Tribal History
Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; they came each one with his household: Exodus 1:1 NASB
Came to Egypt – What does the history of Jacob’s family mean to you? Is it a story of a tribe from the ancient past that eventually became the Jewish nation? Or is it just the preamble to your faith, a kind of brief recounting of God’s purposes along the way to the Cross? That seems to be the usual Christian assessment of Jewish history; stories of ancient religious examples whose lives lead us to Christ, one way or another, so that when the Savior arrives on the scene, all the previous personages can be pretty much discarded, or at least ignored, since they were not the real goal. So those who went into Egypt, and those who eventually came out, are but footnotes to the real drama—the coming of the promised Messiah, in Christian terms, “Jesus Christ.”
Philip Jenkins raises some serious questions about this abnegation of historical context. Though he concentrates his attention on what happened in the Church between the fifth and sixth centuries, his opening remarks reflect a critique of the thoroughly-Christian point of view about the priority of the “Jesus” issue. For example:
“Failing to understand Christ’s nature properly made nonsense of everything Christians treasured:”[1]
“For over 1,500 years now, Chalcedon has provided the answer to Jesus’ great question [‘Who do you say that I am?’].”[2]
Jenkins does not approach the “Jesus question” from a Hebraic point of view. Instead, he examines what happened to the Church when it left behind the Jewish Messiah and reconstructed Christ in its own image. His conclusions are devastating:
“ . . . the Roman Church became right because it survived.”[3]
“By the end of 449, One Nature believers had carried off an astonishing putsch that potentially transformed the whole Christian world. Not only had the council proclaimed their ideas as the absolute foundation of correct belief, but the movement had removed from office anyone who threatened its supremacy.”[4]
The religious intransigence and the political will to exterminate all who did not agree had one spectacular result: the expansion of Islam throughout North Africa. As Jenkins notes:
“Christian divisions also go far toward explaining the swift collapse of the Roman position in the Middle East, where popular sentiment leaned so heavily toward either the Monophysite and Nestorian churches. Repeatedly, writers from these traditions describe the relief with which local inhabitants greeted the Arab conquerors, who promised an end to the heavy-handed regime of the Roman Empire, and the Chalcedonian order. Even as they bemoaned the bloodshed associated with the collapse, most Egyptians were happy to see the back of the defeated governor, Cyrus, and the restoration of the exiled Coptic patriarch Benjamin. Some Christian writers—Monophysite and Nestorian—saw the Arabs as God’s scourge, the weapon he chose in order to punish the empire for its theological blunders and its brutality toward its true-believing opponents.”[5]
Let’s summarize this another way. Because the Christian hierarchy of the 3rd to 6th Centuries abandoned Jewish history, co-opting the heroes of Jacob’s descendants but removing their “Jewish” God, they spent 300 pitiful years fighting among themselves over the reconstruction of the “faith,” an effort to replace an existing Jewish heritage. Their intramural brutality was so harmful that they opened the door for the general populace to embrace a more peaceful religion—Islam! As amazing as that sounds today, the real source of Islam’s existence is not Mohammed and Mecca but rather Athanasius and Chalcedon.
And what a sad, sad history it is.
Topical Index: Philip Jenkins, Chalcedon, Islam, Israel, history, Exodus 1:1
NOTE: I will be going into the hospital today for surgical repair of my Achilles tendon. If you would pray for this to fully restore my ability to walk, I would appreciate it.
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