Ok i might sound like an idiot, but i’ve never even noticed or thought about this before. One of my non-Catholic friends asked me why Israel is in the Bible if it only became a country a little while ago. Is it a differant Israel? Or did the Jews just name the country Israel after the Israel in the Bible? Thanks.
Israel had a country in the Old Testament. It consisted of (most of) the Promised Land that God promised Abraham.
After the Exodus, Joshua led the 12 tribes of Israel into the Promised Land and they proceeded to conquer most of the tribes and nations that lived there (as detailed in Joshua and Judges). Finally they became the nation of Israel with the annointing of Saul, their first king. 1st and 2nd Samuel, and 1st and 2nd Kings details the kingdom of Israel through the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon, and then the breakup of Israel into two countries. The 10 northern tribes formed Israel and the two southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, formed Judea (which is where the term “Jews” originated). In the 700’s BC, Israel was conqured by Assyria, and most of the Israelites were exiled. The area of Israel became Samaria in Jesus’ time.
In the 500’s BC, Babylonia conqured Judea, and they were exiled, only to be released some 70 years later. Judea was considered occupied territory for most of the next 600 or so years, through the birth and life of Christ.
In 70AD, Rome destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem and there was basically no country or territory of Israel or Judea until the 1950’s, when our good friends at the United Nations gave the land of Palestine to the Jewish people to repopulate as a country.
I hope I’m fairly accurate in my assessment of this.
