The Two-Hundred-Fifty-Fifth (All Israel)

I hope you’re doing well!  We’ve got quite an interesting topic this week.  It’s something that I believe is a key puzzle piece to understanding a lot of things in scripture, including some of Paul’s views, eschatological (end times) things, and overall YHWH’s plan for man.

We’ll start with a few caveats, or “full disclosure” items, since I believe that’s necessary for this particular topic.  It can be quite a polarizing one for some, and I want to make sure there’s no misunderstanding as to how I came across this interpretation, the somewhat limited references I’ve reviewed (and why I think that limitation is ok for me to agree with the interpretation), and additional references that can be reviewed.  It’s quite an exciting topic, so let’s get into it!

The first background item is that I found this through a video from a youtube account that recently posted a podcast episode created by Dr. Michael Heiser (you can find the original podcast here).  If you don’t know who that is, he was an Old Testament scholar and was looked to by a wide variety of groups for his expertise as related to whatever field that group was investigating.  For example, he appeared in Ancient Aliens Debunked as a biblical and ancient near eastern texts expert, as well as for his view of disagreeing with those who claim the world was visited by other-world beings in the distant past.  He also has published many books on a wide variety of subjects related to scripture.

Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that I completely agree with everything that Dr. Heiser had written or believed in his life.  I’m simply giving you the background on how I came to the topic at hand this week.  Furthermore, it really wasn’t his view to begin with.  He actually stated at some point in the podcast that his view aligned with someone else’s, a man by the name of Jason Staples, and at that point in the podcast I actually stopped listening and went to find Jason’s writings about this topic.

Jason’s view about this topic was actually the result of the study he did for his dissertation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  It ended up being an almost 800 page dissertation, and you can find it here, if you so desire to read it.  Obviously, I did not read his whole dissertation, which is the second caveat I feel compelled to mention.  

He subsequently condensed his dissertation down into an article which was published in the Journal of Biblical Literature.  Unfortunately, in order for someone to gain access to that article they must purchase it.  So, I kept searching, and what I found was a series of three posts (Post 1, Post 2, Post 3) he wrote on a blog that boiled down the key points in his dissertation regarding what Paul meant when he wrote the words “all Israel” (Romans 11:26).

Since these three posts were written by Jason himself, I’m comfortable with the fact that I have not read either his dissertation or his JBL article but still have come to accurately understand his view.  If it was someone else writing a summary of his interpretation, I’d be less confident in that, and likely this would have just turned into an interesting nugget that I may or may not have use for in future studies.  I have to say though, regarding Jason’s view, it’s one of those things that when I read it, it just made sense and connected so many different things together in my mind.  Have you ever had that when reading things like this?  It’s quite exciting!

Hopefully, I haven’t lost your interest just yet!  I know sometimes these things can get quite boring, especially since I haven’t really even got into the topic yet!  I just felt it was necessary to give you that background so you’re aware of the foundation we’re working with.

As alluded to earlier, Jason’s dissertation was about the portion of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome in which he states that all Israel will be saved once the fullness of the Gentiles has come in (Romans 11:25-27).  In this statement, Paul also quotes Isaiah as a basis for his view (Isaiah 27:9, 59:20-21).  Unfortunately, as with many of Paul’s writings, things are not quite as plain as we would like them to be, and as a result, many different interpretations have come about.  

Before getting too much further though, I want to make sure you have a better understanding of this passage and its context.  Paul had just finished talking about the grafting in of Gentiles to the “olive root” of Yeshua based on their belief in Him, a topic we’ve studied previously.  Paul was trying to get the believers in Rome to understand that while non-Jews were now able to receive the blessings that were previously limited to Israel, they shouldn’t look at the unbelieving Jews as being less than them due to their unbelief causing them to be cast out of those blessings (Romans 11:1-24).  He said the unbelieving Jews were not rejected by YHWH, as evidenced by the fact that he himself was an Israelite but have come into the same blessings and salvation of believing Gentiles.

Paul even warns the congregation in Rome that they could easily be removed from the olive root just as the unbelieving Jews were, so they should be wary of becoming arrogant about their status, or in this case arrogant about the lack of spiritual status for the unbelieving Jews.  Then we come to the part where Paul talks about a “mystery:” that all Israel will be saved once the fullness, or the full number of, the Gentiles comes in.  And this is where believers have developed various views to try and explain that.

You may or may not have heard about “replacement theology,” but this view is one that is associated with this passage from Paul.  As I mentioned earlier, this is a polarizing topic, because the view essentially states that since Yeshua’s death, any believer in Him is actually considered Israel and there is no longer an Israel as a specific ethnic group when it comes to the prophecies and promises written about Israel in scripture.  In other words, those who hold this view see all yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecies regarding Israel as applying to Yeshua’s ekklesia (church) rather than a group of people that descended from the tribes of Israel.  As a result, they call the church “spiritual Israel.”

The reason this is so polarizing is not just because you have those that disagree with that interpretation, but also because once you make this blanket assumption you run into some issues in interpreting various things in scripture.  We don’t have time to get into those this week, but just know that there are things that a believer can’t agree with unless they are just blindly taking a hard line in accepting that view.  Additionally, this view contradicts, quite harshly, with the eschatological view that a majority of believers, especially scholarly believers, hold: dispensationalism.  The reason being that if there is no future prophecy regarding an ethnic Israel, the whole idea of having a period of time for “Jacob’s trouble,” in which ethnic Israel goes through tribulation and as a result comes to Yeshua, doesn’t make sense (Jeremiah 30:7).  The church being spiritual Israel would mean that it would go through this time of trouble, but the trouble would not be necessary because the whole point of it, according to scripture, is to bring people to YHWH.

If you’re not familiar with that view, or you’ve never heard of the time of Jacob’s trouble, don’t worry.  It’s not pertinent to this week’s study.  I only mention it to give you an idea of why the view of replacement theology is so contentious.  The time of Jacob’s trouble is one of the key aspects of the dispensational view, and a lot of believers hold that view.  

The replacement theology belief is really one of four views regarding the fate of Israel in scripture, of which it is the most radical.  As Holy Spirit-led studies tend to do, this week is tied to a previous study we did regarding the seemingly absolute language used in scripture.  Believers have attempted to reconcile Paul’s use of the word “all” in relation to the salvation of Israel, and have come up with the idea that he was talking about a spiritual Israel, formed by the church, which replaced ethnic Israel.

The other three views become less and less radical, and it isn’t really necessary for our purposes to get into them, but Jason does summarize them in his first blog post.  Suffice it to say, all four of these views seek to explain who Paul was referring to when he says “Israel” in this particular passage, but all have their own issues.  There are things that can’t be reconciled with other scriptural truths, or at least with things that must be true given the compilation of certain verses across scripture.

Getting back to the passage at hand, Paul’s choice in Old Testament references doesn’t give us any better idea of what he’s talking about.  He simply quotes verses that talk about redemption which don’t even mention Israel.  They use the name Jacob.

This, however, is one of the things that confirms Jason’s view.  At least to me.  I’ve always found it interesting that there are places in scripture, after which Jacob’s name was changed to Israel by Yeshua (Genesis 32:28), where the name Jacob is used vice Israel.  This is particularly true in quite a few prophecies, two of which are the ones Paul referenced.  I’ve tried to figure out why Jacob is used vice Israel in certain places, but have yet to come to a final conclusion.

I believe one of the reasons the name Jacob is used is that the particular verse is referring to an unbelieving, or apostate, Israel, and the view presented by Jason seems to confirm that.  Essentially, Jason states that when Paul uses the name Israel, he is still referring to ethnic Israel, but not specifically the Jews, as some have come to believe.  He is referring to all twelve tribes, which includes the ten tribes that were dispersed among the nations as a result of YHWH’s judgment for their sinfulness.

You may be able to see where this is going by now, but one of the reasons why this view just makes sense to me is that it aligns with something we’ve mentioned in previous studies a very long time ago.  There is no longer any way to identify anyone in the world as to whether or not they are descendants of the ten tribes.  There are no genealogical records to read, let alone genetic material to use modern science to analyze, in order to determine a person’s relation to those tribes (and, I would argue to some extent, the two tribes that weren’t dispersed at that time…but that’s for another study).

We came to this conclusion independently, many years ago, and said we might even be a descendant of Israel and not even know it!  Then, Jason comes along and does an in-depth analysis, which includes this fact as a part of coming to a conclusion for Paul’s use of the name Israel.  That’s confirmation to me, and in my mind I include it with the rest of Jason’s justification to bolster its truthfulness.

Along those lines, Jason mentions some questions that have to be answered if we are to come to an understanding of who Paul was referring to.  For example, why in this portion of his writing did Paul even use the name Israel?  Many other places in his writing, and even earlier in this letter to the believers in Rome, he uses the term “Jew” vice Israel.  Why now did he change to say Israel?  Not only that, but in this portion of the letter he uses Israel more than he does in any other of his writings.

Jason also goes to extra-biblical writings in his analysis.  One of which is the writings of Josephus, whom we’ve referenced in previous studies.  If you recall, Josephus was a Jew that actually lived, and played a semi-prominent role in, the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD.  It turns out, Josephus also did not use Israel and Jew interchangeably.  When writing the history of the Jewish people, he stops using Israel about midway through and starts using Jew.  This change in usage aligns with the period of time where the nation of Israel had split into two kingdoms: the ten tribes in the Northern Kingdom, and the remaining two tribes, which included Judah.

This is a crucial thing that Jason identifies, since based on when they lived, we have two independent writers that use these terms separately vice interchangeably.  Paul lived until around 64AD, and Josephus was born around 37AD.  In Josephus’ writing, he actually gives an explanation, through his description of historical events, as to why he started using Jew vice Israel, and we can safely assume the Paul had the same basis for his usage.  They both grew up as unbelieving Jews, learning the history and culture of their people.

This major historical event for Israel is actually a basis for a number of prophecies in scripture which talk about the reunification of Israel.  That’s one of the exciting parts about this explanation for Paul’s use of the name Israel.  If Jason’s view is correct, and I believe it is, that means these prophecies are actually fulfilled in Yeshua’s ekklesia.  When you think about it, this almost has to be the fulfillment.  Since there’s no way to identify descendants of the ten dispersed tribes, how else can they be gathered together with the other two tribes of Israel?  

This view then reaches out to other prophecies and gets my mind wondering if this is a clue as to their fulfillment.  For example, when interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, where the legs and feet were iron mixed with clay and the mountain not cut out by human hands (Yeshua’s Kingdom) smashes the statue at its feet (Daniel 2:34), I always assumed the ten toes were associated with the ten crowns on the beast of Revelation (Revelation 13:1, 17:12).  What if the toes actually represented the ten dispersed tribes which were thoroughly mixed in with the nations at that point and were essentially all ruled by the Roman Empire when Yeshua created His kingdom?    

The real crux of Jason’s view for me though, is his finding in the Old Testament regarding the fullness of the Gentiles.  Remember, the word used for Gentiles could also be translated to nations from the original words in both Hebrew and Greek.  When seeking to understand the term “fullness of the Gentiles/nations,” Jason found that it could only be found in one place in the scriptures Paul studied all his life (the Old Testament).  

That fact is interesting enough, but the most interesting part?  According to the original Hebrew, the verse states that Ephraim’s descendants will become the fullness of the nations (Genesis 48:19).  And guess what the name Ephraim was used to refer to later on in scripture and especially prophecy?  That’s right, the northern kingdom of Israel!  The same ten tribes that were dispersed through YHWH’s judgment!

I hope you have found this week’s study to be at least a fraction as exciting as I found it!  I’m just beginning to look at all the different ways we can use it to help us understand not just Paul’s writing but all of scripture and YHWH’s plan for man.  I encourage you to read Jason’s blog posts linked above and seek out that understanding yourself!  Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!

-Rob and Sara Gene