Christianity began as a Jewish sect, but its relationship to Judaism since then has been rocky to say the least. As we enter the sixth month of the Israel-Hamas War, Christians find themselves at odds with each other in their stances on the issue. Within the pages of the Bible, we encounter narratives where God commands the utter destruction of Israel's adversaries. Can we assume these ancient sentiments persist today, or do our scriptures convey a different message? Join us over the next two weeks as we reassess both the historical and biblical sides of this discourse.
In this week's episode, we lay the foundation for the conflict by digging into the history of Israel and Palestine, exploring their dual claims to the land. Next week, we'll cover some biblical perspectives and offer a Christian response to the modern nation of Israel and to the ongoing war with Hamas. There's a lot to unpack here that you won't want to miss!
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Editor: Janna Connor
Edits:
Around 1:03:00, I say that Rome had wiped out most of the Jewish population around 136 years after Jesus. I meant to say 136 CE. One hundred thirty-six years after Jesus would be roughly 30 years later.
Around 1:10:00, I give some statistics regarding the number of Jewish people living in Palestine in the last 100 years. I mistakenly said "the land of Israel" several times when I meant the overarching land of Palestine since Israel had not yet become a recognized nation in the time of some of those figures.
Notes:
Question: In the Old Testament, God commanded Israel to kill everyone, women and children included, in battle. Does God view war differently in the New Testament? With everything going on in Israel, Christians are divided on how to feel. The Bible says any nation that goes against Israel will be punished, but then I hear some other people say that the Israeli government is satanic and shouldn’t be supported. The lives lost on both sides are sad. How should we view that conflict?
Response: This is a question we've received several times over the last six months. And it's no surprise given the current political climate in Israel and the ongoing war with Hamas. Many Christians closely watch current events in Israel and have experienced increased anxiety in the past year. But in order to understand the current situation well enough to formulate a response, we must first consider the history of Israel, Palestine, and the land to which they both lay claim.
For this first section of the discussion, we will be viewing the matter solely from a historical perspective. This means we will not privilege the Bible over any other book and we will assume it has some bias to it given that it is written from a Jewish perspective. That is not to say the Bible's account is untrue or untrustworthy. But in order to understand the historical perspective, we must set aside religious biases. If we had to consider a part of Middle Eastern history that was mainly covered in the Qur'an, many Christians would view the event's historicity with suspicion. If we are unwilling to automatically assume the validity of other group's sacred books, we must also concede the biases within our own. We will cover the biblical perspective next week.
Let's address some key terms before moving any further:
Israel: Both an ancient kingdom and a modern nation-state. There is shared lineage, but given the gap of 2,000 years, the entities are not exactly the same. The exact boundaries of the land have changed many times, but it is usually bordered on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, on the north by Lebanon, on the east by the Jordan River, and on the south by Egypt.
Palestine: A region of the Middle East (West Asia, often called the Levant) that includes the land claimed by Israel and a little more. It is known in the Bible as the land of Canaan (roughly, since Canaan is a slightly broader area). There is also a modern state of Palestine which claims that whole region, including the land claimed by Israel.
Hebrew: Someone tracing their lineage back to the biblical character Abraham through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob, living between the time of Abraham and the conquest of Canaan under Joshua. The term can still be used up to today but is less common.
Israelite: A Hebrew living between the time of the exodus/conquest of Canaan until the Babylonian exile.
Jew or Jewish person: A Hebrew living after the return from exile. This is still the correct term for people of Jewish decent today. There is both an ethnic and a religious side to the word. Someone can be ethnically Jewish but not practice the Jewish religion. Someone can be a convert to the Jewish religion without being ethnically Jewish (a gentile, today often called a goy, the Hebrew word for the nations around Israel).
Israeli: A citizen of the modern nation of Israel; they do not have to be of Jewish descent.
Zionism: The belief that modern day Jews have a right to a homeland. Some use this term in a more colonializing sense, suggesting that the nation state of Israel has a right to the the whole land of Palestine. In its most technical sense today, it means that modern Jews can and should live in the state of Israel if they so desire.
Arab: Someone tracing their lineage back to the biblical character Abraham through his son Ishmael.
Palestinian: A citizen of the modern state of Palestine.
Antisemitism: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities....
Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for 'why things go wrong.' It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.” - https://www.state.gov/defining-antisemitism/
History:
The Philistines are some of the earliest known inhabitants of the land of Palestine; in fact, the word Palestine derives from Philistine. The Bible refers to the inhabitants of the land as Canaanites, a broad term encompassing many tribes listed throughout the Tanakh. According to the biblical account, the god Yahweh promised the region of Canaan to the descendants of Abram, a nomadic herder from a bit farther north. He, his sons, and his grandchildren lived among the tribes of the land until the next generation was forced south into Egypt during a time of famine. Over four hundred years later, his descendants marched back into Canaan and sought to conquer the current inhabitants.
The Bible records a grand conquest of the land of Canaan in the books of Joshua, Judges, and 1 Samuel; but the historical record suggests the actual conflicts may have been much smaller. Scant evidence exists for such a large-scale invasion of Canaan during the time period implied within the Bible. It is possible the Bible's accounts are later political dramatizations of much smaller events. Remember, we are looking at this solely from a historical viewpoint this week; the biblical perspective will come next week.
Under the on again off again leadership of sheriffs (often called judges), the Israelites settled in the land and fought off the remaining inhabitants and local warring tribes. Localized war lords (Saul and David) coordinated the disparate tribes of their people into a monarchy, and David's son Solomon expanded Israel's borders to include land slightly beyond the normal borders of Palestine. The kingdom split in two after his death, with ten tribes following one of his officials, Jeroboam, and the remaining two staying loyal to his son, Rehoboam. Granted, we have no proof of a united monarchy outside the Bible, so some historians believe Israel was never united under one ruler.
After the kingdom split, both the north and the south continued to fight off nearby tribes, sometimes winning ground and sometimes conceding it. In 721 BCE, the Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrian Empire. Some Israelites were displaced and relocated. Others stayed in the land and became the Samaritans of later stories. Over time, Assyria fell to Babylon which defeated the Southern Kingdom in 586 BCE. Babylon then fell to Persia which eventually allowed Jews to return to the land after about seventy years. Persia still oversaw the land until their empire fell to Greece which then restructured the governance of Palestine. As the Greek Empire gave way to the Romans, Palestine continued to be the center of several conflicts. Some of them stemmed from Ezra and Nehemiah's mistreatment of their Samaritan cousins who remained in the land during their time of exile. Closer to the time of Jesus, several messiah figures arose, promising freedom from pagan governance and a return to the independent rule of the days of King David.
Rome tussled with Jewish resistance forces for several decades until finally destroying the Jewish temple in 70 CE and eventually dispersing many Jews by 136 CE. Some Jews remained in the land, but most fled to other regions and assimilated into the local cultures. By 326 CE, Israel had become a pilgrimage destination for many Christians, and the Roman Emperor Constantine helped to establish it as such for centuries to come.
By the 600s CE, Islam had come to prominence in the greater region, and shortly after Muhammad's death in 632 CE, the Rashidun Caliphate claimed control of Palestine due to their also seeing many of the same sites as significant. Various groups held short-term control of the land over the next few centuries until the Byzantine Empire (the part of the Roman Empire in the east that was never quite destroyed) along with the Latin Church (often called the Catholic Church but actually a subset of it) began the mostly unsuccessful Crusades to win back the land for Christianity. Palestine mostly remained under Muslim Arab jurisdiction for the next several centuries.
The Crusades led to the creation of the Malmuk Sultanate which arose out of Egypt and controlled the land for a short time. They fought off invading tribes from Asia until the Ottoman Empire arose in Anatolia (Asia Minor, modern Turkey), destroyed the Byzantine Empire, and conquered Palestine by 1516 CE. The Ottoman Empire's governance of the land continued while the British stepped in to maintain peace and spark cultural innovation in 1840. As antisemitism began to arise throughout Europe, more and more Jews spoke of wanting a land of their own where they could live amongst other Jews rather than being a part of the cultures they'd lived among for the last 1800 years.
During World War I, the Ottoman Empire sided with the Central Powers, leading Britain to dialogue with some Arab groups who wanted to regain control of Palestine from the current leaders of the Ottoman Empire. Britain agreed to give those Arab factions self-governance of Palestine under the Sykes-Picot Agreement if they'd fight against the Ottoman Empire and the Central Powers. Around the same time, Britain also signed the Balfour Declaration, promising Jewish Zionists a homeland within Palestine, essentially pledging the same land to two different groups.
The British maintained a temporary and tenuous control of the land known as The British Mandate until the end of World War II. They agreed to detach themselves from governance of Palestine on May 15, 1948, effectively removing many protections from the Palestinian populace. Just hours beforehand, a prominent Jewish leader named David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the modern nation of Israel. The next day, a coalition of forces from neighboring nations moved in to regain control of the land that Britain had been overseeing. Zionist forces rebuffed the attacks, and Israel took control of much of the Gaza Strip, a small section of land along the Mediterranean Sea that had been previously contested. Jordan gained control of the West Bank along the western and northern sides of the Sea of Galilee.
Over the next several decades, neighboring nations would frequently seek to regain land from Israel. Israel would often push them back and gain a little more territory, leading foreign nations to step in and request Israel return the land. The cycle has continued to this day. Though many in the West see Arab nations as invading Israel, many within Palestine view Israel as the invaders. Arabs were the predominant people group in Palestine for several centuries, and many of them claim a religious and ethnic right to the land just like Jews do. Seeing as Israel was not the first or only people group in the land, even back in Bible times, modern Palestinians struggle to accept that modern Jews have a right to that whole land. Even if you believe the genocides of Joshua, Judges, and 1 Samuel were God-ordained back in the early days of Israel, there is no biblical sanction for that sort of behavior today. There is certainly a genetic link between ancient and modern Jews, but that does not mean that every aspect of ancient governance should be brought forward to today.
Israel is roughly the size of New Jersey. Imagine if a large number of people, all from the same ethnic group, converged on New Jersey over the course of about forty years. Then imagine out of nowhere they form an army and claim they have rights to live in your home because their ancestors lived in this part of New Jersey 2,000 years ago. Not too many people would go along with that idea, and if that group were to gain control of a large portion of the state by force, many native New Jerseyans would likely fight back using whatever means necessary.
By no means do we intend to justify terrorism or war crimes; by no means do we intend to suggest Israel is an evil nation or that Jews don't deserve a homeland. But with a little context, the Palestinian aggression against Jews in their land begins to make a little more sense. Many Christians will jump to say Israel has a divine right to that land and that it's really theirs because God promised it to Abraham's descendants. Remember though that we are looking at this today from a purely historical lens; we will address the biblical side next week. When we set aside our biases about what we think God promised a people group several millennia ago, it becomes easier to see both sides.
That brings us to the 1980s when Israel had forcibly driven out many Palestinians from their homes, leading to the Intifadas. In 1928, an Egyptian Muslim formed the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that existed to spread Islam throughout the Near East. They were largely successful and worked to peacefully oppose Israel's control of the land after 1948. In 1987, an Israeli army truck killed four Palestinians when it crashed at a checkpoint in Gaza. That event inspired a former Muslim Brotherhood member named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin to found Hamas. Hamas began as a political and social reform movement and has been the legitimate ruling political party in Palestine since 2006.
Hamas has engaged in several conflicts with Israel since then, including the war that began in October 2023 when Hamas and a coalition of neighboring forces invaded the Gaza strip, killing over 1,000 people and taking over 200 hostages. Reports of the war will vary mostly depending on one's political affiliation. Conservatives are more likely to hear of Hamas' terrorist actions and war crimes. Liberals are more likely to hear of Israel's questionable retaliations. By this point, both sides have committed to continue fighting until the other is annihilated, all but removing the possibility of any peaceful resolution in the foreseeable future.
Again, it is worth stating that we do not condone any terrorist actions or war crimes, regardless of which side commits them. The facts of the conflict seem to change daily, with previous reports of one side's atrocities being replaced with an alternate perspective of how it was really the other side's fault. Deception is an integral part of war, and both sides have certainly engaged in their fair share. So, given all of this backstory, what is the biblical perspective and how should Christians respond? That'll be our discussion next week