Stanley Scism

Q: What do you think of John Hagee’s views on Israel?

A: God’s promises to Abraham do not apply to the modern nation-state of Israel because:

First, Abraham’s sons were more than Isaac. For that matter, Semitic people are more than just Abraham’s family, so anti-Semiticism would apply as much to criticism of Arabs as it would to criticism of Israel.

Second, Israel’s people intermarried with many other people, so they are not pure-bred sons of Abraham, or even of Jacob. Joseph married an Egyptian, Moses a Midianite, Salmon a Canaanite, Boaz a Moabite, and eventually most of the population moved away captive except the poorest, who married the people the Assyrians moved in. Many people of ten tribes were lost, intermarried with local populations.

Third, the promises were based on faith—most Jews in Israel are atheists. Abraham’s real children are of his faith, so the promises apply to believers in One God, not to mere physical descendants, which in any case are hard to trace over millennia.