People often ask whether the modern State of Israel is truly “Israel” in the biblical sense, as if there were some distinction between the two. But the reality is straightforward: the modern State of Israel is Israel. It is the same people, the same nation, and the same story continuing in history.
The Jewish people never disappeared after the first century. They were scattered, but they remained a real, identifiable nation with a shared faith, a shared Scripture, a shared memory, and a shared ... morePeople often ask whether the modern State of Israel is truly “Israel” in the biblical sense, as if there were some distinction between the two. But the reality is straightforward: the modern State of Israel is Israel. It is the same people, the same nation, and the same story continuing in history.
The Jewish people never disappeared after the first century. They were scattered, but they remained a real, identifiable nation with a shared faith, a shared Scripture, a shared memory, and a shared longing for the land God promised to their fathers. Passover is the single most continually celebrated holiday in history. For nearly two thousand years, Jews have prayed facing toward Jerusalem and ended their Passover meals with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.” No other people on earth kept such a continuous identity while living all over the world.
When the Jewish people returned to their ancestral land and reestablished sovereignty in 1948, this was not the creation of something new. It was the restoration of something ancient. The people who came back were descendants of the same people who once lived in the land under David and Solomon. Had some Gentiles converted and joined them over the years? Yes, of course, just as they had during biblical times.
No other nation on earth has ever been exiled for centuries and then returned to rebuild its homeland. Yet this is exactly what the prophets said would happen, that God would scatter Israel among the nations and later gather them back to their land.
There is no biblical or historical reason to separate “Israel” of Scripture from “Israel” today.
