Why do Jews call themselves Jews?, page 4

Ashlar:

Since there are no phyical blood descendants of the ancient Israelites left around today to "inherit" any land" I suppose the whole idea is a moot point at this stage in western history.

The poetical-wisdom phrase "but, the humble shall inherit the Land [of Israel]" (Psalms 37) referred to a time when the area of greater Palestine was brutally occupied for centuries between BC 920 and AD 138 by ruthless and powerful goyim gentile nations who freely interbred racially for centuries with the locals (i.e. the sophisticated and warlike cultures of Egypt, followed by invasion from Assyria, then Babylon, then Persia then Greece and the Syrians and finally invasion and occupation by the Romans who ended up destroying it utterly, and virtually all of its local inhaitants).

The sentiments in Psalmist who wrote No. 37 were expressed by a writer who had no idea that Rome one day would kill 900,000 Palestinian Jews in two horrific wars of rebellion and that the remainder would be scattered to the four winds only to interbreed with the Gentile nations they fled to (or were sold into slavery into) and he would not have known anything about a mass forced "political" conversion of Slavic Ukranian Gentile goyim in the 9th and 10th centuries AD----he probably was assuming that there woud be a physical descendant group of the original Israelites (a righteous fragment) who would one day rule the land and occupy it.

But we can no longer speak along purely racial lines when referring to people who call themselves "Jews" anymore.

The Greek of Matthew 5:5 ("Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth") is a bad translation of what was originally an Aramaic utterance placed into the mouth of R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean ("Iesous") who quoted the Tanakh fairly regularly in his teaching: from Psalm 37

The source for this idea (Psalm 37) plainly refers to a scenario wherein a group of righteous sufferers are somehow being oppressed by a wicked and mroe powerful group--- but the Day of Judgment is coming for them according to the Psalmist, from YHWH himself:

Those who commit evil shall be cut off utterly,
but those who wait patiently for YHWH shall possess the Land (of Israel)
Wait a little while, and the Wicked Ones shall be no more;
Look for them, and they shall not be found longer:
But the poor ones shall inherit the land (of Israel)
Yea they shall delight in great prosperity
YHWH shall laugh at the Wicked
Knowing their Day (of Judgment) is coming soon...
For YHWH loveth Justice, and will not abandon the Faithful ones,
and in that Day when the Unjust ones are destroyed
And the Sons of the Wicked ones are cut off without remnant
the Righteous Ones shall possess the Land (of Israel)
and they shall live upon it forever...

The many references in Psalm 37 to "distress" and the need for "patience" suggests an historical background of long term foreign occupation (especially all the references to re-inheriting the land by a "righteous remnant", which is a theme of the Deuteronomistic historian who wrote the material found in the books of Deuteronomy all the way through II Kings--and a theme of R. Yehoshua as well, who believed that his followers had to be even "more righteous than the sofrim" in order to enter into "the kingdom")

Notice how in Jewish writings, the Hebrew prophets and psalmists often pair off/equate the term "wicked ones" with the "rich/powerful"

(e.g. He shall make his grave with the Wicked Ones, and he shall lie with the Rich Ones in his death) especially in the socalled Wisdom Psalms that delights in opposing pairs of types.

Notice also how the "poor ones" (or "humble" ones, or "the meek") shall be repaid in the psalm: according to the writer, these humble ones shall be rewarded (i.e. in the Last Days) and this is the tenor of the message of "Iesous" = those who weep now will laugh in the kingdom, those who thirst now will drink in the kingdom etc. where in the last days all the wrongs agasint the righteous ones shall be righted.

But the term "the poor shall inherit the land" was never meant to be "universalized" to mean "the earth: or applied to "the world" --it meant the Land of Israel was going to be populated by the "poor of the land. "

Ha Aretz in Hebrew can mean "dry land" or "Earth" (as opposed to the sea or air) but it also means "the Land [meaning "of Israel" in the narrower geographical sense.

This dual meaning is reflected in the title of the Israeli newspaper HaAretz.

"Inheriting the land of Israel" meant originally "re-claiming" the land of Israel from foreign occupiers by some humble and righteous remnant (the type of people R. Yehoshua would have envisaged to re-claim Judaea after the Romans were expelled, according to his End of Days ideology, which we see reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls (e.g. the War Scroll or the Pesher on the Psalms etc.).

The phrase was also a reflection back to 587 BC of who exactly was left behind in Palestine (i.e. the poor) when the Babylonians came and took everyone who worked in metals, or who could read and write e.g. the priests (these were the dangerous and powerful ones who could foster a counter-revolution) out of the country--i.e. the Babylonians left only the "meek" and the poor and humble behind unmolested to "inherit" the land of Israel, and this was noted by the author of Psalms 37, and was a theme which recurred to be applied to the Last Days when Rome would finally be expelled from Judaea with the coming of the Daviddic Messiah, when all the exiled Jews from the Diaspora would return to Palestine...

Clear as mud?