The DOOM of Israel??? A somewhat more serious discussion.

Great Debates
1

Long ago, there was a country called Eretz-Yisrael–that is, the land of Israel. It splintered into the smaller states of Samaria and Judah, got conquered several times, and generally suffered the abuse of history.

Somewhere along the way, the Jewish Diaspora developed. (I plan to come back and get into the whys & wherefores later, ok?) These were people whose ethnic/national identity remained “Jewish” no matter where they lived. This identity was maintained through the efforts of their religion, which was identified with their race.

OK, fine. Nationality doesn’t have to be identified with or determined by a territory. Look at the Gypsies for the chief example.

But the Jewish Diaspora existed with a theoretical tie to the land of Judah (or by theoretical extension, Israel) and its existence as a nation-state. For a long time, the two co-existed. Judah was the homeland, and Jerusalem the capital, holding the singular holy Temple of the Jewish people; and Jews elsewhere in the world looked to it as their racial home, paid taxes to it, and so forth.

Then Titus Caesar leveled Jerusalem. A new city was built on the site, and no Jew was permitted in it for a long time. As the centuries passed, the city would once again become known as Jerusalem. But it did not return to Jewish control, and the Temple was never rebuilt.

Judah as a nation-state was finished. Samaria was still there, of course, but Jews didn’t consider Samaritans real Israelites–because they weren’t Jews, after all. :rolleyes: So from the Jewish p.o.v., Eretz-Yisrael was (temporarily, of course) defunct. The people of Israel, however, were still there in the Diaspora. Horribly dispossessed now, having lost their Temple, without which their religion was incomplete.

OK. One aside. The Mosaic law (Exodus-Leviticus-Deuteronomy) doesn’t say the Temple has to be any particular place. (If someone had decided to take a strict “fundamentalist” view of the Torah, they could have largely rebuilt the Temple–anywhere. Of course, the Ark of the Covenant had been spirited away centuries before, so how this Temple would be legitimized, I’m not sure.) But Jewish tradition was tied to Jerusalem, the City of David & Solomon, and expected the Temple to be in its accustomed place there.

So, the now dispossessed Jews went forth, maintaining their ethnic identity, enough of them staying insular & endogamous to survive as an ethnic group (eventually multiple ethnic groups) while they scattered through practically every country in the civilized world. The Jews came to be everywhere. But nowhere was their own. And they would say to each other, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

And they had problems. Some rulers & some nations didn’t look to kindly on this group living on “their land” with its own very strong identity and religion. Rulers like to have people in their country that are loyal to them. Jews got their share of ethnic persecution. There’s even a special word, “pogrom”, for violent harassment & attempts to remove Jews in Eastern Europe.

And 1,850 years passed. All this time, the land that once was Israel was populated, fought over, having history happen in it. Sooner or later, it became known as Palestine. The Samaritans, though few, were apparently still there.

And then some not-particularly-religious Jews got this idea that a nation should have a nation-state and some territory to go with it, and tapped into that “Next year in Jerusalem” sentiment, and started trying to move back to Eretz-Yisrael (now known as Palestine)–back to the ancient homeland.

Eventually, the Jews took over. The new State of Israel would be a homeland for all Jews, and those persecuted for being Jews would have a homeland to offer them refuge. Of course, Palestine is not a very large area, it was already populated, and there were a lot of Jews worldwide.

The previous Palestinian population freaked. Many of them, thinking this would be temporary, fled to await the removal of the invading Jews, rather than accept citizenship in the new Jewish state.

And now they, like the Jews before them, are crying out for the political and social restoration of this land to “their” people.

Troubles ensue.

That’s where we are. Where is this going? Discuss.

(OK, Sua, I've started my own thread. Happy? Really, I'd had an idea for a thread like this earlier today, so Bunny's goofy proposal caught my eye.)
2

This is probably unnecessary for many, but a list of genetive forms used might help a few people:

Ancient Israel had Israelites.
Modern Israel has Israelis.
Judah (a.k.a. Judaea) was the homeland of the Jews, and the adjective form is Jewish.
Samaria was the home of the Samaritans.

Those are kind of irregular forms, aren’t they?

3

First of all, I don’t know if “invasion” is the right word to use for the new Israel; IIRC (someone will correct me if I’m wrong) it was established officially after WWII to be the Jewish homeland. I’m not sure how many Jews were already living there, but I don’t think it was a significant number. The Jews who did relocate to Israel were sympathetic to the Palestinians already there. They gave them some territory (but did not recognize a Palestinian state) and even helped arm their police force.

(all this history is from a very fuzzy memory, so I don’t know if my conclusions are really all that valid.)

The Palestinians right now do not have an army of any real capability. Israel has historically been tolerant of them; that is, very rarely does Israel attack a Palestinian target. The Palastinians have, most of the time, started all the armed conflicts with Israel, and generally Israel does a lot of damage in defense and retalliation.

I believe that Muslims living in Israel have the same official rights as the Jews, though there is racial prejudice and tension. I think it’s safe to say that this tension is probably greater than that between blacks and whites in the US right now.

Without the involvment of established Arab states, the Palestinians could not win in a war against Israel. (And the US would side with Israel if it got bad.) Whenever you have a group of people who have a political cause against an opponent whom they cannot possibly beat, they result to demoralizing skirmished and terrorism. This seems to be Arafat’s forte.

The Jews, in my opinion, will not be sufficiently demoralized by this to recognize a Palestinian state. However, I think that if the Palestinians get a leader more prone to deplomacy instead of terrorism, within maybe 150 years Israel (and maybe surrounding nations) will cede a little bit of land for an official Palestine. One MAJOR problem is that both the Jews and the Muslims have holy sites within Israel; and I predict that fighting over these (hopefully diplomatically instead of violently) will continue indefinately.

4

Interesting survey, but you’ve made a few mistakes.

  1. The kingdom of Israel was indeed devided into two separate realms, Judea in the south, and Israel (including the “Samaria” geographical region), after the death of Solomon. A few hundred years later, Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians and its inhabitants exiled and lost to history (the “Ten Lost Tribes”); some time after that, the kingdom of Judah was conquered by Babylon (Iraq) and the majority of the population was exiled to mesopotamia.

After the Babylonians were conquerd by the Persians, the Jews were pemitted to return to Judea and rebuild their cities, as well as the Temple (which, BTW, can only be built in Jerusalem; I don’t know where you got the idea that it could be otherwise). I don’t know exact numbers, but I believe that over half of the Jews chose to return to Judea. After the Greeks conquered Persia, they Jews enjoyed relative freedom and independence, until the point where the Greeks (actually hellenized Syrians) tried to enforce the worship of Zeus and the adoption of GHellenic customs. The Jews rebelled, and founded an independant state, which stayed independant for some two hundred years until Rome decided to reiforce its control of the routes to Egypt and the Orient. After a number of extremely violent rebellions, the Temple was destroyed, Jerusalem was razed, and most of the Jews were exiled to Messopotamia, Egypt and southern Europe.

  1. When the Assyrians and Babylonians exiled the Israelites, other peoples were brought in to replace them - population movements were considered an effective means of ruling a conquered populace. These people, brought from who knows where, adopted many Jewish customs and beliefs, but were never considerd Jewish by the “original” Jews, nor did they think of themselves as being Israelites. Remember, at the time, most gods and beliefs were highly localised, and it was quite common for exiles to worship the gods of whatever land they found themselves in. In fact, that’s what set the Jews apart from from other nations - they believed in what they believed, regardless of location or whoever was in power. Anyway, these exile brought in to Israel became known as “Samaritans” (“Shomronim”)

The Samaritans remained a minority in Israel, and I believe there were quite a few left after the Romans exiled the Jews. Most of them have died outm although there is a small community of several hundred still living in the south of the country.

As for the Palestinians, they are primarily of Syrian origin (Palestine was known until the last century as “Southern Syria”), as well as descendants of the original peoples of the region - I can’t tell you at what point the Canaanite, Jebusites and Edomites became merged into the “Arab” nation, but I guess they did; people don’t just disappear - Beduins, Egyptians, and probably some Samaritans and Jews. History, as is its wont, has generally ignored them, and labelled them “locals”. It was not until the 20th century did they start to think of themselves as an indepenadant nationality.

More later…

5

From the perspective of Traditional Orthodox Judaism, the above statement is false. The only acceptable location for the Holy Temple is on the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem.

6

Have just seen a BBC story about a Palestinian who left his home in what is now Israel 50 years ago when the state was being created. The film crew took him back to where he lived, but within an hour the welcome from Israeli locals turned into suspicion and hostility. The police were called. The old man and the film crew were held for 3 hours before release.

The old man said at the episode’s beginning – “We can share the land”. By the end, on the drive home after detention, he was talking about, “Just wait until we get our land back.”

The cycle continues.

All those nationalists from the end of the 19th century have a lot to answer for – the Zionist organisations, the anti-semitic tide that crested with Nazi Germany, and the Pan-Arabic movements, egged on by colonial powers during world wars.

I don’t agree with “the doom of Israel”. Frankly, I don’t see an end to this mega-feud – which saddens me to tears.

7

That’s two people who’ve made this correction. I’m not challenging its accuracy. But is there a Scriptural, basis for this? I’d just be interested in knowing; I have no emotional investment in the issue.

Although I would like to point out that the only sanctified site which can exist lies within the human heart. Anyone who thinks the Temple Mount is worth taking a life for is guilty of blasphemy.

8

Israel is a colony, plain and simple. It’s a shame that it was created in the first place; Great Britain should have been more mindful of the consequences of this ill-guided decision. Sure, it’s true that Jews have been thrown out of many nations where they’ve lived, and persecuted to some degree or another in all of them, but how does that justify kicking people out of another country to move the Jews in?

It doesn’t. Israel was founded on hypocrisy. Because Jews were kicked off their land 1900 years ago, they can come in and kick someone else off their land. The Palestinians had been there for centuries! How can we ethically say they have no right to stay there?

That said, we cannot throw the Israelis out of Israel. Israel exists, and there’s nothing we can ethically do about that. That’s the problem with colonization: if you’re going to take someone’s land away from them, these people are going to want it back. In colonial cases like North America and Australia, the colonizing race sufficiently outnumbered the colonized, so their voices were quashed. Israel, however, is different. Besides the Palestinians, all Arabs view its existance as a threat, as an affront to their sovereignties; and perhaps out of regional loyalty (or maybe religious) the Iranians feel the same way. And they have a point. With every surrounding nation feeling that Israel has no right to exist, plus the exiled Palestinians and their descendents feeling that Israel has no right to exist, Israel is in trouble. Most nations on the face of the earth feel that Israel is excessive in its actions, in its own colonization (i.e., sending settlers into Palestinian lands), and in its human rights abuses. The only nation that overwhelmingly feels that Israel is in the right is—lucky for them—the United States. That’s a pretty big trump card, and that’s probably the reason that Israel gets away with its excesses.

I don’t mean to defend Palestinian terrorism, but I have to admit that the Palestinians have a point. However, Israel now exists, and that’s a sticky problem which we’ve got to work out. I would suggest that a state of Palestine be created, if only to allay Palestinian complaints somewhat. The United States should not discourage such a declaration, but encourage it, which would let the Palestinians have their land and the Israelis have theirs. Is this fair? No, but there is no fair solution to this mess that Britain created and that the United States sustained.

It’s worth noting that history has a sickening way of working such problems out. Israel was colonized in the twelfth century, some might be aware, by Europeans intent on reclaiming the holy land. These were the Crusades, which were somewhat successful in their political aims, as far as taking the holy land and making it Catholic. (The reunification of the Eastern and Western Churches never came to pass, but that’s another story.) The Crusaders actually held the holy land for over a century, until they were driven out by the Turks, who let the Arabs and the Jews and the Christians live in peace in Palestine, only requiring them to pay taxes to the Turkish government. I’d say we could take a page from the Turks, and allow everyone to live in the region as equals. The world’s governments ought to be harder on both parties, coming down on terrorism when practised by Israelis and Palestinians. The state of Palestine should be declared and allowed to exist, and this decision should have the backing of the West, as well as of the Arab world (which it certainly would). Likewise, Israel should be allowed to continue to exist, though not to expand, and every attempt it makes to expand should be checked by the West. It’s our mess; we should clean it up.

Will this work as a long-term solution? Who knows? The only long-term solution that ever works is genocide, and I’d think that humanity should know better than that by now.

9

Well, just as a nitpick, there are Arabs living in Israel, itself…about 15% of the population is Arab(from the World Almanac), and those Arabs who live in Israel, who are citizens of Israel, have, theoretically, equal rights…They pay taxes, they vote, they are represented in the Knesset (with their own political party, in fact…the Arab List), etc. Is there discrimination against them? Sure, and I’m not saying that’s right, but sadly, a lot of countries discriminate against some members of their citizenry, and, in Israel, there is progress being made. On the other hand, there are Palestinians, who do not live in Israel, who are not citizens, and who don’t have the rights of citizens. 50 years ago, they, and their parents or grandparents had a choice, which was the same choice that every Arab in Israel had to make. When the nations around Israel, nations like Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, planned to destroy Israel, they said to the Arabs living there, “If you stay, we will destroy you too. Leave, and come here, and then, when we kill everyone who is living there, the land will become yours again, to set up your own country.” A lot stayed, but some went. They fled to the area around Gaza in Egypt, to the west bank of the Jordan river in Jordan, waiting for the victorious Arab armies to give them their land back, purified. Unfortunately for them, the Arab armies were defeated, and they couldn’t, or wouldn’t go back to Israel. Unfortunately for Jordan and Egypt, they found themselves with a lot of refugees that they didn’t know what to do with. The refugees demanded autonomy for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but any demands like that were crushed by the two governments. They then began terrorism against the two states. In Jordan, Yassar Arafat attempted to lead a coup against King Hussain, but it failed. After the Six Day war, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, what to do with the refugees became Israel’s problem, and Jordan and Egypt, who were so adamently opposed to anything approaching autonomy for the Palestinians under their rule, became really strong advocates of it, as long as they weren’t the ones granting the autonomy. I just point all this out, because it’s easy to oversimplify, to look for easy heroes and villians, and I want to make sure people don’t do that. Every side involved in this has made some serious mistates, and every side has suffered.

10

This is largely a myth. Most Palestinians who fled did so due to threats from the Israelis, not because of threats from other Arab countries, or by free choice. This issue was addressed extensively and definitively in an excellent documentary series on the history of Israel last year on Israeli TV. I will try to track down a cite on the internet. (Can’t remember the name of the series - saw it off of videotape at a friend’s house.)

Sua

11

One more minor nitpick,

The Temple does not need the Ark to be “legitimized.” The Second Temple didn’t have the Ark in it at all for all of it’s 420 years of existence, and no one doubted it’s legitimacy…

Zev Steinhardt

12

Chance:

You want to talk about hypocracy? In 1947 the U.N. General assembly decided, by a majority of votes, to divide Palestine into two nations, Arab and Jewish. The Jewish leadreship accepted the resolution, albeit reluctantly; the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected it unanimously, preferring to fight for the sole ownership of the land. They fought hard, they fought bravely, and they lost. They decided that Palestine was only big enough for one nation, and were proven right.

However - and here’s the hypocracy - after they lost, they demanded that Israel obey the terms of the U.N. resolution. And whined when they didn’t.

Sorry, bud, but nobody likes a sore loser.If you’re side had won, you would have kicked us all out in a New York Minute. Once you start shooting, all bets are off.

I’m not about to go in to what I think of what other nations think of Israel - nations that don’t like the fact that Israel opposed the U.S.S.R; nations that don’t want to offend the OPEC members; and nations that aren’t really fond of anything Jews do. That would be petty of me.

Israeli occupation of the Territories was indeed horrible for the Palestinians, and many mistakes were made. Still, compared to other conquerers, I don’t think the Palestinians had it that bad. Just look at the British in Ireland, the French in Algeria, the U.S. in Vietnam (I’m sorry to say it, but far more Vietnamese civilians died at American hands than Palestinian by Israelis), or Russia, China and Japan just about anywhere. Hell, they could have been conquered by their Iraqi brethren and been bombed with mustard gas.

That’s typical Arab rhetoric. It ignores the fact that most Jews coming to Israel were poor refugees, with nowhere to go home to; that most of the immigration was legal, under British and Turkish law (if you have a problem with that, take it up with the Brits and Turks), and most lands settled by Jews were legally sold to them by their Arab owners; that over half of Israeli Jews originated in Muslem countries (mainly Morroco and Iraq) and not Europe; that Britain violently opposed the foundation of Israel, taking the Arab side more often than not; that Israel reached out for peace with all its neighbours, and was refused; that Israel, as a whole, has no interest in expansion, just in security, and if the Arabs truly intended to make peace, they’d get whatever they wanted…

… except, of course, for the destruction of Israel.

Chance, everybody, let’s go off the record for a moment. You talked a lot about “rights” and “ethics” in your post, so let me tell you a secret: it’s not about “rights” and “ethics”. “Rights” and “ethics” are what both sides hold in stock to sell to the tourists. The Mideast Conflict is about enlightened self interest. The Israelis’ highest priority is to look after Israelis, and the Palestinians’ is to look after the Palestinians.

Let me put it in different terms: I believe in “live and let live”, and I don’t believe the world is divided into victims and victimizers. But if someone put a gun to my head and made me choose - ehich is usually the case in real life - then I’d rather be the victimizer. The victim may get sympathy and moral high ground, but sympathy and moral high ground, along with $3.00, will get you a Tall Latte at Starbucks. I’d rather take home all the marbles.

That’s why we came to Israel, and that’s why we’re fighting for it. Because we want to survive. And that’s why we’re trying to make peace - not because it’s right, but because it’s smart. Peace is almost always good policy. If the Palestinians don’t realize that, and insist of fighting wars they can’t win, then they’re idiots.

We’re not a cruel people. We’ll act justly, and treat the Arabs with friendship and kindness, so long as it doesn’t put our country in danger. Becaues, like a good lawyer, we’re not looking for the best deal for everybody, we’re looking for the best deal for us.

13

Sorry. I was going through that survey pretty fast, and then I threw in that bit about the Temple, and the bit about the Ark wasn’t really explained. So hang on for what probably won’t be the last installment of “The Ark Digression!”

Of course Zev is right. The Second and Third Temples were considered legitimate, and never held the Ark of the Covenant. They were intentional copies of the First Temple (built by David & Solomon), and set on the same hill. They were legitimized in people’s minds by both function and location. In time, the idea developed in Jewish thought that the Temple had to be on that site.

But the written Mosaic Law, as I said earlier, specified a movable shrine, which in English is called the Tabernacle. This allowed the shrine to be removed, and the sacred rites to continue, even if the city where it was located were overrun (and, say, leveled by a Roman Imperator, eh?). Not a bad idea.

Even so, this shrine was apparently singular. One unique thing about it was the Ark of the Covenant, housed in its Sanctum Sanctorum (Holy of Holies, Most Holy Place). When the First Temple was built, it replaced the Tabernacle; the various artifacts were moved to it, and the Ark sat in one place…
until somebody removed it, we’re not sure who or when. By the time of the Babylonian Captivity, the Ark was already gone. The Temple as a building replaced the Ark in the minds of the Jewish people as holding the covenant between Israel and JHVH.

I don’t contest, sdimbert, that “from the perspective of Traditional Orthodox Judaism. . . the only acceptable location for the Holy Temple is on the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem.” I do contest that this viewpoint derived from the Law of Moses, written when Jerusalem wasn’t even an Israelite city. The Jewish perspective you refer to is fixated on the city of Jerusalem, conquered by King David and made his capital, and on the Temple Mount, where his son Solomon built the First Temple–or the first Temple that the Jews could claim rooted JHVH in one place–their city, natch.

Various additions to Moses’s religion made by later generations of Jews seem to intend to aggrandize the Jews above other Hebrew/Israel-derived tribes, or to exalt the memory of King David’s accomplishments. This is why I referred to a hypothetical “fundamentalist” view of the Torah. If a hypothetical Levite of the priestly caste had decided to throw out these specifically Jewish doctrines, this Levite might, in theory, have attempted to reëstablish the Tabernacle cult outside of Jerusalem.

Of course, the Jerusalem power structure back in the days when a Temple still stood there would decry any other Temple/Tabernacle as false. But now there is no Temple in Jerusalem, and the rabbinical traditions of the Jewish Diaspora decry having the Temple/Tabernacle in any other place as insufficient. This long ago ceased to be primarily about Israel or the Law of Moses–it’s about the land and people of David.

What I said in the OP was the glimmer of a thought, more fully developed here:
If some Jews still had the Ark of the Covenant–or, if that were truly lost, any of the old Temple artifacts–they could rebuild the Tabernacle anywhere, & so long as it housed those ancient objects, it could be accepted because of them. However, since none of the artifacts of the old Temple(s) remain, there is no Jewish way (I don’t know if there is a non-Jewish, as in Samaritan, way) to claim that any “restored” Tabernacle is the singular, legitimate ONE Tabernacle. But building a Temple on the Temple Mount is accepted as a clear “legitimization.”

Conveniently for those who don’t want incredible amounts of blood sacrifice in the middle of modern Jerusalem (and if we’re going to play catch-up for 2000 years, there are gonna be some very well-fed priests :D), modern Israeli law was written to prohibit destroying the Muslim mosque now on the old Temple Mount. Perhaps the bit about the Temple having to be in that one place is now a convenient excuse not to revive the Temple cult, Sadducees, etc.

14

OK, **foolsguinea **, just to recap, to make sure I understand you properly:

You are stating that there is no Mosaic basis for a permenant Temple; that the only legitimate “Temple” is the portable Tabernacle, and that the idea of a permenant Temple arose later in Judaism. If that’s not your position, please correct me.

Now then, of course in the Torah only a portable Tabernacle is mentioned. The Jewish people at that time were living as wanderers. They had no permenant structures. They lived in tents.

However, if you look at Dueteronomy 12, you’ll see that you are mistaken. Verse 5-7 specify that God will choose a place to bring sacrifices. Verses 11-12 repeat this. Verses 13-14 then gives a prohibition against offering sacrifices anywhere other than the place that will be designated.

Did Moses come out specifically and say “Jerusalem?” No, of course not. The place had not yet been chosen. But once it was, in David’s day, that became the only place to offer sacrifices.

Zev Steinhardt

15

Oh, yes, thank you to everyone who wrote additional information. I think this thread will see debate, in the “disagree with each other at length” sense, but I want the background facts to be there so we understand what we’re debating.

:pWhich is one nice thing about saying “Discuss,” instead of something like, “Prove me wrong, feebs!”:stuck_out_tongue:

foolsguinea, Patron Swaint of Chee-tos, the cheese that goes crunch.

16

I didn’t say–at least, I didn’t mean to say–that only a portable Tabernacle was legitimate. I said it was a good idea, and I said that the Divine Presence cannot be geographically pegged in Jerusalem by the Mosaic Torah. I also said that the Tabernacle was unique. I’m sorry if I gave the impression that it was continually mobile once Canaan was conquered. It stayed in Shiloh for a long time (Joshua 18:1, I Samuel 1).

I admit, I’m not that familiar with Deuteronomy. So I went and read Deuteronomy 12. I see that text applies to the pre-Davidic period as well. Verse 10: “But when you go over the Jordan, and live in the land which the LORD your God gives you to inherit…” (Revised Standard Version, by the way–I’m at the library right now & grabbed the first Bible I found.)

So there was a regular place where the Tabernacle stayed, and where people could find it. Before David, that was Shiloh. David moved it to Jerusalem.

I don’t see anything in this chapter that says the following: “A king will come and move the place of the LORD’s habitation. And he will set the place on a hill, from which it will never be moved…” Do you see anything like that? Is there something like that in the “oral Torah”?

Deuteronomy 12 says that G-d “will choose” a place. Is it unthinkable that this active, personal deity could also choose to leave a place? So long as the Tabernacle was mobile, G-d could tell the priests to pick up stakes and leave if things got dangerous, or if the locals got uppity, thinking of the Tabernacle (and by extension, G-d) as belonging to them. Such an action seems in character to me; weren’t the prophets always going on about how the Jewish people were too proud, took G-d for granted, and only came back to him and his laws when times were bad?

foolsguinea, who changed the Tetragrammaton to “G-d” to stop Zev’s teeth from being on edge, even though the internal hyphen will probably split the word between two lines.

17

**
OK. Here we go. The Tabernacle was in the wilderness for 40 years. It was then in Gilgal for 14 years. After that, a semi-permenant structure (with stone walls, and curtains for roofs) was set up at Shiloh. It was there for 369 years. After that, the Tabernacle was in Nov and Giveon for 57 years before the Temple was built in Jerusalem (got all that? They’ll be a test later… :slight_smile: ).

The verse (12:9) speaks of a menuchah (resting place) and a nachalah (inheritence). Clearly, a resting place is not as permenant as a resting place. The mishkan at Shiloh was referred to as this “resting place” and the Temple in Jerusalem as the “inheritence.”

**

Well, clearly two places are mentioned (“resting place” and “inheritence.”) In addition, it should be obvious that an inheritance is permenant (especially in light of the Jubilee laws, which returned a family’s anscestral land to the family every 50 years). As such, once the Temple was built in Jerusalem, it could no longer be built anywhere else.

I’m not sure what your point here is. God doesn’t “leave” a place just because a Temple is built somewhere. God is everywhere and just because there is a temple in one place doesn’t mean he not anywhere else.

Zev Steinhardt

18

A study of the prophets in the old testament attests to a common theme announcing a promise of the restoration of Israel, indeed both houses or kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Several of the prophets suggesting the eventual restoration, actually wrote prior to the first Assyrian exile of 721BCE involving the the northern kingdom or House of Israel. It is commomly believed that the Assyrians removed most of the population to parts unknown and replaced them with several different ethnic groups who according to the customs of the middle east adopted the religion of the area, but were reluctant to give up some of their previous religious practices and were therefore despised by Jews racially and religiously.They are the Samaritans. The Jews who were from the House of Judah, experienced their own exile 80 years later at the hands of Babylon but most returned later. It wasn’t until after Christ that the final diaspora of Jacob’s descendants was made complete.

Today there is no question as to who the Jews are. The are descended from three of the tribes of “greater” Israel. But what about the rest, commonly referred to as the lost ten tribes of the northern kingdom exiled to Assyria. There is much speculation and a considerable body of Christians believe that they are the germanic tribes who first appeared in history 700 years after the Assyrian exile.

I suggest that it just may be that the present day Palestinians are descended from the lost ten tribes.They are not the Samaritans who now number about 500. I have tried to research the origins of these people, and since I can not unearth any ethnic connection to annother group,I see no reason why this possibility cannot be researched.

Some points of similarity between Palestinians and Jews are as follows:

  1. They look similar
  2. Both their people have distinguished themselves in the societies of their respective diaspora in the arts,science and business.

I have a vague recollection of a genetic study between Jews and Palestinians suggesting a similarity. However I have also heard of genetic studies suggesting genetic similarity between man and chimp.Now wouldn’t it be kind of neat if a thorough genetic study were conducted proving a link back 3500 years or thereabouts? Wouldn’t that change the whole dynamic in the region. I would forsee Israel, by and large a secular but ethnic nation more energized than ever to seek accomodation, but would Palestine have to ally with Islam regardless of ethnical considerations? Oh, this is all probably idle speculation.

19

Strange. Where did my post go?