The story of Israel begins not with a nation, but with a man who would not let go of God. In the midnight struggle by the Jabbok River, Jacob wrestled with the divine until daybreak, and there received a new name: Israel — “the one who strives with God” (Genesis …

The Olive Tree: Grafting, Not Replacing Paul’s olive tree metaphor (Romans 11) is essential to understanding Israel’s role in God’s plan. Here’s the picture: Christianity = A Jewish Denomination Throughout history, many Jewish movements and sects have rallied around leaders they believed to be the Messiah. In Paul’s day, during …

The word Palestine echoes with ancient sounds, but its political sting comes from Rome. In 135 AD, after crushing the last Jewish revolt under Bar Kokhba, Emperor Hadrian sought to erase Judea not only from the map but from memory. With one stroke, he renamed the land “Syria Palaestina,” a …

I remember vividly the day Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. Thirty years ago, I was a child in Tel Aviv. I recall the shock, the grief, and the overwhelming sense that something irreversible had occurred. The ideological war in Israel was at its height. It was different from the climate surrounding …

Few verses have been more misread than Paul’s declaration in Galatians 3:28–29: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s …

God’s decree about atonement isn’t vague or peripheral — it sits at the heart of Moses’ Torah: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes …

Does the New Testament water down the Torah and God’s standards? Does “grace” give people permission to sin? Those charges get repeated a lot, but they rest on a pair of mix-ups: (1) confusing Moses’ Torah with later rabbinic tradition, and (2) assuming that Yeshua relaxed the Law when, in …

Honest readers deserve more than drive-by objections. Many so-called “contradictions” dissolve as soon as we (1) read precisely, (2) remember there were multiple textual traditions in Second Temple Judaism, and (3) let ancient authors speak in their own literary conventions. Below are the top popular claims (collected from rabbis’ articles, …

Accusations that the New Testament “forces” Israel’s Scriptures to say what they do not say are not new. What’s often missed is that the New Testament’s way of reading the Tanakh is thoroughly Jewish — riffing on motifs, echoing earlier texts, and weaving together promise and fulfillment the way Israel’s …

The charge is common: “The New Testament tosses Israel aside and replaces her with the Church.” Many repeat it without opening the book they critique. But when you actually read the relevant passages, the story sounds very different — deeply Jewish, fiercely opposed to boasting, and saturated with covenant hope. …