The many-faceted Israel (2)

I understand that some modern Jews do not even know that Jesus “the Nazarene” is a Jew, explaining his ministry from the Hebrew Scriptures and (uniquely) obedient to torah throughout his life. Christianity seems to be regarded by them as a Gentile heresy to which Jesus, or Paul, or both, “converted.”

Yet “Israel” or “Israelite” are mentioned 91 times in the New Testament. As in the Old Testament, there are many nuances of meaning, some of them new in the light of Jesus’s coming.

NEW TESTAMENT

• The first NT mention of Israel, in Matt 2:6, quotes Micah in prophesying that Jesus will “shepherd my people Israel.” Micah’s text indicates the rejoining of scattered Judah and Israel into one nation.
• In Matt 2:20 the angel tells Joseph to return to “the land of Israel,” politically anachronistic but still valid in God’s eyes. He returns to Galilee, part of the original settlement by Joshua.
• In Matt 8:10 Jesus tells the Gentile centurion that he has not seen such great faith “In Israel,” clearly meaning “among the Jews,” and predicts that such Gentiles will share the Messianic feast with Israel’s patriarchs whilst “the subjects of the kingdom,” presumably unbelieving Israelites, will be excluded.
• Matt 9:33, the people say “Nothing like this was ever seen in Israel,” showing how the Jews of Roman-occupied Galilee still self-identified as biblical “Israel,” and were not contradicted by Matthew.
• In Matt 10:6 Jesus tells his disciples to go (at this time) only to the “lost sheep of Israel,” not the Samaritans and Gentiles. Israel clearly, in this case, has a different meaning from 2:6, which included the “lost” northern tribes.
• Matt 15:31, Gentiles praise the “God of Israel,” suggesting they too saw Galileans as Israelites first and foremost. I wonder if, as outsiders, they viewed Samaritans the same way?
• Matt 19:28, the apostles will in due time “judge the twelve tribes of Israel.” The apostles are seen, therefore, as future leaders of a reconstituted historical Israel, including lost and dispersed tribes like Dan or Issachar.
• In Matt 27:9, the two conflated quotes don’t actually mention Israel, though Matthew does. But they both postdate the destruction of the northern kingdom. The Jerusalem rulers seem to represent, to Matthew, the people of Israel as a whole in exchanging silver for Jesus, despite their questionable legitimacy. That seems relevant to Israel’s Knesset today.
• Matt 27:42: Jesus’s opponents mock him as “king of Israel,” rather than quoting Pilate’s “King of the Jews” label. Either they see him as the (false) prophesied Messiah of a reconstituted nation, or else they anachronistically regard the separately-governed Roman Judea and Galilee as “the kingdom of Israel.”
• Luke 1:16, the angel prophesies that John will bring back to God many of the “sons of Israel,” which in practice seemed to work out as baptizing Judaean and Galilean Jews, as the currently visible remnant of Israel, both torah keeping and backslidden. We must remember that, like the hated Samaritans, the Jews of Jesus’s time were actually of mixed blood even since Moses’s time. “Israel” in this context seems a mixture of ethnic, geographic and cultic self-identity, which coincides, it seems, with their identity in God’s eyes.
• In Luke 1:54 Mary’s prophetic song specifies “God’s servant Israel” as Abraham’s descendants (those according to the promise being understood), and as the unmeriting recipients of Christ’s salvation. Neither she nor Zechariah have any word for the Gentiles, but note that the Baptist later (3:14) castigates unrepentant Jews by saying God can raise up sons for Abraham out of the stones, thus setting up an ambiguity between Israel as the chosen genealogical race, and Israel as the repentant remnant of both Jews and Gentiles.
• Luke 2:25: “Consolation of Israel” comes from Isaiah 52:9, referring to the salvation of Jerusalem from spiritual exile, which Simeon/Luke have generalised to the Messianic hope for all the “exiled” people of Israel, far and near.
• Luke 2:32: Simeon includes the Gentiles in his prophecy, but here maintains their practical distinction from “your people Israel.”
• Luke 4:25-7: Comparing his mission to Elijah’s and Elisha’s, Jesus alienates his townsmen by citing God’s rejection of Baal-worshipping Israelites in favour of a Sidonian woman and a Syrian official. Neither became “Israelites,” but were accepted by Israel’s God. Already at the start of his almost exclusively Jewish ministry, Jesus has based his overall mission on faith, over ancestry.
• Luke 24:21: the Emmaus disciples had hoped Jesus would “redeem Israel.” They seem to mean, and Jesus goes on to confirm, the whole body of Messianic promises for Jews and, perhaps, the missing northern tribes too.
• John 3:10: Jesus describes Nicodemus as “Israel’s teacher,” which in practice probably meant he taught Judaeans and some other non-Samaritan Jews. Jesus once again insists on the biblical, theological, concept of Israel as a distinct, yet ill-defined, people under God’s instruction.
• John 12:13: The crowd of local and diaspora Jews quotes Ps 118 in calling Jesus “King of Israel.” This psalm is a Messianic promise for the entire historical united kingdom of Israel, which remains within their imagination and hope despite the mess of history.
• Acts 1:6: The disciples ask if the time has come for the kingdom to be restored to Israel, and clearly mean godly statehood under the Davidic Messiah. Jesus does not question the premise, but the timing. But significantly he spreads the net to Samaria and the ends of the earth – Israel is to be a kingdom of people from across the globe. He could have meant simply the gathering of the Jewish diaspora, but we already know that he has been rejected by the current “Israel,” and that he has intentions for the Gentiles within his kingdom.
• Acts 2:22: Peter addresses the Judaean and diaspora Jews alike as “men of Israel,” and likewise through to 4:27.
• Acts 5:21: Luke describes the Sanhedrin as “the full assembly of the elders of Israel,” though its direct jurisdiction was only over Judaea (not even Galilee), though it had moral authority in the diaspora. Clearly there is a biblical sense in which “Israel” can be seen as “the recognised Jewish nation of the time,” which would make the modern Israel and its Knesset as legitimately “Israel” as Judaea and the Sanhedrin of Peter’s time. It was that Sanhedrin that “officially” rejected Christ on behalf of Israel, so one can conceive that an acceptance of his Messiahship by an equivalent body would be no less theologically significant.
• Acts 9:15: God tells Ananias that Paul will speak to the Gentiles and the people of Israel, the latter in this case meaning diaspora Jews, for Paul did not minister to Judaea or Galilee.
• Acts 10:36: “the message God sent to the people of Israel.” Peter is confirming the Jew/Gentile division to Cornelius. Yet the Jerusalem Church recognises that God has granted the Gentiles “repentance to eternal life,” and given them the same Spirit promised to Zion and Israel in Joel. Does this make them in some sense adopted Israelites (albeit the Council of Jerusalem recognises them as Gentile believers exempt from circumcision and torah)?
• Acts 13:16ff: Paul’s first missionary sermon specifically address “Men of Israel and you Gentiles who worship God,” yet his sermon seems to treat the latter as descendants of God’s people, or at least equally heirs to the promises, vv32,38.
• Acts 28:20: Paul says he is in chains “for the hope of Israel,” yet he is in chains for preaching to the Gentiles, suggesting that they are now co-heirs of the hope of Israel, making them distinguishable from “Israel” only genealogically.
• Romans 9:4: “my own race, the people of Israel.” Paul uses several definitions of Israel in Romans, sometimes in the same sentence. Here he clearly means the whole Jewish people, by descent, of his own time, and particularly those who have not accepted Jesus.
• Romans 9:6: “Not all those of Israel are Israel, nor because they are Abraham’s seed are they all his children.” He goes on to speak of Isaac’s election, clearly making a new, spiritual, definition of the true Israel as those in Christ, and clearly excluding the unbelieving among his race from that true Israel. This Israel is chosen by grace and mercy, but for what? V23 – those called both from Jews and Gentiles for faith in Christ. In this way Gentiles who were not God’s people become his people, regarded (v8) as Abraham’s offspring, and I would argue, by implication, also children of the promise to Jacob, ie adopted as Israel’s children.
• Romans 9:27: “Isaiah cries out concerning Israel…” Paul clearly reverts to his racial use of “Israel” here, to explain his own people’s rejection of Christ, as also v31, in which they (ie that majority not yet called by Christ) stumble by pursuing law without faith. This is the same sense, and the same argument, as in 10:19 and 21.
• Romans 11:2: “God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew.” In this chapter, that same racial/covenant sense of Israel is held to be still within the election of God, God’s plan being to partially harden them (as a people) for a time whilst the Gentiles “come in,” when it seems he will save them en masse. If that is not his meaning, the “love on account of the patriarchs” (11:28), and the following verses, make no sense. So this seems not to mean just that that minority of Jews who believe down the centuries constitutes “all Israel.” But into what do the Gentiles “come in”? The only relevant entity under discussion is the spiritual Israel of the promise, and not a separate entity called “the Church.” It seems Gentiles are adopted into Israel (as were many in the OT, eg Rahab, Ruth), so that when Paul says “all Israel will be saved” he may mean the future full salvation of the Jews, or the completion of Israel by the full salvation of the Jews and the elect Gentiles. I don’t think there’s much difference in sense – but since Paul does so, we need always to take care in what sense we refer to “Israel.”
• 1 Corinthians 10:18: “Consider the people of Israel.” Here Paul means Jews performing the temple’s worship (which mainly means Judaeans and those close enough to make pilgrimage at the festivals).
• Galatians 6:16: “Peace be to all those… and to the Israel of God.” A contested verse used either to exclude “the circumcision” from a “New Israel,” or to exclude Gentile believers from the old one. Paul has been criticising Gentiles for getting circumcised, but his “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but a new creation” seems to apply to Jews as well as Gentiles. In other words, the covenant sign of circumcision has been abrogated in Christ, mediator of the promised New Covenant, though it may well be a valid voluntary tradition (as in the circumcision of Timothy). “All who follow this rule” could then include believing Jews indifferent to circumcision as well as Gentiles following Paul’s instruction, meaning that “the Israel of God” might also include Gentiles adopted into the spiritual Israel, or only believing Jews as distinct from Gentiles. But surely it includes only the righteous elect of Israel, a distinction even held in the OT (see Psalm 125). Whichever it is, there is no suggestion that “the Church” (of Gentiles) is separate from the Christian Jews of “the Israel of God,” still less that Gentiles have replaced Jews in God’s gathered assembly.
• Ephesians 2:12: “at that time you [Gentiles] were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenant of promise.” Surely if Gentiles have been “brought near” and are now included in the covenant of promise of Abraham (3:6), they have also been adopted into citizenship in Israel? But note that the language is of drawing Gentiles in, not (a) creating a brand new assembly open to all or (b) creating a Gentile assembly that Jews may join. There is one spiritual body in which Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, which is surely an inclusion by adoption into Israel, whilst recognising the valid distinctions of physical reality. This accords with the “wild olive branch” analogy of Romans 11. Israel/Judah is called an olive tree in the OT, eg Hosea 14:6; Jeremiah 11:16, in which branches are also said to be broken off in judgement. Gentiles grafted in, against nature, must therefore be grafted into Israel, not despising the natural branches – of which even those currently lopped off may be grafted in again.
• Hebrews 8:8: “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” The writer quotes Jeremiah to show the Mosaic covenant is obsolete, and in Christ a new covenant is founded. He implies, to Jewish readers, that to return to spiritual fellowship with the temple/synagogue is apostasy. Though there is a continuity with the original Israel (the covenant is for them first), the spiritual assembly of Christ, which includes Gentiles though they’re not mentioned, is a separate entity from the former institutions.
• Revelation 7:4; 21:12: in apocalyptic language John writes to largely Gentile churches, in the first text probably, and in the second definitely, identifying their final hope with the twelve tribes of Israel. This implies that all believers are sharers in Israel, and not that Jews (or 144,000 J.W.s!) have a special separate eschatology.

My conclusion from all this is that Scripture uses “Israel” in a wide variety of ways, genealogical, historical, geopolitical, cultic, cultural and spiritual, to name just some. Yet by doing so, it renders all these senses legitimate in the divine purpose.

In the twenty-first century “Israel” still has these ambiguous senses, and so it is hard to justify a clear theological distinction between the Zionist State of Israel today, largely secular, religiously mainly Rabbinic, with its diaspora, and the heterogeneous and unbelieving Judaea of the apostle’s time, with its own diaspora, which they not only laboured to evangelise, but regarded as God’s elect nation still, with every promise of salvation in the future.

Nothing, then, has fundamentally changed since New Testament times in spiritual terms. Rabbinic Judaism’s concerted rejection of Jesus is on a par with his less systematic rejection by the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin of Acts. That is not to deny that a lot of historical sewage has flowed under the bridge, including Christian persecution of the Jews (as well as earlier Jewish persecutions of the Christians), the destruction of the Jewish nation by the Romans, the rise of Islam and the tangled politics of the Levant, the Holocaust, secular Zionism and the establishment of the present Jewish State.

Yet “Israel” remains what it was in Jesus’s time – a complex biblical schema to be untangled with care and the Holy Spirit. Understanding it better will undoubtedly help us to understand “church” better, and with more humility towards the Hebrew root into which we Gentiles are grafted, by grace.