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Sunday, March 11, 2012

The British-Jewish "homeland"; Christians and Jews today (Frederick Danker)

Most people of today don't have any idea how the modern nation of "Israel" came about for the return of the Jews. They were largely empowered to replace the Palestinians by the British.  There are numerous articles in Wikipedia: Balfour Declaration, Herbert Samuel, and Palestine Zionist Executive. Kevin Phillips, a former Republican strategist, wrote the following in his book American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (Penguin, 2007) on page 256 pertaining to world events surrounding World War I:
More than any other European people, nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century Britons spoke of resettling Jews in the historic land of Israel.
Mr. Phillips does not write from a Christian perspective, but Franz Pieper commented numerous times about the British, the Jews, and the resettlement of Jews in their "homeland".   I hope to bring out some of Pieper's comments in Lehre und Wehre as events unfolded during those early years of the 20th Century.
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On another note, it was announced in a St. Louis newspaper that Frederick Danker passed away, a former professor at the St. Louis Concordia Seminary.  The article introduces him:
...along with most of the faculty at Concordia Seminary here, were fired for what the college president called their liberal teachings.
The firing was associated with those who started Seminex in 1974.  But Danker, according to the article was:
...a prolific author and a world-renowned Bible scholar. His most famous work, published after 30 years of research, is an acclaimed Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament.
So why am I mentioning this in relation to the Jews?  Because Frederick Danker, according to this article, had this to say about the word "Jews" in the New Testament:
For example, the Rev. Danker investigated centuries of Gospel readings about Jesus' final hours that said "the Jews" called for Jesus to be crucified. That led some Christians to blame the Jewish people for Jesus' death, the Rev. Danker said.
But he determined that "Jews" should be translated as "Judeans," referring to the proper name of the people who then lived in southern Palestine.
"Over the centuries, the word 'Jew' in translations got so distorted and caused so much unnecessary acrimony, causing such tragedies between Christians and Jews," the Rev. Danker told the Post-Dispatch in 2001, in an interview about his lexicon.
We see from this that Frederick Danker is as responsible as anyone for causing Christians of today to doubt the condemnations of the Bible regarding the unbelief of the Jews... and for causing the condemnations of Martin Luther for his writings against the Jews. And finally it was reported that Frederick Danker spent "...12 years working 14-hour days on the lexicon". How hard he worked to prove his scholarliness and that we did not understand our Bible. I would not deny the usefulness of a scholarly approach to Biblical studies, but only when coupled with a spiritual understanding. And so Danker's (and all modern biblical scholars) great works would have to be approached with great caution because of his lack of spiritual understanding. Danker does not hold a candle to Luther, Walther, and Pieper! They believed God at His Word... and were scholarly!

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