421 - Israel and The Land: A Note From A Christian Perspective

"It is important for Christians not to perceive the promise of land in the Old Testament as a relic of ancient Near Eastern history, much less an idiosyncrasy of contemporary Palestinian politics. For that promise, with all its intrinsic problems, is a theological expression of the fundamental human need for security and freedom. There is no doubt that that promise has been exploited through the ages to legitimate the most inhuman of institutions and policies. But in rejecting the symbolic power of the promised land, the church would stand in danger of denying the fact that it lives in, if not of, this world."

Israel and The Land: A Note From A Christian Perspective
By Thomas W. Mann

ON a summer morning in 1965 I was riding in a bus which was slowly ascending the road leading up the eastern approach to the city of Jerusalem. I was with a group of Americans, composed mostly of college religious studies majors, chaplains, and professors of Bible. Suddenly, as we neared the environs of the city proper, one of the chaplains began to sing the popular anthem, "The Holy City." Hardly a line escaped his mouth before the whole busload was singing along. Of course, I had heard the anthem many times before; it was a staple item for the observance of Easter in my Southern Baptist environment. But I had never heard the song as I did then and I have never heard it like that since. One could explain such an experience phenomenologically as a manifestation of the strongly emotive character of "Southern religion" (and most of my companions were Southerners). But I suspect that there was something more substantial at work as well. We all felt an attachment to that particular place. We all knew that our heritage as Christians had its origin in that particular geographical spot. We had roots in the soil of the Holy City.

But those roots are, at best, historical (that is, part of ancient history), or, at worst, merely sentimental. As Christians we have been grafted into the tree of Judaism-and thus become heirs of the promises contained in the Old Testament-through a surgical procedure, and not

Thomas W. Mann is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. He holds degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Yale Divinity School, and Yale University. He is the author of Divine Presence and Guidance in Israelite Traditions: The Typology of Exaltation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).

422 - Israel and The Land: A Note From A Christian Perspective

through the natural growth of the plant. It is that break in the natural connection between soil, root, and tree which presents a major barrier to Jewish-Christian-dialogue on the land of Israel. On the surface, it would not seem to be so. After all since at least the time of the Babylonian Exile in 587 B.C.E., millions of Jews have been uprooted from the land, and yet have maintained their self-understanding as Jews. Moreover, what began as forced exile became, within one generation, voluntary Diaspora, and thus places like Babylon and Alexandria could rival eve Jerusalem as centers of Jewish piety and learning. Furthermore, the canonization of the Torah, or Pentateuch, which surely received a major impetus in the Exilic period, appears to depict an ideal Israel outside the land, and thus could lead to an understanding in which to be a Jew was more to be a member of the people of the Book than the people of the land. ¹ In the words of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai (first century, C.E.), "the Torah is enough." Such a statement would appear to place Jews and Christians within a common theological self-understanding.

Rabbi Bruce S. Warshal's article, in this issue of THEOLOGY TODAY, comes to us as a passionate plea not, to make such a simplistic connection vis-á-vis rootedness in the land. Although one could quibble with some of Warshal's specific biblical interpretations, one could hardly dispute his overall claim that the land of Israel is a fundamental aspect of Old Testament theology. ² Indeed, one could make a strong case for the assertion that the triangular relationship between God, land, and people constitutes the heart of the Hebrew Bible. Warshal's argument that Jews have always maintained a close identification with the land-even from afar-has also been documented for the period of the early church in W.D. Davies's recent work, The Gospel and the Land. ³

Davies does not minimize the tendencies toward geographical detachment, referred to above. Indeed, he concludes his treatment of the land in Israelite religion and Judaism with the statement that "the sentiment for the land of Israel has often been tempered, suppressed, and even ignored and rejected by many Jews. Yet that sentiment has remained tenaciously present in the depth of the consciousness of many Jews across the centuries" (p. 158). However, precisely in comparison to this tension inherent in Judaism itself, one cannot fail to see a fundamental theological shift in the New Testament understanding of the land. Again, Davies has posed the problem succinctly: "In coming to grips with Gentile Christianity, early Christians had radically to assess the geographic realia of Judaism, and they either abandoned or transformed them or lent them a new perspective" (p. 373). Thus, "the logic of Paul's understanding of Abraham, and his personalization of

¹ Cf. James A. Sanders, Torah and Canon (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972).
² For a recent survey of this theme, see Walter Brueggemann, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977).
³ Subtitle: Early Christianity and Jewish Territorial Doctrine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).

423 - Israel and The Land: A Note From A Christian Perspective

the fulfillment of the promise 'in Christ' demanded the deterritorializing of the promise" (p. 179), and this despite Paul's refusal to place the church as a "New Israel" over against the "Old." In Matthew and Mark, Jerusalem retains its significance for Judaism as the center of eschatological activity, but the Jewish expectations have been broken (pp. 241-42). In Luke-Acts, Jerusalem is dissociated from the parousia and, in a sense, demoted as the beginning of the way which leads out to the Gentiles (pp. 260, 278). In John, the holy places of Judaism have been supplanted by the person of Christ (p. 316). As for Jesus himself, he too "knew the love of his native land, but his concentration on a loving, universal community suggests that the land itself played a minor part in his mind" (p. 354). But perhaps more important than any of the foregoing is the fact that the New Testament as a whole is simply not primarily interested in the land of Israel (p. 369).

Given the radical dissociation between the gospel and the land, what problems present themselves to contemporary Christians?

(1) Taking our cue from Warshal's article, the first issue is that of the contemporary Arab-Israeli dispute concerning Palestine. For those who want to understand the issue from a Christian perspective, there can be no doubt that Warshal is right. We must take into consideration the Jewish attachment to the land, the bedrock of which is the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12. The New Testament dissociation of the gospel and the land, combined with the tendency to construe the land as a spiritual or transcendental reality (Heb. 11:16), has undoubtedly led to a failure on the part of many Christians to recognize the Old Testament promise of land and nationhood on, its own terms. Moreover, many of us are woefully ignorant of theological developments within Judaism since the first century C.E., as well as the church's conscious and/or unconscious participation in the relentless sufferings of the Jewish people throughout the centuries. (In the light of both ancient and modern catastrophes, passages such as Luke 19:27, and 21:23-24 take on an ominous, macabre tone.) Contemporary Judaism-including tenacity to the land of Israel-simply cannot be understood outside-the shadow of Auschwitz.

On the other hand, the self-understanding of the Arab Palestinian people, not to mention the place of the land in the faith of Islam, must also be taken into consideration. ⁴ Moreover, contemporary political decisions about Palestine cannot be made on the basis of any theological self-understanding, but can only be made on the basis of formal treaties agreed to by all involved parties and recognized by the international community.

(2) As already implied above, the problem of the land of Israel is not

⁴ It is important to observe that some circles within the Zionist movement have, from the outset, expressed a deep concern for Arab identification with the land, and a respect for the rights of all native inhabitants. On this see I F. Stone, "The Other Zionism," Harper's, September, 1978, pp. 65-72; also Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1972), especially chapter 5.

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only one of contemporary politics, but also one of hermeneutics. For Christians, it presents a major stumbling block between the Old and New Testaments. ⁵ No doubt, the hermanetical problem is felt most keenly by those, like myself, who's primary preoccupation is with the Old Testament. Faced with the New Testament abrogation of any intrinsic link between ethnic or territorial nationality and the gospel, the theologian of the Old Testament cannot avoid an honest and often painful wrestling with the promise to Abraham. At times, it would seem that the promise of land and nationhood cannot be incorporated into Christian theology without a thorough spiritualization. But to do so is to throw into question some of the fundamental historical referents which have traditionally been understood as constitutive of Old Testament theology. In my judgment, the theologian of the Old Testament will have to steer a middle course between the extremes of a transcendental spiritualization, on the one hand, and a "political theology" which simply serves as a legitimation of nationalism , on the other. Only by such a course can the Old Testament teach, one of its most enduring lessons to the church. That lesson is what we might call "earthiness," or what others have called "thingness" or "worldliness." ⁶ However much it may be encumbered by theological dangers, the promise of land and nationhood in essence, the promise of political self-determination-precisely within its theological context, affirms a fundamental aspect of human aspiration as concern of God. In this, and many other ways, the Old Testament is refreshingly, if also sometimes embarrassingly, materialistic. While a genuine understanding of the New Testament should not lead to an improper "otherworldliness," its popular understanding often does. It is, here that the "earthiness" of the Old Testament can be a helpful corrective to the church, one which the church will ignore at its peril.

(3) In the context of the fusion of the ancestral promise in Genesis and the Egyptian oppression in Exodus, the, significance of land and nationhood represents an important aspect of liberation theology. Again, the potential for demonic distortion and is obvious. However, the way in which the "promised land" functioned as a galvanizing theme of black liberation, from the days of slavery down through the civil rights movement of the 1960's, demonstrates the perpetual relevance of this symbol. The fact that the land can be used as a symbol, which itself is part of a larger typology should not be confused with an a historical, transcendental application. ⁷ In fact, if we follow the line of recent studies of black spirituals, even lyrical phrases such as "the land beyond the sky" or "over Jordan" can symbolize both a

⁵ For other hermeneutical reflections, see Brueggemann, The Land, pp. 184-89.
⁶ For the former, see Davies, The Gospel and the Land, pp. 161-62; for the latter, see Walther Zimmerli, The Old Testament and the World, (Atlanta-, John Knox Press, 1976), especially chapter 6 on the land and chapter11 on Old and New Testaments.
⁷ For the land in the Old Testament as both literal and symbolic, see Brueggemann, The Land, pp. 2-3.

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transcendant and an existential hope, a hope which looks beyond this life for ultimate freedom, but also hope which looks toward political liberation within the realities of present existence. ⁸ It is not at all surprising that the Old Testament witness to the latter side of this symbolic power has been apprehended by those communities in need of liberation, both in our own country, and in the Third World.

(4) Finally, when "American" Christians took at the theme of the promised land in the Old Testament, they must realize that, historically, their position is extremely vulnerable. It is one of the great ironies of American history that some of the founders of this nation incorporated-often uncritically- the Old Testament themes of a "chosen people" in a "promised land," and yet violated the human rights of both black and Native American people. ⁹ Again, the irony is present in the Old Testament itself. In the chronology of the final text, no sooner were the Israelites freed from: Egyptian bondage than they entered into a covenant with Yahweh which included the institution of slavery (Exodus 21: 1-1 1) and the pledge, of divine extermination of native Canaanites (23:23-33). In reading the comments of major figures in American history, well into the twentieth century, one cannot but be appalled at the way in which the Old Testament promise of land, with all its inherent dangers, was often adopted without any consideration of the New Testament corrective, and this at times by leaders of the church. Now the contemporary ancestors of those who were involved directly or indirectly with this sordid history are being confronted with the legacy of guilt. Native Americans are demanding a restitution of their land which, in their own religious traditions, was also inseparably linked with their self-understanding as a people. ¹⁰

In the preceding paragraphs, we have only been able to hint at some of the problems involved in a Christian perspective on the promise of land in the Old Testament. The comments concerning hermeneutics, theology, and American history were not intended to detract from Warshal's focus on the Arab-Israeli issue. In terms of ongoing human suffering, that issue obviously has priority (although some Native Americans may rightly want to assert their rival claims). It is incumbent upon all of us to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" (Psalm 122:6). But it is also important for Christians not to perceive the promise of

⁸ James H. Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues (New York: Sea bury Press, 1972), pp. 88-102; see also "Black Spirituals: A Theological interpretation," THEOLOGY TODAY, April, 1972, pp. 54-69; "Sanctification, Liberation, and Black Worship," THEOLOGY TODAY, July, 1978, pp. 139-52.
⁹ For two recent treatments of this, see Martin E. Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (New York. Dial Press, 1970), especially chapters I and 2 ("The People" and "The Land"); and Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in a Time of Trial (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).
¹⁰ On this see Vine Deloria, Jr., God is Red (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973), pp. 7-22, 73-74, 80-8 1, 88, 161-67. For his view of the importance of space over against time, contrast Brueggemann, The Land, pp. 4-6. I am indebted to Michael F. Smith, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, for referring me to Deloria's work.

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land in the Old Testament as a relic of ancient Near Eastern history, much less as an idiosyncrasy of contemporary Palestinian politics. For that promise with all its intrinsic problems, is a theological expression of the fundamental human need for security and freedom. There is no doubt that that promise has been exploited through the ages to legitimate the most inhuman of institutions and policies. But in rejecting the symbolic power of the promised land, the church would stand in danger of denying the fact that it lives in, if not of, this world.