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What is the Relationship between Christians and Israel?

dianaiad

Well-Known Member
Untermyer was a very powerful man.. He was the chief fund raiser for 6 million starving Jews in Europe in the early 1900s... and he was an ardent Zionist. He paid for the writing and publishing of the Scofield Bible.

I still don't see how this is relevant to the bias exhibited in the article linked to in the OP.
 

sooda

Veteran Member
I still don't see how this is relevant to the bias exhibited in the article linked to in the OP.

Zionism needed the support of Christians.. The Scofield Bible and the Dallas Theological Seminary have changed American Protestant beliefs.. which are heavily focused on the end times.. The belief is that Jews must return to Israel and rebuild the Temple before Jesus can return.

You have read, "I will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel"?

It didn't catch on quickly in 1919, but it resonated with the poor during the Depression and the Dust Bowl years. It got a boost in the 1950s among some of the NOT mainstream Protestant churches and caught fire in the early 1970s with writers like Hal Lindsey and Tim Lahaye. Fundamentalists and evangelicals are very preoccupied with the end times.
 

dianaiad

Well-Known Member
Zionism needed the support of Christians.. The Scofield Bible and the Dallas Theological Seminary have changed American Protestant beliefs.. which are heavily focused on the end times.. The belief is that Jews must return to Israel and rebuild the Temple before Jesus can return.

You have read, "I will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel"?

It didn't catch on quickly in 1919, but it resonated with the poor during the Depression and the Dust Bowl years. It got a boost in the 1950s among some of the NOT mainstream Protestant churches and caught fire in the early 1970s with writers like Hal Lindsey and Tim Lahaye. Fundamentalists and evangelicals are very preoccupied with the end times.


You still aren't getting the problem, sooda.

I am not arguing historical fact or attitudes or whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that Jews have Israel back. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything one way or the other. I have my own opinion about this issue, but I freely acknowledge that it is based upon my own perception of scripture and my admiration for the Jewish people in general. I wouldn't be able to argue history with you.

My point is simply and only that the writer of the article the OP sent us to is unreliable and biased. Every article written by that person is heavily and obviously biased towards Palestinians and against Israel. that makes him a very bad source of information, and useful only to those who want their own anti-Zionist and/or anti-Semitic opinions bolstered.

It's not whether this writer has the historical facts at hand. It's what is done WITH those facts.

It is...like learning about Catholicism from Jackchick.org, Mormonism from "SaintsAlive," Liberals from Rush Limbaugh or Conservatives from the Huffington Post.

THAT is my only point here. I really dislike getting information from sources that obviously biased, even if they end up being correct..and even if they cater to my own biases. It's too much trouble to check out all the references. By the time you have adjusted for the bias, you would have been better off to go to someone less...er...one-sided in the first place.
 

sooda

Veteran Member
You still aren't getting the problem, sooda.

I am not arguing historical fact or attitudes or whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that Jews have Israel back. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything one way or the other. I have my own opinion about this issue, but I freely acknowledge that it is based upon my own perception of scripture and my admiration for the Jewish people in general. I wouldn't be able to argue history with you.

My point is simply and only that the writer of the article the OP sent us to is unreliable and biased. Every article written by that person is heavily and obviously biased towards Palestinians and against Israel. that makes him a very bad source of information, and useful only to those who want their own anti-Zionist and/or anti-Semitic opinions bolstered.

It's not whether this writer has the historical facts at hand. It's what is done WITH those facts.

It is...like learning about Catholicism from Jackchick.org, Mormonism from "SaintsAlive," Liberals from Rush Limbaugh or Conservatives from the Huffington Post.

THAT is my only point here. I really dislike getting information from sources that obviously biased, even if they end up being correct..and even if they cater to my own biases. It's too much trouble to check out all the references. By the time you have adjusted for the bias, you would have been better off to go to someone less...er...one-sided in the first place.

The Palestinians have paid for the holocaust in Europe with their land and blood... and you are sensitive to anti-Semitism. The Palestinians are Semites.
 

dianaiad

Well-Known Member
The Palestinians have paid for the holocaust in Europe with their land and blood... and you are sensitive to anti-Semitism. The Palestinians are Semites.

I give up.

exiting right stage, throwing up my hands.
 

sooda

Veteran Member
You still aren't getting the problem, sooda.

I am not arguing historical fact or attitudes or whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that Jews have Israel back. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything one way or the other. I have my own opinion about this issue, but I freely acknowledge that it is based upon my own perception of scripture and my admiration for the Jewish people in general. I wouldn't be able to argue history with you.

My point is simply and only that the writer of the article the OP sent us to is unreliable and biased. Every article written by that person is heavily and obviously biased towards Palestinians and against Israel. that makes him a very bad source of information, and useful only to those who want their own anti-Zionist and/or anti-Semitic opinions bolstered.

It's not whether this writer has the historical facts at hand. It's what is done WITH those facts.

It is...like learning about Catholicism from Jackchick.org, Mormonism from "SaintsAlive," Liberals from Rush Limbaugh or Conservatives from the Huffington Post.

THAT is my only point here. I really dislike getting information from sources that obviously biased, even if they end up being correct..and even if they cater to my own biases. It's too much trouble to check out all the references. By the time you have adjusted for the bias, you would have been better off to go to someone less...er...one-sided in the first place.

Who is Jack Chick? I've never heard of him before.
 

Tumah

Veteran Member
Jews were banned from Jerusalem after 69/70 A.D. insurgency however they were not contrary to myth exiled than from Palestine, how do we know this? We know this because of the Simon Bar Kochba insurgency in 132 A.D. was larger than that one, and were they exiled after this? No, we know this because of the Misnah. The idea that there was a Jewish exile as such is a myth that probably originated among Christians and was later adopted themselves by Jews. Before the 19 th century the only Zionist movements so to speak that we see are from the Karaites who were regarded as Amalek by the Rabbis and possibly Proto-Islam which is it's own interesting story- unless of course you want to discuss the Samaritans who were actually exiled twice but found a way back to the Land as soon as possible.

The below by an Israeli journalist and historian explains the rough out lines of what we actually know historically:

Tom Friedman’s belief in an ‘ancestral homeland’ is a toxic myth and not history — Updated
What you mean to say is that not all the Jewish people were exiled by the Romans. There was already a large community in Babylon from the time of the Babylonian exile. There were other communities in Egypt, Rome etc. That's not what marks an exile - during the Babylonian exile, there remained Jewish communities in Israel as well, yet we still call it exile: our Temple, the focus of our religious life was destroyed and our nation was scattered.

There was no single day where the Romans lined up all the Jews in the country and marched them right out. That's true and I don't think anyone makes that argument. The closest was the aftermath of the Bar Kohba revolt when the majority of Jewish communities of Israel were either wiped out, sold as slaves or ran. The fact that the Mishnah exists actually points to the opposite of what you're saying. The Oral Torah is forbidden to be written down. It's only because the Rabbis saw that the persecution and exile represented a risk of our losing the Oral Torah, that they wrote it down. So yes, the destruction of the Temple does mark the beginning of the exile when our focus of religious life was destroyed and our nation began to scatter.

I'm not sure what you mean by your "Zionist movement" comment. Israel and the return to Israel has been part of our institutionalized prayers perhaps since even before our exile. It was the dream of many Jews to move there despite the danger. It's perhaps only in the modern era where it became possible for a return en masse. And Zionism as a movement may have other problems with it. But the idea of returning to Israel has definitely been a part of the national consciousness for millennia.

I could not find any Rabbis who regarded Karaites as Amalek. And it would be odd if they did being as the Karaites are (mostly) Jewish and Amalek is a different nation. The only source I was able to find was a Rabbi criticizing a different Rabbi for not accepting returnees from Karaitism using an a fortiori argument from the Law accepting conversion from the Amalek nation.
 

qaz

Member
an honest and cold look at history teaches us the jewish people always had and will ever have a tribalistic weltanschauung. which means they respectively judge good and bad anything advantageous and disadvantageous to them. the jews adopted the idea of equality during their nomadic/servile period as easily as they are constituting an ethnic state nowadays - since nobody can deny e.g. the law of return is essentially racialist, being judaism passed through the maternal line, or that the symbol on the israeli flag represents one ethnicity in the whole citizenry, etc etc.
you can find it even in their myths, as Lord Bacon noticed in "the advancement of learning", 2nd book:
We see Moses when he saw the Israelite and the Egyptian fight, he did not say, “Why strive you?” but drew his sword and slew the Egyptian; but when he saw the two Israelites fight, he said, “You are brethren, why strive you?”
so, what's the solution? unfortunately there is no solution. you only have to move to the next daily occurrence.
 
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