During the week covered by this review, we received 9 articles on the following subjects:
Christians and the Holocaust
Political Issues /Anti-Missionary Attitudes
Archeology
Interfaith Relations
Christians and the Holocaust
Haaretz, August 30, 2020; HaModia, August 31, 2020; Iton Shacharit, September 3, 2020
Professor David Kertzer of Brown University said he has found evidence that Pope Pius XII was involved in the kidnapping of two Jewish brothers during the Holocaust. The brothers, who were twins, were held at a monastery after their parents were murdered at Auschwitz. Their family tried to get the twins back, but the monastery refused. Eventually the twins were transferred to their aunt in Israel. The Pope was reportedly aware of the situation and did not act to release the twins.
Political Issues
The Marker, September 2, 2020
This article was about President Donald Trump’s special relationship to Evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham and John Hagee. It was argued that those two leaders can get ahold of Trump on the phone quicker than most world leaders, and that their influence is great. Trump has recently said that he moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem for Evangelicals.
Political Issues /Anti-Missionary Attitudes
Yom LeYom, August 27, 2020
This article alleged that thousands of missionaries were sent to Israel during the Ethiopian migration. The Falash Mura are of the Ethiopian Beta Israel community whose ancestors converted to Christianity from Judaism in the nineteenth century. The article argued that missionaries pretended to be Falash Mura and immigrated in that way, estimating that over 20,000 Ethiopians came to Israel without sufficient proof of their Judaism. The author urged support for a law proposal that would restrict Ethiopian access to the right of return in order to protect the Jewish identity of the country.
Archeology
Haaretz, September 2, 2020; The Jerusalem Post, September 2, 2020; The Jerusalem Post, September 3, 2020
The first two articles reported that a number of biblical scholars have rejected the claim made by Professor Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University, who has argued that a 3,000-year-old clay head found in the ruins of Khirbet Qeiyafa is meant to be a representation of Yahweh. The clay head is dated to the 10th century BCE, and is connected to two horse figurines that were also found in Tel Moza with the anthropomorphic vessels. Garfinkel argued that because Yahweh is depicted in the Bible as riding a horse, the vessels are meant to be representations of him. However, in opposition to him, biblical scholars argued that there are no markers on the vessels indicating a deity, and that Yahweh is not depicted as riding a horse, but a chariot.
The third article was about Professor Rami Arav’s contention that Bethsaida, a village in the New Testament where Jesus performed a number of miracles, is located at Et-Tell. The main objection against Arav is that Bethsaida is believed to have been accessible by boat, but Et-Tell is not on the shore. By contrast, the competing site at el-Araj is only 200 meters away from the shore. Arav, however, argued that el-Araj was a military camp and not a fishing town, further claiming that the Sea of Galilee is right in the middle of the Syrian-African rift and is prone to tectonic changes. Thus, the site may have moved over time. Arav said his team found ancient fishing equipment at Et-Tell.
Interfaith Relations
The Jerusalem Report, September 1, 2020
In honor of the 55th anniversary of Nostra Aetate – the document produced in 1965 during the Second Vatican Council that repudiated the tradition accusing Jews of Jesus’ murder and affirmed the eternal relationship of the Jews to God – this article discussed the context of first century Judaism. The article presented the argument that Jesus’ intention was not to create a new religion, but to reform Judaism. He himself was an observant Jew, and it was only a later misreading of what Jesus taught that led to the separation between Judaism and Christianity. The New Testament and the Talmud, if read properly, do not oppose each other.