Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>]

At 03:05 PM 7/18/2002 -0400, Randall Buth wrote:
>one wrote
>>[for] the region between the Dead 
>>     Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
>and another
>>"Land of Israel" as an abstraction, fits the biblical texts but not
>historical
>>reality. 
>
>What's wrong with the NT, 
>1st century name? See below.
>
>Not to be confused with the color maps at the back of most 
>Christian bible translations, 
>
>Gosp. of Matthew 2.20 simply mentions that they left Egypt and
>went to 
>
>"the Land of Israel". 
>
>That wasn't political, 
>but geographical, 
>"contemporary", 
>internal to the peoples concerned, 
>and is even canonical for many on the the list.
>
>bivraxot
>
>Randall Buth
>
>
That's just what I wrote:' "Land of Israel" as an abstraction, fits the
biblical texts'. This is the original, Jewish-Christian source behind the
Gospel, perhaps even writing in Jewish Aramaic or Hebrew. Even in the 1st
century, the land was not called "Israel", but rather "Judaea". "Land of
Israel" is an internal Biblical and Jewish concept, meaning either "the
land of the Israelites" or "the land promised to the Israelites", depending
on the content. Would the Gospel have referred to the pagan city of Askelon
as being in the Land of Israel?

Yigal



Dr. Yigal Levin
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
U.S.A.