Marc Turnage: Is Israel Still Israel?

Is the modern state of Israel the same Israel you read about in the Bible? The short answer is no, and it is also not a completely different thing. There is a real, unbroken line in the Jewish people and their worship. But the borders of the modern state have never matched biblical Israel one to one. Getting this right starts with reading the Bible in its own world before you bring today's headlines to it.

Why should you ask "What did it say?" before "What does it say to me?"

Because the first question keeps you from reading your own world into the text. If you open your Bible and start with "What is this saying to me?" you are already off track. Start with what the passage said to the people who first heard it. Then ask what God is saying to you through it and what you should do about it.

Bible scholar Marc Turnage applies the same rule to history. You can't put on modern lenses and retrofit them onto the ancient world. When people argue about Israel today, they often carry modern ideas of borders, nation states, and ethnicity back into the Bible. They get it wrong in both directions.

There are two common errors. One says biblical Israel and modern Israel have nothing to do with each other. The other says they are exactly the same thing. On Beyond Sunday, Turnage told host Pastor Sean Sloan that both are mistakes. The reason has to do with how the ancient world defined a people.

How did the ancient world define a people?

In the ancient world, a people was defined mainly by worship. Gods were understood to belong to particular peoples, and a people was bound together by land, law, and practice. Bloodline mattered, but nobody was running DNA tests. That is why Rahab, a Canaanite, could become part of Israel.

Ethnicity, in this ancient sense, means belonging to a people through shared worship and way of life, not only through ancestry. Keep that definition in mind and much of the modern argument looks different.

Turnage points to Paul in Athens as a clear example. Paul could easily have told the Athenians that Zeus and the God of Israel were the same deity under different names. He refused.

For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship, and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

Acts 17:23

Paul would not water it down. The God he called every idol worshiper to follow was the Creator of the universe and, at the same time, the God of Israel. He went on to say exactly that.

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.

Acts 17:24

Is there a real connection between biblical Israel and the Jewish people today?

Yes. Turnage calls the claim that there is no connection badly misinformed. Religious Jews today still pray prayers that go back to the time of Jesus and Paul. Versions of some of them appear in the New Testament, including the prayer Jesus taught His disciples.

Think about your own faith. As a follower of Jesus, you likely feel a living connection to the first believers in the book of Acts. You feel it even though the church has changed shape over two thousand years. In the same way, a straight line runs from first century Jews like Jesus and Paul to the Jewish community today. People joining that community over the centuries does not break the line. You see that kind of joining in the New Testament, too.

Do the modern borders match biblical Israel?

No, and they never have at any point in history. Even inside the Bible, the answer depends on the period. The northern kingdom of Israel never included Judah, and it never included Jerusalem. So when someone says "Israel," it is fair to ask which time they mean.

Turnage also notes that the names on the map carry their own history, much of which rarely makes the news:

• The name Palestina came from Rome. After the Jewish revolts of the second century, the emperor Hadrian banned Jews from Jerusalem. He renamed the city Aelia Capitolina and renamed the province of Judea "Palestina," after the Philistines.
• Words have changed meaning. Under the British Mandate, from about 1920 to 1946, every person born in the land, whether Jew, Arab, Christian, or Muslim, was called a Palestinian. That is not what the word usually means today.
• Religious Jews kept returning. For centuries, religious Jews moved back to the land. Every Passover, Jewish families still say, "Next year in Jerusalem."
• The whole region was reshaped. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and two world wars displaced millions of people and created new states across the Middle East.

None of this settles every modern debate, but it shows how much a simple story leaves out. People who erase the link between the Bible and the Jewish people today are wrong. People who drag ancient Israel straight onto a modern map are also wrong.

What does this mean for how you read the news and your Bible?

It means slowing down. Don't take a headline and read it back into Scripture, or take a verse and paste it onto a headline. First ask what the text meant in its own time and place. Most of us have never been to the land, and much of what we know comes from cable news. Humility and good history help you hold convictions without flattening a complicated story.

Common questions

Is modern Israel the same as Israel in the Bible?

Not exactly, and not completely different either. There is real continuity in the Jewish people, their prayers, and their worship. The borders of the modern state have never matched biblical Israel one to one, and the Bible's own borders changed from period to period.

Why did Paul refuse to say Zeus and God were the same?

In the ancient world, gods were tied to particular peoples. Paul was clear that the God he preached was not one more local deity with a different name. He was the Creator of all things and the God of Israel, calling every nation to Himself.

Where did the name Palestine come from?

According to Marc Turnage, the Roman emperor Hadrian renamed the province of Judea "Palestina" in the second century, after the Philistines. He did it at the same time he banned Jews from Jerusalem and renamed the city Aelia Capitolina.

How should Christians read the Bible when thinking about Israel today?

Start with what the text meant to its first readers, in its own time and place. Be careful about reading modern ideas of nations and borders back into Scripture, and about pasting ancient texts directly onto modern maps.