Jesus wasn’t born yet. And it’s spelled “Israel,” not “Isreal.”
Jews are called so because they are purportedly descendants of the Tribe of Judah (and Benjamin); the other 10 tribes of Israel, that is, of the Northern Kingdom, having been lost to history after the Assyrians deported them (probably to somewhere in Syria, where they were gradually assimilated to the local population).
You are correct on both accounts. (I had forgotten)
“Greek”?! Surely you meant to say “Hebrew”. “Goy” (pl. “goyim”) is a Hebrew word, not a Greek one. And in Biblical Hebrew it did not mean only “gentile” or “non-Jew”. The word “goy” literally means “nation” or “people”, and it is used many times in the Hebrew Bible to describe the nation of Israel (i.e., Jews) itself.
In later Biblical and post-Biblical Hebrew, “goy” did come to be used exclusively for non-Jewish peoples.
The reason they use the same word is because they’re speaking the same language. “Goy” meant “non-Jew” in late Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew in ancient times, and “goy” means “non-Jew” in modern Hebrew today.
And I don’t understand what you mean by “graffed”. Did you intend to write “grafted”?
Myself, I’m more interested in exactly what ‘fatness of the Olive Tree’ means. Did you mean phatness? 
(might as well have some fun, I think the question in the OP has been adaquately answered at this point…thanks all for helping expand my knowledge on this)
-XT
I think the stories about Eden were based on a real place. Early civilizations arose in the Tigris and Euphrates river vallies. But these people didn’t understand the long-term effects of what their society was doing. They over-farmed the croplands, deforested the woods, hunted down wild game and fish stock, ruined their water system with irrigation and canals, and raised their populations above the rate they could sustain. So eventually times got hard; people had to work much harder to support themselves, there were more droughts and crop failures, there were battles for decreasing resources, and everyone was generally poorer and hungrier. But they all had stories about the good old days when life was easy and the harvests were good and everyone got along. And no doubt some of these people ended up wandering around form their original homeland and told this type of story about the old hometown.
So, you don’t buy the idea that Eden is under like 200 feet of water in the Persian Gulf? The ground penetrating radar sat images were pretty compelling (they showed the 4 rivers converge basically in the Persian Gulf).
Was it really over farming that changed the environmental conditions in the ME region? Or was it climate shift? I always thought that the climate shifted, weather patterns changed, and Bob’s your uncle…desert. No?
-XT
It’s possible a natural climate shift was a factor. But I believe the evidence is that regardless of whether the climate shifted or remained stable, human activity was going to eventually cause a collapse. Nobody disputes the idea that if you keep planting the same crops in the same fields year after year you deplenish the fields.
Leviticus 25:1-8 shows they tumbled into this fairly early on, incidentally.
You’re just not hanging out with the right Christians! 
A little from column A, a little from column B.
The climate of the world has changed a lot in the last 10, 000 years, in the Middle East and everywhere else. However a change in climate alone does not produce a desert. Many areas of the world are far drier than the much of middle east, and they are not deserts.
What appears to have happened is that human populations expanded to agricultural carrying capacity based on a relatively benign climate. When the climate changed abruptly around 7, 000 years ago the popualtion couldn’t be supported on the same amount of land. People over exploited the land they did have leading to severe erosion and nutrient depletion. That in turn made cultivation impossible in many areas and the popuaton was forced to switch to herding. Grazing animals prompltly stripped the land of all vegetation, further exacerbating the existing problems. And hey presto before they knew it they had a desert.
The vast majority of the desert of the Middle East itself is not natural. Naturally areas with that amount of rainfall should be confier and Acacia savanna, with fairly good stands of grass. Ther are no trees and little grass today because of the actions of people. Paradoxically the small regions that are still savanna today are mostly within the hearts of ME deserts. That’s because the lack of surface water made it impossible for people to graze stock into those regions. In contrast any areas with surface water or wells, even in much higher rainfall areas, have been completely denuded of vegetation.
An even more pronounced loss was of the gallery forests. Naturally all the rivers of the middle east should be lined with rainforest and deciduous closed forests. Those forests existed for millions of years and are largely immune to climate change because they derive their water from river soak rather than precipitation. You only need to lok ata the gallery forests extending into the dry regions of Southern Africa, Australia and South America to see what the area should look like. BUt the middle east today has no forests. They have been completely extemrinated. And once again the cause was climate change coupled with overpopulation.
Blake: Can you back up that with cites? I’m having a hard time believing that there are “no forests” in a place like, say, Lebanon.
Little Nemo beat me to it but this is pretty much what I was going to say. I remember being in my ancient history class and reading about early civilizations in the fertile crescent and “Garden of Eden” was the first thing that popped into my mind. Not that there would be any way to prove this theory.
I have no opinions on where to find the angels with the swords
But just the history of the Oscars.
As in: he puts the halo in halotosis ?
This is oral history, right?
You had forgotten that Israel existed before Jesus, and that the word Jew came from the word Judah? Not to be too rude, but why should anyone pay any serious attention to your other religio-historical statements?
**
To the OP: **a constant in almost all cultures and times is the sense of a previous golden age, compared to which the present age is a degenerate shadow. Surely the myth of the garden of Eden is yet another variant on this? It doesn’t have to be based on any actual place.
I haven’t studied the Awful Scroll a
I haven’t studied the Awful Scroll as much as I used to. I wanted to witness a bit in hope that likeminded people might point out something I didn’t know.
BTW, I am a diagnosed Schizzophrenic, and am taking benzodiazapines.
It’s hard to stay focused, and I was eager to put my ten cents in.
:eek: That’s a name for the Bible?!
Ah, well, at least staying indoors and posting to message boards, you can’t get in any (real) trouble or cause any (real) harm. But until you get to the point where you can focus better, your witnessing will do no help to your cause.
Alas, the Identity folk have taken that idea & run with it. Remove the racist overtones & it’s pretty compelling for those of us who want to reconcile Genesis with what we know of human origins. Where I mainly differ from the Identity version- I don’t regard Eve’s temptation by the Serpent as being sexual, with Cain as their offspring, and I don’t see the mixing of the Adamites with the others as being forbidden. The only forbidden mixing would be if the others rejected the Adamic revelation of God. Also, another major problem became the oppression of the non-Adamic people by tyrranical Adamites, the Nephilim.
Btw, while I’m presenting this idea as if I’ve accepted it totally, I must clarify that it’s just a theory I’m playing with to see how seriously I can treat it.
Oh- and RE shoe1234’s mentioning that Jesus changed Jacob’s name to Israel. Some Christian theologians consider the being who wrestled with Jacob, and who is spoken of as Divine, as a manifestation of the Eternal Son, the pre-human Jesus.
It doesn’t HAVE to be, no. The question is…was it? Or could it have been? If Eden is where this show was indicating we will probably never know…as we will probably never know the extent of the proto-civilizations in places like the Black Sea before it was flooded out, or in other places that were above water at one time and are now hundreds of feed below sea level. They are gone…probably for all time. But…it’s interesting to speculate. And 4 rivers DID converge in a place in the ME that later became the cradle of civilization…and is now several hundred feet under water. And that flood DID happen while humans were in the region.
Does this add up to a slam dunk case for a physical Eden? Of course not. But it IS interesting, no?
-XT
To the racists, the essential difference is that Adamite (white) humans have immortal souls while non-Adamite (non-white and mixed) humans have not. (Whereas Jews are literally the spawn of Satan, i.e., of Eve and the Serpent.) Stripped of the racial categories, would that be your view?