No. of Recommendations: 6
So is the Exodus not historically true as it is written? Deliverance from slavery (presumably in Goshen) in Egypt not true?
Yet it is apparently taken as indisputable truth that Yahweh allocated Israel as The Promised Land and that's the land that is taken to be their indigenous home.
Right? Shocking, isn't it - that a collection of oral traditions passed among goatherders that was later written down thousands of years ago might not be historically accurate?
There are some deeply religious folks (not all of them Jewish!) who genuinely take the bible as indisputable truth. Obviously, I don't think it is - and I don't think that's considered much of an argument in international law or many other circles.
As a 3rd (or 4th?) generation immigrant American with great grandparents hailing from Ireland, England and Germany, I make no claim to any indigenous land and wouldn't care if I was transplanted elsewhere as long as I could have the same standard of living!
Fair enough - but not everyone feels that way. I turn again to Japan as an example (mostly because I don't think most people have a lot of strong opinions about the existence of the country of Japan). A 3rd generation Japanese-American who's perfectly happy living in the United States but deeply connected to their Japanese heritage might have no desire to emigrate to Japan....but they might care very deeply if one were to propose that Japan should no longer be allowed to exist as a separate nation. You might personally not have much of a connection to Ireland, England or Germany - or even the U.S., if you were talking about prospectively being transplanted elsewhere. But a broad swath of humanity, and I daresay the majority, tends to regard themselves as members of a "people" (whether that's a national, ethnic, religious, or all of the above group), and draw meaning and importance from their connection to that group beyond their experience as an individual.
