Basic HTML Version
Palestinian Jesus
and descendants of ancient peo-
ples such as the Samaritans and
Assyrians.
While there is some historic
evidence that, before the time of
Christ, the Greeks may have
called the larger region Syria-
Palestine, in 63 BC the Romans
designated Syria as a province
separate from a “
Judaean
”
province. One hundred years
after the life of Christ, the Ro-
mans put down the Jewish Bar-
Kokhba revolt and Hadrian
renamed the province of Judea
as “
Syria Palestina
,” possibly in
an attempt to remove all traces
of Jewish history.
Cartographers throughout
the centuries continued to label
the region Palestine and consid-
ered it part of larger Syria. In the
early 20
th
century, as the modern
states of Jordan, Syria and
Lebanon were formed, the name
Palestine referred to a progres-
sively smaller area. The people
living in that area were both
Jews and Arabs, therefore in
1947, the UN passed a resolu-
tion to divide the area left of
Palestine into a Jewish state and
an Arab state.
The Jews accepted the plan
and declared statehood, so the
Jewish inhabitants of the land
became “Israeli,” leaving the des-
ignation “Palestinian” to the
Arab inhabitants. Hence, today,
the term Palestinian describes
an Arab Muslim people with a
small minority of Arab Chris-
tians.
What does the Bible say?
The New Testament gospels
describe in fascinating detail the
Jewish lineage of Jesus as well as
that of his relatives, the family of
John the Baptist. Mary, the
mother of Jesus, was from the
royal lineage of King David.
The gospels also describe
Bethlehem as the city of David,
in the region of Judea. While
Bethlehem was within the realm
of the Roman Empire, nowhere
in scripture was Jesus ever con-
sidered Roman. Nor was he ever
referred to as Syrian or as Pales-
tinian. To force an identity on
Jesus, based on modern geo-po-
litical labels, is a gross manipula-
tion of the facts.
Jesus was a Jew. He did not
die for the modern Palestinian
political cause but was the sacri-
ficial lamb, according to Jewish
sacramental law, who died for
the sins of the world. In Revela-
tion 22:16-17, Jesus affirms his
eternal Jewish lineage when he
says of himself, “I am the Root
and the Offspring of David, the
Bright and Morning Star …. let
him who thirsts come.”
Susan Michael is US Director of
the International Christian
Embassy Jerusalem
www.icejusa.org, creator of
IsraelAnswers.com.
From
PREVIOUS
page
WORLD
39 January 2014
goodnewsfl.org