>>1263324 >>1263347 >>1263353 >>1263293 from last thread
And I do apologize for the length
PART 1 = You have to remember that the Hebrews were persecuted for not getting in line with the new religion. Those who were tired of being persecuted revised aspects of their bible. The others went underground with the original teachings. Today, most Jews follow the edited version which is why the Orthodox still think they are in exile. The original still exist.
I also believe that Israel is a state of being/mind same as the Christ Consciousness.
"[Hebrew] A dynamic language
The Hebrew language works different from ours [English, etc]. That makes it very difficult to translate, and that causes translations to be often poor and lacking. One of the differences is that the Hebrew language is much more dynamic than ours. Hebrew is all about action. Something is reckoned after what it does, not after how it looks. This principle is quite fundamental in Scriptures; it is applied all over. Probably most drastic in the Second Commandment where the Lord prohibits the making of graven images. A graven image after all does not move, and a statue that, for instance, tries to display a calf is not showing typical calf-behavior but static appearance.
[The principle even occurs in the New Testament, which is written in Greek but with a Hebrew way of thinking. The second chapter of James, for instance, explains that a believer is not someone who looks like one, or even says she's one, but rather someone who acts like one. To be is to do."] http:// www.abarim-publications.com/ToBeIsToDo.html
"Names in Biblical times actually meant something, and in the Yahwist tradition, they usually indicated some kind of theological thought." [like Israel for example….there was very little pure Jewish about the early theology of Israel, and very little pure Jewish about any of the Temples of YHWH in Jerusalem. In fact, it's more than obvious that the signature names Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were the names of global social movements, and that the names Israel and even Jerusalem were only later applied to physical locations. The country called Israel today relates to the Biblical Israel the way a hypothetical village named Internet, Montana, would relate to Google and Wikipedia.]
"Another persistent folly is the belief that the Hebrew Bible is a local product of a minority sect operating predominantly in Jerusalem; a religious movement that competed with other religions, telling the story of their pet deity YHWH (Yahweh) versus the "other gods," projected on a dubious national history of Israel. It positively isn't. As many mythologists have noted, the Hebrew Bible reflects a collective effort of pretty much the whole Semitic language area, from Babylon to Egypt and possibly beyond, and describes an endeavor that is wholly separate from religion and politics at large. It tells the history of Yahwism, which roughly describes a dedication to truth in its broadest sense."