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Where Is Israel Located In The Bible

Jebus Zion City Of David

“Jerusalem Surrounded by Mountains” (Episode 3) – City of David: Bringing the Bible to Life

An ancient settlement of Jerusalem, founded as early as the Bronze Age on the hill above the Gihon Spring, was, according to the Bible named Jebus.). Called the “Fortress of Zion” , it was renamed by David as the City of David, and was known by this name in antiquity. Another name, “Zion“, initially referred to a distinct part of the city, but later came to signify the city as a whole and to represent the biblical Land of Israel.

Map Drawn By Student For First Exam In Introduction To Biblical Literature

On the first exam in Introduction to Biblical Literature, students may be asked to hand draw amap of the eastern Mediterranean and indicate the location of several places. Check the study guide to see what the expectations are for your particular class.

Maps will not be graded on either artistic quality or exactness to scale. Below is an exampleof what will meet the expectations. As you can see, it’s not the most precise map that’s everbeen drawn. However, it does indicate to me that the person drawing it would be able to point toall of the places on a professionaly-drawn printed map of that area of the world.

— Howard Culbertson

Need answers? The Old Testament has them.

How can I know what God expects of us? What plan doesGod have for the world? These questions and others are answered in the Old Testament.

The Bible Tells Us There Were 12 Tribes Of Israel Find Out Where The 12 Tribes Are Today And Why They Are Important In Understanding Prophecy

The famous Black Obelisk in the British Museum includes a pictorial etching of King Jehu of Israel paying tribute to King Shalmaneser of Assyria. After the Assyrian captivity, where are the 12 tribes of Israel today?

When God called Abraham, He promised him that because of his obedience, his descendants would become a great nation and that in him all nations of the earth would be blessed .

The physical blessings God gave Abraham would continue through his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob, also called Israel, whose 12 sons were the progenitors of the 12 tribes of Israel. There was also a spiritual promise that all nations would be blessed through Jesus Christ, who was a descendant of Abraham .

The 12 sons of Jacob, from whom the tribes took their names, were:

  • Reuben.
  • Joseph.
  • Benjamin.
  • Even though the Levites were not counted among the tribes that received the larger land allotments , there were still 12 tribes that did. At this time, Josephs two sonsEphraim and Manassehwere also considered sons of Jacob and tribes .

    Read Also: Chronological Order Of The Bible

    Following The Clues To Trace The 12 Tribes Of Israel

    To follow the history of the 12 tribes of Israel after the fall of their nation to the Assyrians in 721 B.C., we must recognize the path of their deportation and identify them by the names given them by their conquerors.To follow the history of the 12 tribes of Israel after the fall of their nation to the Assyrians in 721 B.C., we must recognize the path of their deportation and identify them by the names given them by their conquerors. Various websites and books have a great deal of information connecting the 12 tribes of Israel to the nations of Western Europe and the United States today, and it would be impossible to cover all this material in this answer. But here is some of the documentation.

    When the Assyrians conquered Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, they transported many of the Israelites to Assyria, and placed them in Halah and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes . Shortly after the Israelites came into these lands, scholars note the appearance of peoples in this area called Cimmerians and Scythians. The Assyrians also called them Khumri, Ghomri, Gimiri and Iskuza .

    King David And King Solomon

    King David ruled the region around 1000 B.C. His son, who became King Solomon, is credited with building the first holy temple in ancient Jerusalem. In about 931 B.C., the area was divided into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

    Around 722 B.C., the Assyrians invaded and destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. In 568 B.C., the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the first temple, which was replaced by a second temple in about 516 B.C.

    For the next several centuries, the land of modern-day Israel was conquered and ruled by various groups, including the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Fatimids, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians, Mamelukes, Islamists and others.

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    Fall Of Judah & Babylonian Exile

    Ultimately, it wasn’t the Assyrian Empire that destroyed Judah. Nearly a century after Sennacherib’s unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem, a Babylonian king named Nebuchadnezzar II conquered much of Assyria’s former empire and laid siege to Jerusalem, taking the city in 587 B.C., destroying the First Temple and deporting many of Judah’s inhabitants to Babylonia. Both the Hebrew Bible and cuneiform tablets written in Nebuchadnezzar II’s time tell of the events that took place.

    The fate of the Ark of the Covenant, which contained tablets recording the 10 Commandments, is unknown. Some ancient writers say the ark was brought back to Babylon, while other suggest that it was hidden away. In the millennia after the destruction of the First Temple a number of stories were spun telling tales of the location of the lost Ark.

    In recent years, a number of cuneiform tablets have emerged from Iraq revealing details of the lives of Jewish deportees who lived at a village called l-Yahdu which means the “village of Judea.” Many of the tablets were purchased by private collectors on the antiquities market, raising concerns that some of the tablets may have been recently looted.

    The tablets were “written by Babylonian scribes on behalf of the Judean families that lived in and around l-Yahdu,” wrote Kathleen Abraham, a professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium, in a paper she wrote for an exhibition catalog, “Light and Shadows: The Story of Iran and the Jews” .

    Where Is Mount Sinai Located In The Bible

    Mount Sinais exact location is disputed among many. Early Christians identified Mount Serbal, the fifth largest mountain in Egypt, as the landmarks location. Travel further southeast to find the highest mountain in Egypt, Mount Catherine. The historian Josephus named this spot as the landmark in the sixth century. Further north is the Sinai Peninsula where Christians named Mount Sinais location in the third century AD.

    Others believe Mount Sinai isnt in Egypt at all, but instead Saudi Arabia since Moses traveled that way during his exile. Another opinion places the landmark at Har Karkam in Israel. This belief is held by Emmanuel Anatim, a modern archeologist who claims biblical art resides within the 2,700-foot ridge. In conclusion, there are many speculated locations as the location of Mount Sinai.

    Also Check: What Is The Chronological Order Of The Bible

    The Church And House Of Peter

    Archaeologists uncovered an early Christian home in Capernaum thought to have been the home of Peter. Jesus cured Peters mother-in-law here and is thought to have lived in this house while in Capernaum. This is the site where Christ cured a paralytic who was lowered in through the roof . After Jesus death the home became a place of worship. Several architectural changes distinguish it from other homes. In the 5th century, an octagonal church was built here to preserve the remains of the Insula Sacra. Many inscriptions in Greek, Armenian, Estrangelo, and Latin are on the ancient stones. There now stands a modern hexagonal Franciscan church over the spot thought to have been Peters house. There is a glass floor so that you can still see the ancient original church below.

    Despite having performed many miracles in Capernaum Jesus was disappointed in the villages lack of faith and eventually cursed Capernaum. Capernaum is one of Israels most sacred Christian pilgrimage sites where believers can sit on the stone benches in the ancient synagogue where Jesus would have sat and walk the streets he would have walked. In 2000 Pope John Paul II visited this sacred Christian site.

    Jesus Is The Fulfillment Of God’s Promise

    Shechem: Jacob’s Well, Joseph’s Tomb, Mt. Gerizim, Mt. Ebal, Christ & the Woman at the Well

    When Jesus Christ arrived on the scene in Israel, he ushered in a new covenant available to all people, both Jews and Gentiles alike. At the conclusion of Hebrews 11, the famous “Hall of Faith” passage, the author notes that the Old Testament figures “were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.” They may have received the land, but they still looked to the future for the Messiahthat Messiah is Jesus Christ.

    Jesus is the fulfillment of all God’s promises, including the promised land:

    For all of Gods promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding Yes! And through Christ, our Amen ascends to God for his glory.

    Anyone who believes in Christ as Savior immediately becomes a citizen of the kingdom of God. Still, Jesus told Pontius Pilate,

    My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.

    Today, believers abide in Christ and he abides in us in an inner, earthly “promised land.” At death, Christians pass into heaven, the eternal promised land.

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    The 12 Tribes Of Israel Divide Into Two Kingdoms

    After they spent time as slaves in Egypt, God delivered Abrahams descendants and allowed them to form the ancient nation of Israel. Over time, 10 of the tribes formed the northern kingdom of Israel and two of the tribes formed the southern kingdom of Judah. Due to their breaking of His laws, God allowed the northern kingdom to be taken captive by the Assyrians and, later, the southern kingdom to be taken by the Babylonians.

    After 70 years, many of the captives of Judah returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the city. Because of this and their renewed diligence in keeping Gods Sabbath, their history continued. However, the northern 10 tribes largely disappeared from history. As a result, they are sometimes referred to as the lost 10 tribes of Israel. But while their nation disappeared, the descendants of these people continued to exist.

    Jerusalem As Capital Of Israel

    On 5 December 1949, Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, proclaimed Jerusalem as Israel’s “eternal” and “sacred” capital, and eight days later specified that only the war had “compelled” the Israeli leadership “to establish the seat of Government in Tel Aviv”, while “for the State of Israel there has always been and always will be one capital only Jerusalem the Eternal”, and that after the war, efforts had been ongoing for creating the conditions for “the Knesset… returning to Jerusalem.” This indeed took place, and since the beginning of 1950 all branches of the Israeli governmentlegislative, judicial, and executivehave resided there, except for the Ministry of Defense, which is located at HaKirya in Tel Aviv. At the time of Ben Gurion’s proclamations and the ensuing Knesset vote of 24 January 1950, Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan, and thus the proclamation only applied to West Jerusalem.

    In April 2017, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced it viewed Western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in the context of UN-approved principles which include the status of East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. On 15 December 2018, Australia officially recognized West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but said their embassy in Tel Aviv would stay until a two-state resolution was settled.

    Government precinct and national institutions

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    Historians Link The Cimmerians With The Gauls Or Celts Of Northwest Europe

    Historian Samuel Lysons linked some of the people who populated northwest Europe with these Cimmerians. As he put it, the Cimmerians seemed to be the same people with the Gauls or Celts under a different name .

    English historian and scholar George Rawlinson wrote: We have reasonable grounds for regarding the Gimirri, or Cimmerians, who first appeared on the confines of Assyria and Media in the seventh century B.C., and the Sacae of the Behistun Rock, nearly two centuries later, as identical with the Beth-Khumree of Samaria, or the Ten Tribes of the House of Israel.

    Danish linguistic scholar Anne Kristensen concurs, stating: There is scarcely reason, any longer, to doubt the exciting and verily astonishing assertion propounded by the students of the Ten Tribes that the Israelites deported from Bit Humria, of the House of Omri, are identical with the Gimirraja of the Assyrian sources. Everything indicates that Israelite deportees did not vanish from the picture but that, abroad, under new conditions, they continued to leave their mark on history .

    The Bible likewise indicates that the ancient Israelites would eventually migrate in a northwesterly direction away from Jerusalem. According to a prophecy yet to be fulfilled, Gods Servant will restore the preserved ones of Israel , and these peoples will come from the north and the west back to Jerusalem .

    Violence Erupts As Palestinians Protest Trump Action On Jerusalem

    Map of Israel and Judah, 880 BC.

    The argument that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel is also rejected by many of the Christians who live there or in the neighboring territories. Most are ethnic Arabs, and they may feel less kinship with Jews. In a joint letter to Trump before he announced the policy change on Jerusalem, leaders of local Christian churches cautioned that it could bring “increased hatred, conflict, violence and suffering.”

    Some evangelical leaders in the United States who work closely with Arab Christians in Israel and the Palestinian territories also worry about the ramifications of the Jerusalem policy change. Travis Wussow, vice president for public policy at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called Trump’s declaration “important” but warned that many Arab Christians are “concerned” about it.

    “As the Middle East absorbs this news, let’s pray for the peace of Jerusalem, pray for the safety and flourishing of our Arab brothers and sisters in Christ, and pray our brothers and sisters in majority-Muslim contexts,” he wrote.

    Among the U.S. evangelical leaders who disagreed with Trump’s move was Gary Burge, a New Testament scholar at Calvin Theological Seminary in Michigan.

    “For many evangelicals, the modern state of Israel is a revival of the Israel they read about in their Bibles,” he says. “But when you build a bridge from biblical Israel to modern Israel, there is an enormous gap in history and theology.”

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    Not What You Would Expect To See

    The radar surveys were operated at the site by the Oregon-based Topa 3D who were shocked at the results.

    This is not what you would expect to see if this site is just a solid block of rock or an accumulation of random debris from a mudflow, Jones told Sun Online.

    But these results are what you would expect to see if this is a man-made boat matching the Biblical requirements of Noahs Ark.

    The project Noahs Ark Scans say they have found parallel line and right angles below the surface which are something you would not expect to see in a natural, geologic formation.

    The boat formation appears to be the exact length of the ark as written in the Bible which is around 150 meters, or 300 cubits in Biblical terms.

    This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark shall be three hundred amot, its width fifty amot, and its height thirty amot.

    The site, which is where the Ark rested according to Bible scholars, was initially discovered in 1959 by Turkish army captain Ilhan Durupinar, who spotted the irregular boat formation while snapping aerial photographs of the region for the military.

    His discovery resulted in a short-lived period of international intrigue into the site.

    The Durupinar site was then visited by controversial researcher Ron Wyatt in the 1970s.

    Key Points On Jerusalem

    As tensions between the Arab and Jewish populations in Israel as well as the surrounding territories have grown in recent years, so has the disagreement between those Arab Christians who are critical of the Israeli government and those U.S. evangelicals who hold pro-Israeli views.

    “I’d question the authenticity of their faith,” said Cardoza-Moore, referring to the Christians in Jerusalem who oppose its recognition as Israel’s “eternal” capital. “I’d say they’re making a decision on a political expediency basis, not a biblical basis,” she said.

    Burge, an ordained Presbyterian minister and a professor emeritus at Wheaton College in Illinois, an evangelical Christian institution, counters that it is those Christians and Jews citing the Bible to support their policy positions who are thinking politically.

    “We have a political application of a biblical idea,” Burge says. “If you reach into the Old Testament and say, ‘God has given the Holy Land to the descendants of Abraham,’ that’s fine. The question is whether the modern state of Israel is that nation that was imagined back in the Bible.”

    Clarification Dec. 11, 2017

    A reference to U.N. Security Resolution 242 has been edited to make clear that while it calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from “territories occupied” during the 1967 war, the resolution does not list the territories or specifically say forces must be withdrawn from all of them

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    Who Are The 12 Tribes Of Israel Today

    Many have wondered where some of the peoples who came from Abraham went.

    Although the Bible does not specifically name the modern nations representing all of these people, there is biblical, historical and archaeological evidence that make it possible for us to positively identify the United States, Britain and many of the nations of Western Europe as the nations where descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel largely reside today.

    While this historical knowledge is not critical for salvation, it does help one understand end-time prophecy.

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