Here is the Zoom link for the evening (Thursday 16th April):
ID: 572 803 9267
Passcode: 5GkMTA
A reminder: the article can be found by accessing the menu labelled ‘Journals’ and it is Volume 8. It can be downloaded or read online.
I suggest if you read it that you make notes particularly for any questions that need clarification. Not a short ‘breezy’ read.
There is also a short(-ish) video that gives a summary of what I have written.
I am aware this is a highly controversial / debated subject, so a quick reminder – do not come on board assuming I have now settled all discussions and am ‘right’… and neither come to the Zoom assuming that you are right!! we are not seeking to make a point but as the title to the series makes plain these are ‘explorations in theology and practice’.
The part that is ‘new’ follows the work of Jason Staples who has gone to great lengths to show that ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ are not synonymous. An article by Staples that can be easily accessed is here. In it there is a short explanation of how since the influential publication of Kittel’s Dictionary there has been a common assumption that Jew and Israel are simply synonymous… I put an extended explanation below (material from Staples)…
[In addition to lecturing on Rabbinic Judaism while wearing a Nazi paramilitary uniform in the 1930s, Kuhn (1906-1976) was, together with his mentor Gerhard Kittel, one of fifteen appointees to the “Institute for the Study of the Jewish Problem” established in 1936. He contributed several scholarly articles on the so-called “Jewish Problem” in the service of the institute, putting forth anti-Semitic scholarship with remarkable subtlety and scholarly sophistication.
But Kuhn is also the author of the entry in Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament on the terms Israel, Ioudaios (Jew/Judaean), and Hebrew in early Jewish literature, an entry that established the paradigm for how these terms and their relationships to each other have been understood for nearly a century—a paradigm now so dominant as to be regularly assumed without argument or citation across a broad range of scholarly literature.
Like most modern scholars, Kuhn presumed that the terms “Israelite,” “Jew,” and “Hebrew” were essentially synonymous or coextensive in early Jewish literature, with all three terms referring to the same group of people. Nevertheless, these terms are not evenly distributed across early Jewish literature like one would expect if they were completely synonymous. As a result, Kuhn proposed that Israel/Israelite is the preferred “insider” terminology, while “Jew” is a term typically used by outsiders and sometimes carries a nuance of disrespect or contempt, and was used by Israelites themselves as an accommodation when communicating in an outsider or diaspora context. As for “Hebrew,” Kuhn explains that this term serves as another “more dignified” alternative to the “deprecatory element that clings so easily to [Jew].”]
Here are the key points I raise:
- Israel – defined ethnically or by faith. Not all ‘of Israel’ (ethnicity) are ‘Israel’ – a point Paul makes that would not have been controversial.
- ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ are not synonymous so we cannot make ‘All Israel’ to mean ‘All Jews’.
- Paul is seeking to defend God’s faithfulness to the promises in Rom. 9-11; those promises being made to Abraham and his ‘seed’. In Galatians Paul somewhat ‘cheekily’ holds that ‘seed’ is singular therefore it is a reference to ‘Jesus’. (Neither in Greek nor English does the point hold grammatically.) In Romans he is much more nuanced.
- More nuanced but the promises are not made to Abraham’s descendants who are ‘Jews’ (tribe of Judah and Benjamin) but who are ‘of Israel’ (all tribes).
- The Gentile mission is not the abandonment of ‘Israel’ (think ‘faith Israel) but is the very means that ‘all Israel’ will be saved. This is not a temporal statement but a modal one: ‘in this way all Israel will be saved’.
- Leaning into other NT texts – those who come to faith from a Gentile background do not become Jews but are adopted into Israel. This also cuts through the divide on Acts 1:6 are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel at this time. The reply (leaning heavily on Isaianic texts) is neither a denial nor an affirmation (as understood classically) but again a modal answer.
I look forward to seeing you soon.
The YouTube (summary) video is: