Quotes about Israel

Rabbinic literature, though it includes plenty of material from before AD 135, tends to see everything in the light, not of a continuing story about God and Israel within the ongoing flow of world history, but of the much thinner, often dehistoricized world of Torah-piety.

Israel's god dwelt (in principle; and he would do so again) in the Temple; his tabernacling presence ('Shekinah') functioned as had the pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness. He revealed himself and his will through Torah; for some rabbis at least, when one studied Torah it was as though one was in the Temple itself.

The second speaker contributing to what we hear the gospels saying is the one that enables us to hear the story of Jesus as the story of Israel's God coming back to his people as he had always promised.

God's covenant with Abraham and through Israel for the world was there precisely in order to deal with sin, as "the Jew" in 2:17—20 knows and claims.

He had been absolutely right in his devotion to Israel and the Torah, but absolutely wrong in his view of Israel's vocation and identity and even in the meaning of the Torah itself.

And what if Israel's God had done in person, in the person of this man, what he said he would do, defeating death itself and launching his new creation?

God was teaching Israel that they must no longer look at life from the vantage point of human wisdom and strength because they were now the children of the Lord almighty. Their world of weakness and limits had been invaded by One of awesome grace and glory.

Neither the Ten Commandments nor the great commandment is revelatory if separated from the divine covenant with Israel or from the presence of the Kingdom of God in the Christ. These commandments were meant and should be taken as interpretations of a new reality, not as orders directed against the old reality. They are descriptions and not laws. ~ vol. 1, p.125

When Pharaoh pursued Israel into the sea, it cost Egypt 600 chariots, 50,000 horsemen, and 200,000 footmen; not to mention that Egypt has NEVER regained the power and grandeur she enjoyed before touching God's anointed.

And for Christians, the gospel has always been the lens through which Israel's stories are read—which means, for Christians, Jesus, not the Bible, has the final word. The story of God's people has moved on, and so must we.

Jesus was God's climax to Israel's story, but he was not bound to that story. He pushed at its boundaries, transformed it, and at times left parts of it behind.

The Adam story, then, is not simply about the past. It's about Israel's present brought into the past—even as far past as the beginning of the human drama itself.