Rabbi blasts Ilhan Omar, NYT for pushing claim Jesus was ‘Palestinian,’ not Jewish

Wait, are you claiming that Mark 5:41 and 15:34 are Hebrew???

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

Bunching up ancient Semitic peoples into the same race seems purely like a guess to me. People groups can be remarkably different even if they are of similar ancestry or similar racial background. Just look at Africa and how many people groups there are or the divisions in the Arab world.

It's still a cynical attempt to divert people away from Christ's Jewish ancestry.

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But these are the Palestinian Christians who would be ostensibly of the SAME ancestry as Jesus.

With regards to sympathy to the Palestinians. I wouldn't mind supporting them if I thought they didn't want to reclaim all Israel from the river to the sea. That's a pipe dream and never gonna happen. This isn't to suggest that Israel isn't doing anything wrong, I think continuing to advance settlements doesn't help them or make the Palestinians any more likely to want to work with Israelis. Ultimately it will be up to the Palestinians to get rid of their bad terrorist sympathetic leadership if they want to have a state of their own.

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Are all Palestinians the same, then? Like the Borg?

essentialsaltes said:

Maybe we've stumbled upon the one place in the world where Christians do not face enough persecution to worry about!

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Ironic, that.

DaisyDay said:

But these are the Palestinian Christians who would be ostensibly of the SAME ancestry as Jesus.

Are all Palestinians the same, then? Like the Borg?

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Just because they are Palestinian Christians saying something, doesn't mean I'm going to agree with them .

Most Palestinians are Muslim Arabs. I am of course aware of a significant minority of Christian Palestinians.

Monk Brendan said:

This still does not change the fact that Hebrew was not a vernacular language among Jews at this time.

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When did it change back them? Because Hebrew and to an extent Yiddish is still spoken today.

hislegacy said:

When did it change back them? Because Hebrew and to an extent Yiddish is still spoken today.

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Spoken Hebrew was restored as part of the Zionist movement beginning in the late 19th century. Now it is the national language of Israel. Yiddish is a Germanic dialect which arose in medieval Eastern Europe as the language of the Ashkenazium.

Although linked to the Jews now, it was originally the blanket vocabulary of the entire 12 different houses of Israel. I am sure Moses who was fluent in Egyptian but was not Jewish but the house of Levi, no doubt used the Hebrew language to write the Torah for all 12 tribes to understand. By Jesus' time the local dialect was Aramaic but I'll bet the ancient scriptures were still in original Hebrew, and for the same reason.

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

Just because they are Palestinian Christians saying something, doesn't mean I'm going to agree with them .

Most Palestinians are Muslim Arabs. I am of course aware of a significant minority of Christian Palestinians.

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What is it about their concerns (not being able to visit Jerusalem at easter) that you disagree with?

tulc said:

But the point was the region was called "Palestine" long before Jesus was born.
tulc(just thought that should be pointed out)

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I understand, but the province wasn't called Palestine at the time of Christ, even though the word itself had been applied to the region before, and even though the province was called that afterwards. I hope I didn't sound hostile in my previous posts, and I'm sorry for being so nitpicky.

DaisyDay said:

All this arguing over historical details while ignoring the point of the tweet in question re-enforces the point:

Why do the American Christian Right-wingers support the oppression of Palestinians? Specifically, Palestinian Christians are not allowed to travel to Jerusalem for Easter. Nary a peep about this, just a focus on what language Jesus spoke and whether "Palestine" was ever formally a nation.

Note that the FoxNews article, although admitting in passing that the NYT piece was an op-ed, suspiciously does not link to it all the while accusing the paper of antisemitism for running it.

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To be honest, I had not clicked through to the article, and I should have done so before commenting. I didn't know that was going on, and honestly, it's awful that they're not allowing them to travel. This appears to be the article the original Tweeter was posting about, if anyone's interested in reading it. (x)

Since the lede of the article focuses on the "issue" of the tweet and the rabbi being upset by it, from a writing standpoint, it doesn't follow for the rest of the article to focus on that part of the event. (Not that I'm surprised they didn't release a separate article about it or something. A lot of news organizations, Fox included, seem to care more about pandering to their partisan base than about actually reporting.)

hislegacy said:

Mark 15:34 would disagree

As would Mark 5:41

Also history will show that there were no Muslims on the face of the earth during the Times of Christ. Mohammad wasn’t born yet.

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Those words are in Aramaic, if I'm not mistaken. Furthermore, "Palestinian" does not equal "Muslim". There's about 400,000 Palestinian Christians worldwide.

ThievingMagpie said:

What is it about their concerns (not being able to visit Jerusalem at easter) that you disagree with?

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I do believe they should be able to visit during Easter. I also believe the Israelis are rightfully cautious about allowing large crowds into Jerusalem during that period.

hislegacy said:

When did it change back them? Because Hebrew and to an extent Yiddish is still spoken today.

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So is Ladino, for that matter.

Modern Hebrew is not the same as the Biblical language. Modern Hebrew started about the beginning of the 1900's with the rise of Zionism.

R. Genevieve said:

I understand, but the province wasn't called Palestine at the time of Christ, even though the word itself had been applied to the region before, and even though the province was called that afterwards. I hope I didn't sound hostile in my previous posts, and I'm sorry for being so nitpicky.(snip)

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No need to apologize, but thank you for doing so on the chance it was needed!
tulc(knows we all can sometimes come across as more impatient then we actually are)

John 4:22

no "Palestine" until 100 years after the Crucifixion:

Syria Palaestina - Wikipedia

Syria Palaestina was a Roman province between 135 AD and about 390. It was established by the merger of Roman Syria and Roman Judaea, following the defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 AD.

The Faceless said:

Her agenda couldn't be anymore clear.

Rabbi blasts Ilhan Omar, NYT for pushing claim Jesus was ‘Palestinian,’ not Jewish

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There were no Palestinians at the time of Christ's earthly ministry. Jesus was a Jew from the Tribe of Judah.

The Palestinians and Muslims in general, have a mythological narrative that the Jews were never in Israel, that there was never an Exodus from Egypt and that Palestinians have been the sole residents of the region of Palestine from time immemorial.

They have to call Jesus a Palestinian in order to keep that false narrative alive. If they admit that Jesus was a Jew, that torpedoes the lie they are trying perpetuate about Jews never having lived in the Land.

To refer to Palestine in the time of Jesus would be like referring to San Francisco at the time of St. Paul. It just makes no sense, as no one was calling anyone Palestinian nor was there a "Palestine" at that time.

"Palestine" was a name that was given to the region by Hadrian in 125 AD and it comes from the word "Philistine." Hadrian named the region "Syria-P'listine" as an insult to the Jews, as the Philistines were the arch enemies of Israel during the reign of King David. To rename the land that way, meant to indicate that the Land belonged to the Philistines.

The "Palestinians" are not and have never been a nation. The Palestinians are actually Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, etc. who immigrated to Israel in the early 20th century to work for the Jews who had purchased and settled the land. Arab economies were in shambles and these Arab migrants found work irrigating deserts, building farms and cities with the Jews who were returning to their biblical homeland.

Ilhan Omar's claim is a lie and she is trying to take advantage of a perceived historical illiteracy that most have in the west regarding the Land of Israel.

Ugh. People are hair-splittingly focused on the date it became a Roman province. But Ovid and Philo wrote of Palestine and Palestinians at the time of Christ.

c. 40 AD: Philo of Alexandria, (1) Every Good Man is Free: "Moreover Palestine and Syria too are not barren of exemplary wisdom and virtue, which countries no slight portion of that most populous nation of the Jews inhabits. There is a portion of those people called Essenes."

Philo, a Jew, writes of Jews living in Palestine and Syria.

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

Just because they are Palestinian Christians saying something, doesn't mean I'm going to agree with them .

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That wasn't the point. If they are correct, shouldn't you agree with them?

Most Palestinians are Muslim Arabs. I am of course aware of a significant minority of Christian Palestinians.

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The one who tweeted the tweet in the OP is a Christian Palestinian talking about the oppression of Christian Palestinians and how the Western Religious Right ignores them in favor of blindly supporting Israel. He has a point.