Walter Brueggemann on the relationship between biblical and modern Israel

In light of Israel’s ongoing assault of Gaza after the events of October 7 — on top of the much longer history of violence against Palestinians — I’ve been searching for biblical scholarship disconnecting biblical Israel from the modern nation of Israel.

I figured I’d start with Walter Brueggemann’s take, as he is one of the eminent Hebrew Bible scholars of our time. What follows is my review and summary of his book Chosen? Reading the Bible amid the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2015).

My review in one sentence:

• I did find this book helpful in articulating the distinctions between biblical Israel and modern Israel, as well as how both modern Israel and Christian Zionists have co-opted the biblical narrative to serve their own agendas;
• however, I strongly disagree with Brueggemann’s staunch support of modern Israel, which he maintains even while acknowledging that its military is vastly overpowered and that its treatment of Palestinians is unconscionable.

Summing up my summary:

If you want to know the key points Brueggemann makes without reading through the rest of this piece, here they are:

How biblical Israel and modern Israel are not the same:

• While biblical Israel was a theocracy relying on theological claims, modern Israel relies on military might and power politics (including support from Western powers like the United States).
• Deuteronomy and the prophets emphasize that while God gave the Israelites the “promised land” unconditionally, their retaining of that land is conditional on whether they obey Torah. Modern Israel’s violence against Palestine is absolutely not obedient to Torah, which emphasizes protection of “the other.”

“…[T]here is a huge difference between the ancient Israel of the biblical text and the contemporary state of Israel. While defenders of the state of Israel insist upon the identity of the two, many more-critical observers see that there is a defining difference between a covenant people and a state that relies on military power without reference to covenantal restraints.” (Q&A)

Other key points:

• Trying to apply scripture to any modern issue is complex and risky, because scripture is an ancient collection of differing viewpoints; our own personal biases will color which biblical voices we uplift to further our own agendas.
• Even so, taking all of scripture together, God’s reach is clearly towards “the Other” — towards the most vulnerable of society — and our interpretation should reflect that. Ultimately, none of us should be able to morph biblical symbols or themes into an uncompromising ideology to justify our violence or bigotry.
• Zionist Jews equate Judaism and Israel. Other Jews emphasize that they are “people of the book” (Torah), which means that Judaism can be practiced anywhere!
• Meanwhile, Christian Zionists co-opt Jewish Zionism to serve their own agenda to catalyze the Second Coming of Christ (learn more about this issue at christianzionism.org or in this blog post by Jewitches). Christians also appropriate the biblical concept of Jews being God’s chosen people for our own uses, which is supersessionist.

Following that overview, let’s go right into my summary of Chosen?, which includes some key quotes from the text. Only then will I return to my critique of Brueggemann’s personal politics. After all, I read this book for help with the biblical scholarship side of things, not for opinions about a “solution” to this issue, and the book did deliver on what I came to it for. Even so, awareness of the author’s personal views is important in noticing where his scholarship leans towards that bias (as I believe Brueggemann would agree, as he reiterates that all biblical interpretation involves the interpreter’s bias throughout this book).

Book Summary:

Introduction:

Brueggemann notes that “much has changed” since he wrote a previous book on this topic (The Land, 1977): since then, Israel has become an immense military power, has escalated its occupation of the West Bank, and continues to be “indifferent” to Palestinians’ well-being.

• Thus this new book aims to clarify that “…peace will come only with the legitimation of the political reality of both Israelis and Palestinians.”

Book thesis: a warning to and hope for Christians:

• “It will not do for Christian readers of the Bible to reduce the Bible to an ideological prop for the state of Israel, as though support for Israel were a final outcome of biblical testimony.”
• “It is my hope that the Christian community in the United States will cease to appeal to the Bible as a direct support for the state of Israel and will have the courage to deal with the political realities without being cowed by accusations of anti-Semitism.”

Chapter 1: Reading the Bible in the Midst of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Chapter’s aim: to determine how to read the Bible responsibly in the face of this conflict — can the Bible guide us at all here? Trying to apply scripture to any contemporary issue is risky, because the Bible’s many voices allows us to draw the conclusions we want to.

Modern Israel claims that God gave ancient Israel the “promised” land unconditionally, so that it remains promised to Jews today.

• They’re drawing from the ancestral narratives of Genesis
• But other biblical voices hold a different point of view: Deuteronomy and the prophets understand the land as given unconditionally but held conditionally — if the people break their end of the bargain, they can (and eventually do!) lose the land.

Among the biblical authors reckoning with Judah’s fall, there are exclusionists and inclusionists

• Ezra the exclusionist: “Ezra referred to the community as ‘the holy seed’ (9:2). That phrase intends a biological identity…”
  - Ezra had foreign wives expelled in order to guarantee “the purity of the land and of Israelite society”; modern Israel favors this reading, uses it to argue for “one people in one land”
• Post-exilic inclusionists pave the way for expressions of Judaism that welcome the other:
  - Jonah is sent to show God’s mercy to Nineveh, a major oppressor of Israel; Ruth the Moabite is part of David’s line; Isaiah 56:1–8 radically welcomes foreigners & eunuchs [my personal fave passage in all of scripture btw!]

Thus any arguments using one of these two voices tend to fail because the other one is also present in the text

• However, throughout scripture God’s reach tends to be towards the other. Thus any view that excludes the other should be met with skepticism — more likely to be about our own fears and hopes “that serve self-protection and end in destruction”
• “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be resolved until the human rights of the other are recognized and guaranteed. These human rights are demanded by sociopolitical reality. They are, moreover, the bottom line of Judaism that has not been preempted by Zionist ideology.”
• Closes with a quote from Desmond Tutu: “…the liberation of Palestine will liberate Israel, too.”

Protest photo by Susan Ruggles, 2021

“We may draw these conclusions about reading the Bible.

1. It is important in any case to recognize that the Bible refuses to speak in a single voice. It argues with itself, and we must avoid simplistic, reductionist readings of any ilk.

2. Any “straight-line” reading from ancient text to contemporary issues is sure to be suspect in its oversimplification. Such a reading disregards the huge impact of historical distance between the text and our current context.

3. Such a straight-line reading that ignores historical distance is most likely to be propelled by an ideology, that is, by a deeply held conviction that is immune to critical thought and is unswayed by argument, by reason, or by the facts on the ground. That is, it disregards complexities in the process of interpretation. A one-dimensional, uncritical appropriation of the ancient land promises for the state of Israel is exactly such a conviction that is immune to critical thought, reason, or facts on the ground. …

4. …Tribalism, often in Christian practice expressed as sectarianism, tends to absolutize its claims to the exclusion of all else. The tribe or sect characteristically imagines that it has a final formulation, a final interpretation. Absolutist readings of the Bible lead to violent actions against one’s opponent…”

Chapter 2: God’s Chosen People: Claim and Problem

In this chapter: The Hebrew Bible makes no sense if we ignore its claim that Israel is God’s chosen people — a claim which carries on into Judaism today. The chapter explores whether this chosenness is revocable and if not, who carries it today. Ultimately, it concludes that any “chosen” group must “choose beyond their chosenness” to end the violence.

At least 3 traditions in scripture imply that Israel is God’s chosen, all without explaining why God chooses Israel

• Ancestral tradition of Abraham — God promises “to be God to you and to your children after you” (Gen. 17:7). “The drama of the book of Genesis, in each generation, is whether God will grant an heir who can carry the promise and live as God’s covenant partner.”
• Exodus tradition — here God declares that “Israel is my firstborn son” (Exod. 4:22). Firstborn son = role of “special privilege and entitlement but also one of responsibility.”
• Sinai tradition — “Israel is given opportunity to be God’s ‘treasured possession out of all peoples’ (Exod. 19:5).”

“In these traditions, however, the specific language of “chosen” is not exactly used. It remained for Deuteronomy, which represents perhaps a later tradition, to utilize the most direct and unambiguous rhetoric for Israel’s status as God’s chosen people:

• “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (Deut. 7:6).
• Deuteronomy gives a reason for this chosenness: it’s not because Israel is more numerous or righteous, but because God “set his heart” on Israel and “loved” Israel (7:7–8; 10:15).

The exilic texts also reaffirm that Israel remains God’s chosen — surprising and beautiful in the face of all the seeming rejection of being humiliated and displaced.

But there are two big questions that problematize the chosenness that the biblical authors take for granted:

• 1. Is this chosenness conditional? Most biblical texts seem to assume it is unconditional and permanent; but places like Exodus 19:5 and parts of the prophets name a conditional if — that the people’s covenantal chosenness depends on their obedience to the Torah.
• 2. Has this theological claim morphed into an ideological claim that functions as self-justification? — particularly in the context of the modern state of Israel, but also…
  Christians have also appropriated the concept of being “God’s chosen”
  - The United States has too — we are the “city set on a hill” according to the first Puritan governor; we are God’s emancipated, coming from the “wilderness” of Europe to the “promised land” of the New World. And now we are Moses to the “benighted peoples” of the world, butting in with our military to “save” them.
  - Even liberation theology takes the concept of chosenness and applies it to the poor. “Jon Levenson, a noted Jewish interpreter, has protested against the notion of the poor as God’s chosen people, as though to usurp the claim from the Jews to that status.”

Another issue: what about the unchosen?

• Genesis’ ancestral tradition is aware of other peoples, makes a place for them “as those who are blessed by the life of Israel”; prophets like Amos also explore this issue
• Paul takes this “good news” that God’s promise reaches beyond Israel to argue for the “admission of Gentiles”

Ultimately, those who are “chosen” — be they Israel, USA, or church — must “choose beyond their chosenness,” or expect present violence to yield to a future of endless violence.

“The matter of other peoples who are not chosen is a very important element in any talk about the chosen people. …One can, moreover, see at the edge of the Old Testament an inclusion of other peoples in the sphere of God’s attentiveness, an inclusion that intends to mitigate any exclusionary claim by Israel. …

[Amos] acknowledges the singular chosenness of Israel, but it is that chosenness that evokes harsh divine judgment. The evident tension between Amos 9:7 and 3:2 indicates the edginess of the claim of chosenness, thus chosen for obedience but without monopoly of God’s saving deeds, especially when presumed upon.”

Chapter 3: Holy Land?

This chapter digs deeper into the biblical theme of land in the light of all that’s happening in Palestine. Even though it’s only a “small ingredient” in the current conflict, it is one that needs to be explored. Within Judaism, Zionists equate Judaism and the land, while other Jews focus on being “people of the book” (Torah), meaning that Judaism can be practiced anywhere!

Reiterates how “the land is given to Israel unconditionally, but it is held by Israel conditionally.”

• Adds that one thing that leads to disobedience, which then leads to land loss, is “the temptation to self-sufficiency” (drawing from Deut. 6:18)
• Another interesting point is that the Torah, “the most authoritative textual tradition in the Hebrew Bible, ends before Israel enters the land (see Deut. 34:4). That is, Israel’s original or earliest tradition is not about having the land; it is about anticipating the land.”

It turns out that the prophets’ “if” is correct; the land is losable, as Israel and Judah do fall, with many Judeans deported

• And yet — “The story does not end with land loss, displacement, and grief. Most stunningly, in this season of deeply felt abandonment there wells up a bold and vigorous reassertion of the land promise.”
• The prophets argue that God will “reperform the land promise”

One key question: how central and indispensable are the land and land promise for Judaism’s existence?

• The Zionist movement argues Judaism = the land (disregarding the Deuteronomic if)
• But in the 5th century BCE as Judaism was developing, different Jews had differing opinions; some exiles were not “smitten with” returning to the land.
• “One compelling alternative to land theology is the recognition that Judaism consists most elementally in interpretation of and obedience to the Torah in its requirements of justice and holiness. Such intense adherence to the Torah can be done anywhere at all.”

Detail from an election poster for the General Jewish Labour Bund, from Kiev, 1917. The heading reads, “Where we live, there is our homeland!” Learn more about this early anti-Zionist Jewish movement here.

Second key question: Is today’s Israel the biblical Israel?

• No. While biblical Israel was a theocracy relying on theological claims, modern Israel relies on military might and power politics.
• Furthermore, any appeal to theology for self-justification holds no weight among Israel’s “adversaries”; it’s just not compelling to anyone outside Zionism.

“…At most, appeal to the land tradition can ‘energize the base,’ that is, evoke support from adherents to the ancient promise. Such an appeal, however, carries little if any force for any who are outsiders to that narrative. It is no claim to be used in negotiations because it is grounded in theological claims to which Israel’s adversaries will give no weight. …The appeal to the biblical promise must simply be set alongside very old claims made by the Palestinians.”

Chapter 4: Zionism and Israel

Opens with discussion of “Zion” as the poetic name for Jerusalem, has poetic force

• The restoration of Zion is a primary theme in places like Second Isaiah

Delves into the history of Jewish Zionism, from the nineteenth century, through the Balfour Declaration, into 1948. [JVP has an article that delves into this history more thoroughly.]

• By 1967, this ideology had “hardened” into something completely uncompromising, wanting Palestinians to just go away.
• Differences between Jewish and Christian Zionism, and different branches under each umbrella
• It seems like Brueggemann would call himself a Christian Zionist, of the kind that resists weird End Times versions of it, but wholeheartedly supports Israel even while insisting on critique of its violence…
• His problem with Zionism isn’t that ethno-states are inethical overall, but that Zion has been morphed from a biblical “symbol” into an uncompromising ideology, and thus Israel uses Zionism to claim itself beyond critique even while committing atrocities.

Opening infographic on Jewitches’ blog post about the harm that Christian Zionism brings.

Brueggemann’s closing statement is this:

“…[I]t is characteristically the ongoing work of responsible faith to make such a critique of any ideology that co-opts faith for a one-dimensional cause that is taken to be above criticism. Indeed, ancient prophetic assessments of the Jerusalem establishment were just such a critique against a belief system that had reduced faith to a self-serving ideology. Because every uncompromising ideology reduces faith to an idolatry, such critical work in faith continues to be important.”

Author Q&A

The book ends with a Q&A session with the author. This excerpt from it sums up Brueggemann’s suggestion for how Christians should respond to what he calls the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”:

“In the end, Israelis and Palestinians are finally neighbors and have long been neighbors. When ideology coupled with unrivaled power is preferred to sharing the neighborhood, the chance for neighborliness is forfeited. Christians must pay attention to the possibility for neighborliness and must refuse protection and support for neighborhood bullies. Christians must support political efforts to strengthen the hand of the “middle body” of political opinion among Israelis and Palestinians to overcome the dominance of extremists on both sides who seem to want war and victory rather than peace and justice. Christians must call for new thinking in the U.S. government and do some new thinking that no longer assumes the old judgments about the vulnerability of Israel.

Prophetic faith is characteristically contemporary in its anticipation of the purpose of God; it insists on truth-telling that is attentive to bodily suffering, and it refuses ideological pretenses. It will tell the truth in the face of distortions that come with ideological passion and unrestrained power. When truthfulness about human suffering is honored, new possibilities of a just kind can and do emerge. Thus, being able to differentiate between old mantras and urgent truthfulness is a beginning point for faithful engagement in the real world.” (Q&A)

“God’s Holy Mountain” by Oscar (Asher) Frohlich, envisioning ”a normal future day on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem” where Jews, Muslims, and Christian mingle joyously and worship “in their respective holy buildings.”

Returning to My Disagreements with Brueggemann’s Politics

In the introduction to Chosen? (2015), Brueggemann alludes to his previous book on this topic, The Land (1977). He admits that that book needs revising, as it didn’t contend with Palestinians’ suffering under Israeli occupation. Yet he is quick to emphasize right off the bat (and in pretty much every chapter) that he continues to support the state of Israel wholeheartedly, considering its continued existence necessary for the security of Jews worldwide:

“Mindful of the long history of Christian anti-Semitism and the deep fissure of the Shoah [e.g. Holocaust], we have surely been right to give thanks for the founding of the state of Israel and the securing of a Jewish homeland. But the issues have altered dramatically as the state of Israel has developed into a major military power that continues administrative-military control of the Palestinian territories.” (Acknowledgements)

For alternative perspectives, I recommend anti-Zionist Jewish perspectives like here, and here, and here, and here. In short, shipping all Jews off to a settler colony is not the solution to bigotry and violence against Jews; instead, every culture actually dealing with its antisemitism is.

(Then there are the glaring facts that Israel is racist about which Jews it prioritizes; has a long history of mistreating Shoah survivors; and discriminates against Jews who show support for Palestine. If an ethnostate is truly the only way to keep all Jews safe, Irael is majorly failing that assignment.)

But back to the book: Brueggemann takes for granted that modern Israel is the correct response to the problem of worldwide antisemitism — in essence, to what he calls the “continuing vulnerability of Jews.” Still, he sees that Israel’s military has “long since moved past the vulnerability of the beginning of a fragile state” (Q&A).

So keep the state, but reduce its military; that’s Brueggemann’s solution in a nutshell — at least insofar as he states it in this book. To be fair, this text’s goal isn’t to formulate an airtight “solution” to the violence against Palestine. Still, what solution Brueggemann does suggest in Chosen? can be summed up in this bit from the Q&A at the end:

“There is, in my judgment, no realistic hope for any two-state solution. For all of the pretense and obfuscation of Israel, it never intends to allow a viable Palestinian state, so two-state negotiations simply buy more time for the development and expansion of the state of Israel.

It may be that the solution will be found in a one-state solution that insists upon well-protected human rights for Palestinians while the Israeli occupation is fully recognized. A settlement will require an even-handed engagement by the Great Powers (including the United States) as well as acts of greater courage and political will by the immediate parties to the conflict.”

Again, I know it’s not his goal to come up with a perfect solution, but I have so many questions about this version of a one-state solution. For one thing, will Palestinians be made full citizens of Israel in order to ensure their rights are protected? Or will they permanently be second-class (non-)citizens / trapped in this limbo of not being allowed to exist as their own recognized state? What about their right to self-representation? Furthermore, must Israel remain an ethnostate in order to be this supposed safe-haven for all Jews?

My last comment on Brueggemann’s perspective is that, if he does understand that Israel is the oppressor of the Palestinians, he still — at least as of the writing of this book in 2015 — has work to do in un-internalizing a mindset that pretends the two sides are equally responsible for this “conflict.” Indeed, the use of the term “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” in the book’s very title highlights this issue — this term implies equal footing between the two sides, rather than making it clear that Israel is the aggressor and any violence that Palestinians respond with is resistance to that aggression, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and yes, even genocide.

Along with the book’s title, other comments throughout the text imply equal footing between Israel and Palestine. Here are two examples, both from chapter 1:

“…Israeli Zionists want Palestinians to go away. Conversely many Arabs wish Israel would go away. But they will not.”

Palestinians’ and Israelis’ fear of the other, said to be grounded in the Bible, has been transposed into a military apparatus that is aimed at the elimination of the other…”

Both of these comments fail to emphasize the different sources of these wishes and fears for Israelis versus Palestinians. For Israel, the wish that Palestinians would “go away” is a desire to take the land from — to literally seize and dwell in the homes — Palestinians. Meanwhile, any Palestinians who wish Israelis would just “go away” are wishing to be left alone in their own homes that they built, the agricultural lands they have long tended.

Same with their respective “fear of the other”: Israel spins propaganda to represent Palestinians as hateful and antisemitic, a threat to Israeli’s peace, taking incidents of resistance out of context to do so; Palestinians’ fear of Israelis is based in real and recurring incidents of ethnic cleansing, imprisonment and torture, and daily deprivations and insults.

To speak of the desires and fears of both sides as if they are equivalent, without carefully emphasizing the power dynamic between oppressor/oppressed, colonizer/colonized, is negligent and dangerous. It does nothing to “take seriously” “the brutalizing, uncompromising policy of Israel toward the Palestinian people and their political future” (Q&A) as Brueggemann purports as his aim. For more on these issues, this article, “The Myth of the Cycle of Violence,” discusses the harm in treating Israeli and Palestinian violence equally.

The above use of the term “the other” brings me to Mitri Raheb’s criticism of Brueggemann’s theology. Raheb, a Palestinian Christian theologian, spends several pages in his 2023 text Decolonizing Palestine holding up Brueggemann as a prime example of how “liberal” Christian Zionism can do as much harm to Palestinians as the more right-wing flavors of Christian Zionism. He is particularly critical of how Brueggemann’s discussion of Palestinians as “the other” — as well as “the stranger” in his earlier book, The Land — serves to erase the Indigeneity of Palestinians, re-casting them as strangers in their own land.

“As a Palestinian whose roots are in this land, I hear the biblical call to be kind to the Israeli incomers, but I vehemently resist being called a stranger and being made an alien in my homeland or discriminated against politically by Israel or theologically by Christians or Jews. The othering of the indigenous people by calling them strangers is an important feature of settler colonialism in which natives are extraneous and the settlers are cast as natives.” — Palestinian Christian theologian Mitri Raheb

For Raheb, Brueggemann’s failure to define modern Israel as a settler-colonial project funded by Western imperial powers renders all his theology around this issue more or less useless, if not outright harmful. Could it be possible, Raheb wonders, for the “descendant of a settler community” like Brueggemann to be “ignorant to the troubling history of the colonization of North America, especially the use of the Doctrine of Discovery to seize Native American land?” If he is not ignorant of this history, why does he fail to connect it to the issues he discusses in books so focused on land theology?

Ultimately, Raheb writes, “Brueggemann is not an exception among biblical scholars and Christian theologians. Yet it remains incomprehensible to me that the occupation of Palestinian land is seen as biblical and salvation history rather than as part of modern European colonial history.”

Wrapping up

I am very curious to know whether and how Brueggemann’s perspective between the time of this book’s publication in 2015 and today. How did he respond to the explosion of violence in 2021? To October 7, 2023, and Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza? Does he continue to believe that the state of Israel is necessary for Jewish well-being worldwide? I only did a cursory search; if anyone has any information on Brueggemann’s views today, please do share!

And if anyone has suggestions for more texts I should read as I explore the relationship between scripture and modern Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine, let me know!

Stay tuned for more summaries and reviews. In the meantime, one source I recommend but won’t be reviewing is Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s recent newsletter post “Debunking the conquest narrative.”