Replies

I think The Point is this:
The Israeli Government IS NOT the “Israel” to whom God reiterates The Promises made to Abraham and Isaac.

Israel as a national corpus isn’t the “Israel” to whom God made The Promises.

The blood descendants of Jacob — firstly — are the “Israel” to whom The Promises devolve. [Yes, there’s more to this point, but one thing at a time, please.]

And — for THAT matter — Israel and Jew are badly conflated in the Christianese dictionary, so...

What, for instance, actually IS “a Jew”?
Not all Jews are Israelites — foreigners could be proselytes and adherents to The Covenant, and far and away MOST Israelites AREN’T Jews.

We don’t see the label “Jew” until after the Northern Kingdom (Israel) is taken away into Assyrian Captivity leaving only Judah and Benjamin. These two later are exiled to Babylon, where the label becomes prominent, and only about 42,000 ever returned.

The term “Jew” was never contemporaneously applied to the Israelites of any of the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom, and it is a Category Error to apply it retroactively.

No Jew was ever a slave in Egypt, though ancestors of some present-day Jews were.
No Jew wandered 40 years in the Wilderness with Moses.
No Jew fought alongside King David, or worked on — or in — the Temple Solomon built.

Israelites of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were called “Jews” in Babylon, and the term continued to apply to the 42,000 who returned to the land under Ezra and Nehemiah, and to their descendants, and persisted through Roman occupation into the present, but it has become carelessly used in modern Christian circles where inexactitude has sown considerable confusion.

So, when we speak of “supporting Israel”; what does that phrase even MEAN?

The idea of supporting the existence of a nation State encompassing the land that Jews historically regard as “Home” is sound; that land has been “in the family” for 3000 years, so it has relevant, present-day importance on that score. Still we should acknowledge that, when we talk about “Jews,” we’re pretty much only talking about the tribes of Judah and Benjamin; that there’s still an entire swathe of humanity living with the blood of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in their veins and they’ve NO idea.

There is archaeological evidence of descendants of Jacob appearing in the islands in the Aegean about 1500BC, and another wave of arrivals just ahead of the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom. Are you Greek? You might be of the House of Israel and not know it. Other sorts of records exhibit similar migrations of former Israelite tribal peoples. Irish History records five distinct waves of foreign tribal immigration/invasion on the Emerald Isle, one in particular being called the “Tribe of Dan,” and a later wave of arrivals bears traces to the tribe of Judah. Are you of Irish descent? You might be of the stock of Israel and not know it. The Spanish city of Cadiz is not inhabited by “Cadizitanos” but “Gaditanos” and was established by a Phoenician bunch that called themselves “Gadir.” Indeed, southern Spain is peppered with names rooted in “Gaud” the Spanish for Gad. Do your roots extend to Southern Spain? You might be a Child of Israel by bloodline, and not know it.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

And not only for the so-called “Lost Tribes” but for those of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin who chose not to come back from Babylon.

Where didja come from? Where dija go?
Where didja come from Cotton Eye Joe?