Middle East Synod and Israel

[chosen_people]

I really think the attempt at a biblical argument is done more out of convinence than anything else. Israel knows that many Christians in America (particularly evangelicals) will sop up a biblical argument (even though such argument has no merit). Thus it continues to get propetuated, not because it is truely the central issue behind the formation of Israel. But because it works.

1 Maccabees 15:33-34

33And Simon answered him, and said to him: We have neither taken other men’s land, neither do we hold that which is other men’s: but the inheritance of our fathers, which was for some time unjustly possessed by our enemies.

34But we having opportunity claim the inheritance of our fathers

It just never gets old:thumbsup:

 

[Pax_in_Veritate]

1 Maccabees 15:33-34

33And Simon answered him, and said to him: We have neither taken other men’s land, neither do we hold that which is other men’s: but the inheritance of our fathers, which was for some time unjustly possessed by our enemies.

34But we having opportunity claim the inheritance of our fathers

It just never gets old:thumbsup:

Surely you are aware that many many Jews do not take the Torah literally. In fact, many believe that it was written by men during the Babylonian captivity and these stories were oral stories passed down and written down as a myth.

What do you say to them?

 

[Pax_in_Veritate]

By the way, the Hebrew Bible does not even include Maccabees 1.

 

[Timothy17]

Tim previously stated in this thread that Zionists had nothing to do with the creation of Israel. I believe he is wrong about that.

I hope the Tim you are mentioning isn’t me. I absolutely never said that.

Tim

 

[Pax_in_Veritate]

I hope the Tim you are mentioning isn’t me. I absolutely never said that.

Tim

Yes, you are correct. I meant to say Robbinson said that. And he did after double checking.

Sorry

 

[jerome_ky]

jerome_ky: I don’t know why you weren’t able to reach the article, but I clearly stated that it gave the references to the scientific studies. If you want to read an actual scientific study of Y-chromosome haplotypes in all of its technical glory, do it here. There are more studies if you care to find them, but this one should suffice.

As to your other point, if the Jewish religion was the whole point then you would expect the original Zionists to have been religiously Jewish, which they weren’t for the most part. You would expect modern Israel to be Jewish religiously, which it isn’t for the most part. The Jewish religion is NOT the basis of the nation of Israel, and never was. It has always been about blood descent.

Peace and God bless!

I was able to read this article, thank you for providing it. I am stumped, though. This does not further your argument. Your original statement, with which I took issue, was “The Palestinians are Jewish by blood descent, and genetic studies have proven this time and again.” The article you provided does not suggest in any way that Palestinians are Jewish by genetics. It is proving that diaspora Jews are not statistically different from indigents of the region (including Palestinians) despite having been away from the region for so long, or from each other, despite having lived in different places (a natural product of ghetto-ization, no doubt). Here are the relevant statements:

“A series of analyses was performed to address whether modern Jewish Y-chromosome diversity derives mainly from a common Middle Eastern source population or from admixture with neighboring non-Jewish populations during and after the Diaspora. Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level.”

“Several lines of evidence support the hypothesis that Diaspora Jews from Europe, Northwest Africa, and the Near East resemble each other more closely than they resemble their non-Jewish neighbors.”

“A Middle Eastern origin of the Jewish gene pool is generally assumed because of the detailed documentation of Jewish history and religion. There are not many genetic studies that have attempted to infer the genetic relationships among Diaspora Jews and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations.”

The article in no way proves your point and actually makes a case for the standard Jewish narrative, that they started in the Holy Land, were dispersed, stayed fairly homogeneous, and then returned to their Holy Land. And you know what? It’s Biblical. God promised He would do this with the Jews.

“And as the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you; and you shall be plucked off the land which you are entering to take possession of it.
And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other; and there you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.
And among these nations you shall find no ease, and there shall be no rest for the sole of your foot; but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart, and failing eyes, and a languishing soul;
your life shall hang in doubt before you; night and day you shall be in dread, and have no assurance of your life.
In the morning you shall say, Would it were evening!' and at evening you shall say, Would it were morning!’ because of the dread which your heart shall fear, and the sights which your eyes shall see. [Deut 28:63-67]”

"“And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you,
and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you this day, with all your heart and with all your soul;
then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes, and have compassion upon you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you.
If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will fetch you;
and the LORD your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, that you may possess it; and he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. [Deut 30:1-5]”

In this way the Jews have been a sign to the world. Christ led the way, being King of the Jews, He did it first.

 

[Robbinson]

Yes, you are correct. I meant to say Robbinson said that. And he did after double checking.

Sorry

Actually - I didn’t say that either

 

[Pax_in_Veritate]

Actually - I didn’t say that either

You said, “Israel was formed by mandate of the United Nations - not by Zionism and is a democracy surrounded by dictatorships. I think Israel’s right to exist as a nation is clear. That does not give it free reign in dealing with its neighbors. I’m not sure on what basis you suggest that mulims and Christian palistintians have a “greater claim of being descendants of jews” of Israel. That statement has no historical basis. Jews are descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. We have absolutely no idea who the descendants of the remaining 10 tribes are.”

“Israel was formed … not by Zionism.”

 

[Robbinson]

You said, “Israel was formed by mandate of the United Nations - not by Zionism and is a democracy surrounded by dictatorships. I think Israel’s right to exist as a nation is clear. That does not give it free reign in dealing with its neighbors. I’m not sure on what basis you suggest that mulims and Christian palistintians have a “greater claim of being descendants of jews” of Israel. That statement has no historical basis. Jews are descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. We have absolutely no idea who the descendants of the remaining 10 tribes are.”

“Israel was formed … not by Zionism.”

My apologies - I stand corrected, I forgot that post and should have checked the thread before my reply and I’m sorry you had to sort through the thread to find that (but thank you for the diligence and correction).

Blessings,

Brian

 

[Ghosty]

jerome_ky: I provided the link to one study that is over 10 years old. The fact that you refused to look into the other articles (referenced in the first link I posted) is not my fault. At the time of the study you read it was one of the few of its kind, but there have been many since.

Also, you left out a key point right after the last portion you quoted:

Of the Middle Eastern populations included in this study, only the Syrian and Palestinian samples mapped within the central cluster of Jewish populations (Fig. 2).

Incidentally, these are the two groups that frequently claim Jewish descent (at least the Christian ones do; Syriacs, in fact, still continue the use of Aramaic, the actual language of the ancient Jews), and they are the ones who fall into the Jewish genetic map. If Palestinians were Arabs, they would match Arabians (Sar in the diagram, Fig. 2). The other Middle Eastern populations all fall outside the “Jewish spread” of genetic populations.

And yes, the Jews who left the land of Israel did remain largely homogenous. That is why they mostly genetically match the people who stayed in Israel, namely the Palestinians. The fact that Jews didn’t intermarry extensively with their diaspora neighbors actually strengthens the argument that Palestinians are the descendents of Jews, since they match the relatively pure Jewish profile, and don’t match that of Arabs.

Note that I never said that modern Jews weren’t descendents of Israel; I said that Palestinians are ALSO descendents of Israel. To make a claim of the land versus the Palestinians, based on birthright, makes absolutely no sense. It would be like the Ashkenazim making the claim for Israel against the Sephardim. The Palestinians have equal claim to the same land, based on the promise to their forefathers.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Timothy17]

Ironically, after all is said and done, our Heavenly Father and Creator has a perspective on the land of Israel that needs to be understood by all monotheistic residents of this land.

Leviticus 25:3 “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is Mine, and you are but aliens, who have become My tenants.”

1 Chron.29:15 “For we stand before you as aliens. We are only your guests, like all our fathers. **Our life on earth is like a shadow **that does not abide.”

Hebrews 11:9-10 “By faith he (Abraham) sojourned in the promised land, as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise; for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God.”

Thank you, zarthan, your point is well taken. As I was trying to describe earlier, God’s people have always been “strangers in a strange land,” as it were. We are alien to this world, and our citizenship is in Heaven. This world shall pass away, and is passing away, and the day is coming when God shall wipe every tear from the eyes of those who love Him, and they shall cry no more. What I mean by this is that there is an explicit connection between suffering in this life for the sake of Heaven and our present condition as pilgrims and sojourners on earth, which mark us Christians as His own people. Our very suffering and eduring of evil in this life gives witness to our hope and belief in the next, and this estranges us from the worldly and godless, who cannot fathom any benefit or value in suffering in this world, owing to their poverty of belief in, or ignorance of, another world, a better, perfect, and heavenly one. This is the true Promised Land, for as the Apostles says, “who hopes for that which he already has ?” The Holy Land, though indeed holy, is not the promised land, and ceased to be “promised” once it was rendered, and therefore fulfilled, in the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant’s promises were each and every one fulfilled long ago : God had given what He promised.

Heaven is the Undiscovered Country, the true New World, the authentic land of Promise toward which we sojourn through the desert of Faith, which we entered upon our crossing the waters of Baptism.

Pax,
Tim

 

[chosen_people]

Surely you are aware that many many Jews do not take the Torah literally. In fact, many believe that it was written by men during the Babylonian captivity and these stories were oral stories passed down and written down as a myth.

What do you say to them?

I would say that every Israeli high school graduate of the regular state education system can give you a detailed in depth comparative analysis of the Babylonian creation story (Enuma Elish) and the creation story of Genesis [by the way I believe this explains your confusing time line to the Babylonian captivity - traditionally we’re talking about 1250 b.c.e - academically about 900 b.c.e. but well before the Jewish Babylonian captivity]. I won’t begin a discussion on the concept of “Torah” but would ask you to step away for a second from Christian dogmatism and to try and picture the concepts underlying an intellectual religion such as Judaism. The Jewish creation story by using the basic outline of the Enuma Elish comes to not only challenge all other nations (the God of Israel is the One and only God) but to emphasize the inherent differences between Jewish ethical monotheism and pagan and quasi pagan religions. In the Jewish creation, for the first time , we do not have a description of the creation of the god, nor do we have equal or almost equal opposing forces. We have the One Eternal God.

However, we must ask ourselves, since the story of Genesis is the story of the birth of the Jewish people, the nation of Israel, why begin the story with creation and not with Abraham? Part of that answer is pertinent to our discussion. In the Jewish creation story God created all things. Everything owes its existence to God. Therefore, when God promised the Land of Israel eternally to the Jewish people, it was His and His alone to give.

 

[jerome_ky]

jerome_ky: I provided the link to one study that is over 10 years old. The fact that you refused to look into the other articles (referenced in the first link I posted) is not my fault. At the time of the study you read it was one of the few of its kind, but there have been many since.

I didn’t say I refused to look into other articles. I only said I couldn’t get the website to respond.

Also, you left out a key point right after the last portion you quoted:

Incidentally, these are the two groups that frequently claim Jewish descent (at least the Christian ones do; Syriacs, in fact, still continue the use of Aramaic, the actual language of the ancient Jews), and they are the ones who fall into the Jewish genetic map. If Palestinians were Arabs, they would match Arabians (Sar in the diagram, Fig. 2). The other Middle Eastern populations all fall outside the “Jewish spread” of genetic populations.

And yes, the Jews who left the land of Israel did remain largely homogenous. That is why they mostly genetically match the people who stayed in Israel, namely the Palestinians. The fact that Jews didn’t intermarry extensively with their diaspora neighbors actually strengthens the argument that Palestinians are the descendents of Jews, since they match the relatively pure Jewish profile, and don’t match that of Arabs.

Note that I never said that modern Jews weren’t descendents of Israel; I said that Palestinians are ALSO descendents of Israel. To make a claim of the land versus the Palestinians, based on birthright, makes absolutely no sense. It would be like the Ashkenazim making the claim for Israel against the Sephardim. The Palestinians have equal claim to the same land, based on the promise to their forefathers.

Peace and God bless!

You’re trying to make this article into something it is not. It is highlighting that the Jews are from the region that was known as Palestine. That is a remarkable fact, because of the diaspora. Of course the people who stayed there also come from the region. That is not a remarkable fact. They are the control group to show where the Jews come from. If the Jews all traced their ancestry to Scandinavia, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

The Jews of the diaspora retained their religion, their culture and their distinctive genetics, in spite of being spread out and in spite of pressure to convert. If that people were the Palestinians, then the Palestinians would be Jewish by the same percentage. Find me one Palestinian who claims to be Jewish!

St. Paul highlights that Ishmael was the son of the bondwoman. He had no place with the son of promise, Isaac. The promise then went to Jacob, not Esau, his blood brother. So of course there are genetic similarities, but if that were the whole issue then what would we need a Bible for?

Judaism is a religion, a culture, and as Theodor Herzl put it, a nation. That is the whole purpose for Zionism. When Alfred Dreyfus was put in front of a sham trial and the public display of anti-semitism was so flagrant, Jews in Europe realized that no matter how much they tried to be sons of a particular nation, the nation would only think of them as aliens. This is what drove Zionism. Following this, Jews began buying up land in Ottoman Palestine from the Ottoman landlords. Once they started turning the desolate land into something liveable, the natives came back because they could find work. Read what Mark Twain wrote in the 19th century about the Holy Land, that they could travel mile after mile and not see a soul, because it was not a fruitful land until the Jews returned. That is God’s promise, please see the Bible verses I’ve already referenced. Or please see any Bible verses, how about the 100’s in the Old Testament that mention Jerusalem vs.0 in the Qur’an?

 

[Ghosty]

You’re trying to make this article into something it is not. It is highlighting that the Jews are from the region that was known as Palestine. That is a remarkable fact, because of the diaspora. Of course the people who stayed there also come from the region. That is not a remarkable fact. They are the control group to show where the Jews come from. If the Jews all traced their ancestry to Scandinavia, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

Maybe you don’t understand how genetics work, I’m not sure. People from a region only share the same genes if they are from the same family. Other people from the region, namely Arabs and Lebanese, don’t share the same genetic traits as Jews and Palestinians. Yes, the Jews have maintained a purity in the diaspora, but this purity points directly to them being of the same blood as the Palestinians, and the Palestinians claim descent from Israel.

The fact that the Jews have maintained genetic homogeneity, and their genes match the Palestinians, is evidence for the Palestinian claim that they are in fact of “Hebrew” blood.

St. Paul highlights that Ishmael was the son of the bondwoman. He had no place with the son of promise, Isaac. The promise then went to Jacob, not Esau, his blood brother. So of course there are genetic similarities, but if that were the whole issue then what would we need a Bible for?

The Arabs are the descendants of Ishmael, and they don’t match the genetics of the Jews and Palestinians. The Palestinians and the Jews overlap in genetic markers, while the Arabs are outliers in the diagram I posted previously. Genetically speaking, the Jews and Palestinians are one family and one population.

Judaism is a religion, a culture, and as Theodor Herzl put it, a nation. That is the whole purpose for Zionism. When Alfred Dreyfus was put in front of a sham trial and the public display of anti-semitism was so flagrant, Jews in Europe realized that no matter how much they tried to be sons of a particular nation, the nation would only think of them as aliens. This is what drove Zionism. Following this, Jews began buying up land in Ottoman Palestine from the Ottoman landlords. Once they started turning the desolate land into something liveable, the natives came back because they could find work. Read what Mark Twain wrote in the 19th century about the Holy Land, that they could travel mile after mile and not see a soul, because it was not a fruitful land until the Jews returned. That is God’s promise, please see the Bible verses I’ve already referenced. Or please see any Bible verses, how about the 100’s in the Old Testament that mention Jerusalem vs.0 in the Qur’an?

You’re just spouting the “land without a people for a people without a land” nonsense; the people were thinly spread (as they were everywhere in the region), but they weren’t absent from the land. I recommend reading the works of Fr. Elias Chacour about the native Palestinians who had been there for thousands of years.

Peace and God bless!

 

[jerome_ky]

You’re just spouting the “land without a people for a people without a land” nonsense; the people were thinly spread (as they were everywhere in the region), but they weren’t absent from the land. I recommend reading the works of Fr. Elias Chacour about the native Palestinians who had been there for thousands of years.

Peace and God bless!

I’m not “spouting” about anything. I am providing quotes from the Bible, and I was quoting Theodor Herzl, an important figure in Zionism, to get his definition of what defines the Jews.

You are also very much misunderstanding the study you have linked to. The study does not point to the time of the dispersion 2000 years ago. Take a look at Figure 1 (pnas.org/content/97/12/6769/F1.large.jpg) and then look at the y axis. It is in 10^3 years. 10 to the 3rd power is 1000 years. The significant haplotypes, according to the article, are Med and YAP 4s. They both go back approximately 20 * 1000 = 20,000 years. That’s before Abraham. That’s how far back the Jews and the Palestinians converge. Jacob and Esau would have been in this same gene pool, so would Isaac and Ishmael.

“In summary, the combined results suggest that a major portion of NRY biallelic diversity present in most of the contemporary Jewish communities surveyed here traces to a common Middle Eastern source population several thousand years ago.”

That’s “several thousand” not “two thousand.” Did you know all this or have you been led astray by the interpretations of others? I’m not here to say “nyah, nyah” or slam you. I had to read it carefully, too. But if you are a reasonable person, then tell me if it doesn’t sway you a little from your stance that Palestinians of today are necessarily the same as the Jews of today based on genetics studies.

Further statements from the article:

“The second most frequent Jewish haplotype, YAP+ haplotype 4, was common in Middle Eastern and southern European populations and reached its highest frequency in North Africa. The discovery of its precursor (YAP+ haplotype 4L) in seven Ethiopian males supports the hypothesis that the YAP+ haplotype 4S originated on a YAP+ 4L chromosome in Ethiopia (≈20,000 years ago)…”

“However, the existing mtDNA data do suggest that contemporary Jewish populations are composed of a diverse set of maternal lineages that diverged** ≥10,000 years ago** (55).”

 

[Ghosty]

I’m not “spouting” about anything. I am providing quotes from the Bible, and I was quoting Theodor Herzl, an important figure in Zionism, to get his definition of what defines the Jews.

When you say “Once they started turning the desolate land into something liveable, the natives came back because they could find work. Read what Mark Twain wrote in the 19th century about the Holy Land, that they could travel mile after mile and not see a soul, because it was not a fruitful land until the Jews returned,” you are spouting non-sense. I wasn’t referring to Theodor Herzl’s definition of the Jewish people.

You are also very much misunderstanding the study you have linked to. The study does not point to the time of the dispersion 2000 years ago. Take a look at Figure 1 (pnas.org/content/97/12/6769/F1.large.jpg) and then look at the y axis. It is in 10^3 years. 10 to the 3rd power is 1000 years. The significant haplotypes, according to the article, are Med and YAP 4s. They both go back approximately 20 * 1000 = 20,000 years. That’s before Abraham. That’s how far back the Jews and the Palestinians converge. Jacob and Esau would have been in this same gene pool, so would Isaac and Ishmael.

The two genes in question come up 20,000 years ago, but both Jews and Palestinians have the same percentage of both in combination, while other groups have one or the other. This is why they are grouped together in Fig. 2 which I posted previously. You seem to be confusing the divergence between Med and YAP with the divergence between Palestninians and Jews, which is not at all the way the study presents it.

“In summary, the combined results suggest that a major portion of NRY biallelic diversity present in most of the contemporary Jewish communities surveyed here traces to a common Middle Eastern source population several thousand years ago.”

This refers to the general divergence between Jews and other Middle Eastern populations. The fact remains that Palestinians and Syrians in particular fall within the Jewish genetic spread, while the other Middle Eastern groups referred to in this study fall outside.

That’s “several thousand” not “two thousand.” Did you know all this or have you been led astray by the interpretations of others? I’m not here to say “nyah, nyah” or slam you. I had to read it carefully, too. But if you are a reasonable person, then tell me if it doesn’t sway you a little from your stance that Palestinians of today are necessarily the same as the Jews of today based on genetics studies.

The “several thousand” refers to the general survey of Middle Eastern populations, not Palestinians in particular. Again, refer to the specific surveys of Palestinians and you’ll find that they don’t diverge at all from the Jewish population, whereas Arabs and Egyptians and Druze do. The fact that Palestinians fall right in the middle of Jewish populations in terms of genetic variation is actually quite telling.

Further statements from the article:

“The second most frequent Jewish haplotype, YAP+ haplotype 4, was common in Middle Eastern and southern European populations and reached its highest frequency in North Africa. The discovery of its precursor (YAP+ haplotype 4L) in seven Ethiopian males supports the hypothesis that the YAP+ haplotype 4S originated on a YAP+ 4L chromosome in Ethiopia (≈20,000 years ago)…”

“However, the existing mtDNA data do suggest that contemporary Jewish populations are composed of a diverse set of maternal lineages that diverged** ≥10,000 years ago** (55).”

Again, this is the divergence of specific genes, not the divergence of populations possessing these genes. The study was about the percentage of the population that possessed the combination of genes under examination, and it found that Palestinians and Jews were statistically identical in this, while other groups diverged more or less.

Peace and God bless!