ‘canary in the mine’ (not original to us – a recent history book wrote with this lens on Spain in the context of Europe) so do believe that Spain is key to lead a path back toward genuine convivencia – the vision of the New Jerusalem is that: every tribe… and no temple!

Maybe we are naive and yesterday we had two socially active people with us who do not express faith. I admire their stance and understand the huge measure of pessimism as without faith in the transcendent ‘Other’ how much faith can anyone have in humanity to bring about change. The pope recently called for a ‘Christian humanism’ to rise up. For too long we have seen a divide between a focus on humanity and a theology of God. This is why I wrote Humanising the Divine, though I don’t think the pope was one of the four readers of the widely acclaimed book (widely acclaimed in my head!).

I have at times alluded to what I consider is the most profound dream Gayle had which began with Palestine and the coming together of Jesus-aligned people with humanists in the context of Europe in close harmony and support, coinciding with the exit of Christian-Zionists. The end of the dream pushed for a new order economically. (There were many details in the dream that we have watched play out – including a phase of the appearance of pink flamingos with the question: ‘did you see that?’ Did you see what was happening in Albania???)

Palestine, Israel, convivencia, the Bible, genocide – huge questions. And in real life situations there are rarely ‘here is the answer’ but rather here is the first step… and if the steps can be followed bravely and without fear something redemptive unfolds. I think this is the way God / faith works – from glory to glory.

I read this morning an article: Israeli West Bank settler tells BBC attacks on Palestinians are justified as revenge (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4djgdyk2o). I am lifting part of the dialogue below:

I think now, after they killed one Israeli, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” he said, naming the Palestinian villages closest to the outpost.
I put it to him that he was equating one Jewish life with hundreds or even thousands of Palestinian lives.
“No,” he said, “millions. One Jewish life, it’s 10 million [Palestinians].”
Challenged on the racism of his statement, he did not deny it.
“Yes, I know,” he replied. “But this is the truth, because God chose us [and] because of this you are jealous.”

‘God chose us’… there is the issue right in our face. And Paul quotes Deut. 32:21 that God would make Israel jealous by a nation that are not a people!

So over the coming days I want to reflect on Israel, Palestine with reference to what I wrote in the pdf. And hopefully taking it further, for the vision is of ‘neither Jew nor Greek’… maybe it begins with the original creational binary of ‘male and female’ shifting to be ‘no longer male and female’. The binaries that we so often love are no longer present relationally in Christ (Gal. 3:28; convivencia in its fullness).

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All Israel will be saved

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I am setting an ‘open zoom’ date for two weeks’ time:

Thursday April 16th 19:30 (UK time).

Two resources – a shortish video that will raise the poignant points in headline form:

I love the ‘in the moment’ thumbnail (I deliberately don’t change them!). Either I am making a point that no one can dispute or I am practising my kangaroo imitation – you decide.

In headline form:

  • ‘Israel’ is more a faith than an ethnic term.
  • Jew and Israel are not synonymous terms – so Paul is seeking to deal with the issue of God being faithful to his promises to Israel – his discussion is not about the future nor about the people in the land in his day.
  • He argues that God has not forsaken the people ‘Israel’… that not all ‘of Israel’ are ‘Israel’ – the term ‘Israel’ is smaller than the ethnic term Israel. That Israel is bigger than ‘Jews’… and that the Gentile mission is among the nations (where Israel is to be found) and there those of the 10 tribes are found and (God always works bigger) Gentiles also come in…
  • So in this way all Israel will be saved.

The above headlines are what I touch on in the video; the pdf that goes with this open zoom expands on all the above – and if you want to push in to the substance of my direction you will need to read that also.

When coming on the evening it is not about agreeing with me nor is it about forcefully presenting an opposing position. It is about listening and seeing where this might take us.

I will post a link to the Zoom nearer the time.

The pdf is found here: All Israel will be saved

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All Israel will be saved

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I have just completed my piece of writing seeking to engage with the understanding of ‘Israel’ as distinct from ‘Jew’ in second temple Judaism and Paul’s use lining up with that (a big acknowledgement to the work of Jason Staples on that aspect). I will in a short while put up a video of this (much shorter than the pdf, which is 60 pages long… but not big pages!) and hopefully get an Open Zoom where you can nod in agreement / push back in a suitable open discussion format! I will put notice to both of those here.

For now if you wish to download / read – maybe with a coffee in hand and an open Bible when it gets to Romans 9-11. Something in it for everyone I hope!!

All Israel will be saved

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Romans 9-11 A quick run through

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

This is the final post here on ‘Jew, Israel and Gentile’. I am in a final edit of my extended article and will include what is below and then expand on Romans 9-11 in a deeper way. By the end of next week all will be revealed!

Paul’s arguments are somewhat dense at times and his use of phrases and words mean we need to go slowly!

In these chapters Paul is concerned to show that God has been faithful to his promises to people he describes as being his own flesh and blood (Israelites – an ethnic term). He insists that God has not abandoned his promises. He draws from history that not all who are physically descended from Abraham are ‘Israel’, even though they are ‘of Israel’. Drawing on Scripture he uses the illustration of Ishmael and Isaac: they were both ethnically descended from Abraham but the ‘seed’ is through Isaac. Then he uses the story of Esau and Jacob with Jacob being chosen, and the choice not on the basis of works. In using those two illustrations he is effectively saying that neither ethnic descent nor even living by the works (of Torah) are sufficient. These were the two foundational understandings by which ‘Israel’ could lay claim to being the true ‘seed’ of Abraham.

God has not rejected his people – evidence Paul himself has found faith and history informs us that those who were the people of covenant were always a remnant (a part of the whole). He references Elijah and the 7000 faithful people to illustrate this point.

Israel has always been likened to an Olive Tree and consistent with history unfaithful branches have been cut off, the remaining branches are drawing from the root, and at the same time ‘wild branches’ have been grafted in. He instructs those wild branches not to be arrogant and he holds out hope for branches that have currently been cut off to be regrafted – conditional on their repentance, not something that will simply occur automatically. Those wild branches are from the Gentiles / nations… among those ‘other nations’ the northern kingdom of ‘Israel / Ephraim’ has been sown. So as the ‘Gentile branches’ are grafted in two aspects take place: northern tribes are coming in (for they were scattered among the nations) and the Gentiles are incorporated into Israel. The tree that is pruned and has had the wild branches grafted in is Israel, thus Paul concludes ‘in this way all Israel will be saved’. All Israel is the olive tree. Not all those of Israel are Israel, but Israel is the olive tree – smaller than all ethnic Israelites; but beyond a remnant of Jews; and bigger than ethnic Israel.

In the pdf I will expand considerably on the above. The key points to note are that Paul is seeking to show how God has been faithful throughout and continues to be faithful to the covenants in spite of many ‘of Israel’ rejecting the gospel and at the same time Gentiles coming to faith. His conclusion then is that God’s working is the process by which ‘all Israel’ (not every Israelite nor every Jew) but all Israel (all 12 tribes) will find salvation. More to come… I will put the link here when I finally complete.

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Hebrew Scriptures and the trajectory of the bigger circle

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Here is the sixth part on ‘Jew, Israel and Gentile’. Eventually / soon all the parts will be published as a pdf, but if you wish to follow along as I write…

A core Scripture giving Israel an identity was that of Exodus 19:5,6,

Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

Peter utilises that Scripture in 1 Peter 2:9,10 (and goes on to quote Hosea concerning the casting away of Israel and the drawing back),

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Once you were not a people,
    but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
    but now you have received mercy.

Unless Peter is addressing an exclusive group of Jews who follow Jesus, he is clearly giving to these Jesus-followers descriptive terms that were used for Israel. Israel’s regathering into a relationship with God is fulfilled through those (Gentiles) responding to Jesus.

Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:16-18 pulls together a number of Old Testament passages as he warns the gentile Christians:

What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said,
“I will live in them and walk among them,
    and I will be their God,
    and they shall be my people.
Therefore come out from them,
    and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch nothing unclean;
    then I will welcome you,
and I will be your father,
    and you shall be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”

He boldly quotes and alludes to a host of Old Testament texts here – among them are Leviticus 26, Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 52, Ezekiel 20, and 2 Samuel 7.Those Old Testament texts refer to Israel, with the latter allusion being to David! Paul cites texts that were Israel-centric and applies them to a (predominant / exclusive?) group of Gentiles converts. He follows the quotes and allusions with the provocative statement, ‘Since we have these promises’ (2 Cor.7:1). He does not write ‘since they have these promises’ but ‘since we’. He (and he is a Jew) aligns these converts with Israel!

He aligns converts, regardless of their ethnicity, with the ‘ancestors’ of Israel. Those ancestors are our ancestors:

I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea (1 Cor. 10:1).

Although the Corinthians are not ethnically part of Israel, Paul says they are incorporated into Israel. This seems to be something that is very consistent in Paul and when we come to the chapters in Romans (9-11) it will become very evident in his view that wild-olive shoots have been grafted into the one olive tree.

A longer passage is in Ephesians 2,

So then, remember that at one time you gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us, abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone; in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God (Ephes. 2:11-22, emphases added).

The passage needs almost no comment but I note that ‘gentiles / the uncircumcision’ who previously had a status as those who were once ‘outside the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenant’ had been brought near so that the divide between the two groups had ended; the Gentiles had now become citizens with the saints and members of God’s household. To be ‘brought near’ was the language to describe what had taken place when Gentiles converted to Judaism. (Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost records that the promise was for those immediately present, the subsequent generations and for ‘those afar off’. The OT expectation that post-restoration Gentiles would come in, the mystery that has been revealed to Paul is that this was not some future event, but a current one and it was happening without the Gentiles submitting to the Torah as had been the requirement for those converting to Judaism.)

What is described is not ‘replacement’ but incorporation and the foundation being based on that of ‘apostles and prophets’. (In this context it is feasible to understand this to be the proclaimers of God’s will from what we can term (looking back) the Old Testament and the New Testament.)

In the chapter that follows Paul unfolds that what was not understood prior to the resurrection had now been revealed. That mystery is that the Gentiles had become sharers in the promise of God which could only mean that they were incorporated into Israel. The mystery revealed alters any expected time sequence – this is not something taking place after the restoration of Israel (as certain OT Scriptures seem to indicate) but taking place simultaneously, and it was taking place without the Gentiles submitting to the Torah.

In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel (Ephesians 3:5,6).

In these passages all those who are in Christ are now partakers as Abraham’s descendants, and so can be said to be incorporated into Israel (the Israel of God?). If we pull on Paul’s words in Galatians where he insists that the ‘seed’ of Abraham is singular and that singular seed is Messiah then it follows that all who are in Christ are therefore descendants of Abraham. (Neither in English nor in Greek is Paul on firm ground linguistically, but his point is theological.)

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The people ‘in’ Messiah and Israel

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I am almost finished writing on ‘Jew, Israel and Gentile’ where I seek to work through those key chapters, Romans 9-11. Maybe by the end of the week I will finish and then some editing the week that follows. I have in four previous posts included the first parts of the writing (if you missed them just enter ‘Israel’ into the search box and they should show up. I will publish them all as a pdf when I finalise the writing. Here is the fifth part for those who wish to follow along.

The coming of Messiah in order to fulfil the promises to Abraham (Genesis 12 onwards) and to heal the sickness that creation endures (as outlined specifically in Genesis 1-11) is not simply a situation of the past progressing. We read the Scriptures historically and we read them with Jesus being their fulfillment; he fulfills what has been previously written. And yet there is something more that takes place. The resurrection of Jesus changes ‘time’. Not a change to the physical time, but one that changes expectations. An event (the resurrection) that was hoped would occur at the fullness of time had now occurred in time, we could say ahead of schedule. Death and resurrection might be separated by three days but they were part of one event, with the resurrection ushering in a new era, even what is termed ‘new creation’. Something of the future arrived with the resurrection of Jesus. The end is not something we wait for, but the end (in the Person of Jesus) is something we welcome. Hence when we turn to the New Testament there are surprises and twists with regard to fulfilment(s).

Paul sums it up with his words in 2 Corinthians 1:20,

For in him every one of God’s promises is a “Yes.” For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen,” to the glory of God.

All promises that God has made are guaranteed and fulfilled in Christ. Centring everything on Christ means the fulfilment at times might look different (the fulfillment is ‘beyond’ what was expected. Progressive revelation is from the lesser to the greater, never the other way round) to what was expected and we have to take care about simply taking an Old Testament promise and seeking to project forward. The eschatological fulfilment is more vital, and this seems to be why Paul says that Abraham was promised the ‘world’ (kosmos) not the ‘land’ (ge). (We have to do the same with the various laws. We neither abrogate them all except for the ones that are affirmed in the NT, nor do we hold them all except for the ones that have explicitly been cancelled! The tendency is to take one or the other approach. Continuity and discontinuity is involved and all Scripture has to pass through the Jesus filter.)

The church replaces Israel?

There is a theology termed supersessionism where the church is said to supersede / replace Israel. This can be expressed in a very simple way or nuanced better with Jesus faithfully fulfilling Israel’s calling and that those who are in Christ are where the purposes of God are centred. The contrary perspective is that which Dispensationalism expresses – that there are two different paths to salvation: one for Israel and one for those who have come to faith in Jesus. I once heard a Messianic Jew say, ‘In the New Testament the early believers were clear that Jews needed Jesus, they were just not sure about the Gentiles. Now two millennia later we have reversed that approach where we are sure that Gentiles need saving but we are not sure about the Jews!’ This is certainly true of those who hold to two paths for salvation.

We can look at the tussle that occurred in the early chapters of Acts. They are clear that there was ‘no other name’ by which people could be saved (Acts 4:12). Peter’s audience were Jews in Jerusalem and he said that they could not appeal to the patriarchs (‘other names’) as being their guarantee of salvation; then when Gentiles began to respond to Jesus the question was how were they to relate to the law. Gentiles who converted to Judaism took on board the Torah and its instructions – so what response was required of Gentiles who expressed faith in Jesus, the Messiah of Israel? Part of the offence in the new Messianic movement was that Gentiles were given full inclusion without submitting to the law.

(And we must not think of Judaism as being a religion of works; the law acted as a boundary marker and was viewed as God’s gracious gift to the people. Conversely we must not consider that the entry for the Gentiles was one of cheap grace (Torah-free is not lawlessness). Paul was committed to bring about ‘the obedience of faith among all the gentiles for the sake of his name’ (Rom. 1:5).)

The second of the two proposals that I wrote about in the previous paragraph (of two separate paths) is something I reject and the former view I wish to nuance somewhat.

The heading I have given as a question (‘The church replaces Israel’) in itself raises some questions. Always the danger of using the word ‘church’ is that almost inevitably we have injected into the word a predetermined meaning or concept. If, however, we transliterate the Greek underlying word (ekklesia) we can see that the question is indeed a strange one. Israel was termed the ekklesia! (The common word used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures when describing Israel as the community in response to God, hence Moses was said to be with the ekklesia in the wilderness (Acts 7:38).) It is bizarre to ask the question ‘does the ekklesia replace the ekklesia’!

We have to dig deeper. So let’s try and expand this some. As discussed earlier in this paper, fundamental to Israel’s identity was that of faith – faith triumphed over ethnicity. Israel was always smaller than the ethnic boundary and yet always bigger than that ethnic boundary as faith drew a bigger circumference.

If Gentiles became Torah-obedient they were included as part of Israel; this emphasis continued among certain Jewish followers of Jesus, hence the disagreements within the early Jesus-movement. The controversy that ensued was settled when it was decided that Gentile followers of Jesus were not required to be obedient to Torah.

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Paul’s statistical use of Israel

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Biblical Observations

Paul uses ‘Israel / Israelites’ 13 times in Rom. 9-11 and 7 in the rest of the  Pauline literature (we will look at those below); he does not use the term ‘Israel’ in Romans outside of these 3 chapters, but uses the term ‘Jew’ on numerous occasions, but only once does he use the term ‘Jew’ inside those three chapters. His focus inside these chapters is on ‘Israel / all Israel / restoration of the twelve tribes’; outside the chapters he is diving into the Jew / Greek issue (the world as categorised that he is working within). Those statistics alone should get our attention.

Of the seven references outside of Romans 9-11 when Paul uses the term ‘Israel’, he is referring to historical / ethnic Israel. Only once does he use ’Israel’ to refer to a current entity, the ‘Israel of God’ (Gal. 6:16), 

As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

‘And (καὶ) upon the Israel of God’ can either be indicating two groups – ‘those who follow this rule’ and ‘the Israel of God’, or the use of the καὶ can be ‘epexegetic’ and thus carrying a clarifying meaning – those who follow this rule who are the Israel of God. We can further contrast this phrase to Paul’s use of ‘Israel according to the flesh’ (1 Cor. 10:18). There ‘Israel’ is clearly a reference to ethnic Israel (τὸν Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ σάρκα); in Galatians his term is τὸν Ἰσραὴλ τοῦ θεοῦ. The contrast – if both terms are applied to ethnic Israel simply suggests that ‘not all who are (ethnically) Israel are of God’s Israel’. The reference then is either to that portion within ethnic Israel that has responded to Messiah (the Galatian letter is about how Jew and Greek are included in the Messiah) or he is pushing his view that those who respond in faith (who follow this rule) are descendants of Abraham (whether Jew or Gentile) and thus are the ‘Israel of God’. Regardless he is not advocating two ways to salvation!

Paul never uses the terms ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ synonymously (he maintains the distinction between the terms as other Jewish writers of the ‘second temple’ era do). Outside of Romans 9-11 his normal contrasting language is ‘Jew and Greek’ (Rom. 1:16; 2:9, 10, 17; 3:1,9; 1 Cor. 1:22, 24; 12:13; Gal. 3:28) or ‘Jew and Gentile’ (Rom. 3:29; 9:24; 1 Cor 1:23; Gal. 2:14-15).

I end this section with the important understanding when coming to Rom. 9-11 with the foundation that ‘Israel’ and ‘Jew’ are not synonymous terms. ‘All Israel’ cannot mean ‘every Jew’ and has to extend beyond those living in the land.

This is the fourth post seeking to follow what I am currently writing. I am about to get into the three chapters of Rom. 9-11, so it is likely to be a little while before there are other posts on this theme.

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Israel or Jew

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Biblical Observations

This is the third post of what I am working on with regard to the phrase in Paul ‘and all Israel will be saved’. This post begins to show the distinction between the terms ‘Israel’ and ‘Jew’. They are not synonymous.

Israel or Jew

A common response and understanding of the terms ‘Israel’ and ‘Jew’ is to see them as simply synonymous, such as we read in the following quote,

Generally speaking, the terms Hebrews, Jews, and Israelites all refer to the same people – the nation which sprang from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, a nation promised and chosen by God in the Old Testament (https://www.timberlandchurch.org/articles/is-there-a-difference-between-hebrews-jews-and-israelites#:~:text=Generally%20speaking%2C%20the%20terms%20Hebrews%2C,the%20Old%20Testament%20(Genesis%2012%3A1%2D3).

The work of Jason Staples has shown that the two terms are not simply two descriptions for the one entity and that Paul follows the distinction that writers such as Josephus and Philo make.

Josephus (37-100AD) who wrote the Jewish Antiquites (a history of Israel) referred to Israel/Israelites 188 times in the first 11 volumes but does not use those words outside of those 11 volumes; he uses the term ‘Jew’ only 26 times in the first 10 volumes, but in the remaining 9 volumes he only refers to the term ‘Jew’ (1162 times), never using the term ‘Israel’. If the terms were interchangeable we would expect a much more even spread. Something happened in the history to highlight ‘Israel’ in the earlier period but ‘Jew’ in accounts relating to the later history. It was only ‘Jews’ who returned from the exile in Babylon – Jews being from the southern kingdom of Judah.

When these Jews (Ioudaioi) learned of the king’s piety towards God, and his kindness towards Ezra, they loved [him] most dearly, and many took up their possessions and went to Babylon, desiring to go down to Jerusalem. But all the people of Israel remained in that land. So it came about that only two tribes [Benjamin, a smaller tribe is included, also some from Levi who were distributed in both the northern and southern kingdoms] came to Asia and Europe and are subject to the Romans, but the ten tribes are beyond the Euphrates until now and are a countless multitude whose number is impossible to know (Ant. 11:132-133).

Jospehus writing in the Roman era describes the other 10 tribes as being beyond Roman territory. His change of usage indicates that ‘Israel’ (the 10 northern tribes that were taken away in the Assyrian conquest) did not return and he could not use the term ‘Israel’ of returning Jews. Israel was either used to refer to the whole people or the northern tribes; the Iuodaioi (Jews) were the southern kingdom that did return after the Babylonian exile.

The later volumes of Josephus cover the history after the northern kingdom went into their exile (never to return), hence those that remain are referred to as ‘Jews’. Once the Southern kingdom later returns from Babylon the people are only referred to as ‘Jews’ by Josephus; Jews then are a subset of Israel and all Jews together do not constitute Israel – this will become important when we come to Paul’s statement of ‘all Israel will be saved’.

A few paragraphs later Josephus writes,

From the time they went up from Babylon they were called by this name [Ioudaios] after the tribe of Judah. Since the tribe was the prominent one to come from those parts, both the people themselves and the country have taken their name from it (Ant. 11:173).

Jews are those from the tribe of Judah – the southern kingdom. It was the tribe of Judah and Benjamin that went into Babylonian captivity and who returned.

Within the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament) and the books that are post-Babylonian exile the term ‘Jew’ only refers to those who were from the tribe of Judah (and Benjamin and some from Levi who were distributed across the northern and southern kingdoms). Philo of Alexandria (20-50AD) likewise uses the term Israel(ite) eighty times in his Greek works, but he never uses it synonymously with Jew, nor does he ever refer to the contemporary people as Israel or Israelites. Like Josephus, he uses Ioudaios to refer to contemporary Jews.

The shift that takes place is the demise of the northern kingdom who are taken into exile by Assyria and eventually are scattered among the nations. That northern kingdom carried the name ‘Israel’ whereas the southern kingdom was termed Judah – the tribes splitting after Solomon dies. Israel could be used as a term describing the whole people (descendents of Jacob/Israel) or of the northern kingdom by itself, but the southern kingdom was never referred to as Israel.

This distinction remains consistent in the Old Testament Scriptures. It is the ‘elders of the Jews’ (Ezra 6:14) who are those who rebuild the Temple and when the Temple is dedicated a sin offering is made for all Israel, twelve male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel (Ezra 6:17). ‘Jews’ have returned from the Babylonian exile, but the remainder of Israel had not, hence the elders were the elders of the Jews. Yet a hope persisted for the restoration of the twelve tribes (Israel / all Israel) such as was articulated by Paul,

And now I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night. It is for this hope, Your Excellency, that I am accused by Jews (Acts 26:6,7).

The prophetic hope was for the twelve tribes, but Paul was accused by Jews! The hope was expressed in different passages but the ‘I will make a new covenant’ passage in Jeremiah is a good summary of the future hope of restoration (emphases added below) of Israel – the fullness of the 12 tribes:

At that time, says the Lord, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people… The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord… The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jer. 31:1, 27-28, 31-33).

[A sidenote – there was a partial return of the northern kingdom but it was ethnically mixed, being based in Samaria they were known as Samaritans. They are never known as Jews, but did refer to themselves as ‘Samarian Israelites’ or as ‘guardians of the Torah’, thus further making the identification of ‘Jew’ with those of the southern kingdom. They viewed themselves as Israelites (not as Jews) while the majority of Jews viewed them as illegitimate. The debate was not whether they were Jews – that point was agreed on by all: they were not Jews. The debate was whether they were legitimately part of Israel. Thus again we see that even the sum total of all Jews could not be termed ‘all Israel’.]

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