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Middle East Biblical Prophecy

The big picture of Middle East biblical prophecy can be found in major ideas that drive the narrative and argument of both the Old and New Testaments, with Old Testament treatment of prophecy having implications for how it is treated in the New. Prophetic content of the Old Testament, in turn, cannot be understood without reference to the culture of Israel conceptualized as comprising the people of God. Old Testament narrative is relevant to the Middle East because the Levant region, lower Egypt, and the Sinai peninsula constitute the geographical setting in which Israel's--and later, Christianity's--cultural history and myth emerged. Biblical prophetic and eschatological narrative and teaching remain relevant to the Middle East in the modern period because cultural memory is long and remains linked by geography and history as much to the heirs of monotheistic culture as to the biblical-era ancestors who shaped it. How and why that is so is the subject of this research.

Although the main focus of Genesis is the Hebrew patriarchs--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (King, 1990)---they are interesting less as personalities than as embodiments of a culture that reaches mythic meaning when Yahweh covenants with Abram (Abraham) that, as long as his people worship Yahweh alone, "To your descendants I will give this land" (Genesis 12:7). Thus does the special relationship between Yahweh and his people become the overarching theme of narrative. Again at Genesis 17.8, Yahweh gives Israel/Jacob "the land in which you are now staying, the whole land of Canaan, as a permanent possession; and [significantly] I will be their God" (Genesis 17:8).

The condition placed on the gift is very important, and as events of Exodus, Joshua, Daniel, and Jewish history in general show, Jacob's story does not complete the promise. It is a matter of history that the Israelites created powerful kingdoms (Israel and Judah) in the Palestine region. But they continually p...

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Middle East Biblical Prophecy. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 19:48, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1682166.html