On 2/26/2014 8:22 AM, TurquoiseBee wrote:
If it all belongs to God, and he's all-powerful, I think we have to
state for the record that he's a pretty shitty landlord:
>
God, who by definition is all-powerful, owns the land but humans are
supposed to be the managers of the land. It's like working like a serf
on a fruit farm as a migrant worker managing a garden - you get to live
on the land and eat it's produce, but ownership of the land belongs to
the owner, the Creator.
There have been humans managing the land of Canaan since before recorded
history, and they have not done a good job. The British mandate drawing
lines in the sand for national borders based on religion was probably
not a good idea in the first place. Most of the countries we're talking
about don't even have a history of state-hood and never existed as
nations or countries before the end of WW I - that's the real problem -
it's all a matter of management.
"Modern archaeologists dispute parts of the Biblical tradition, the
latest thinking being that the Israelites emerged from a dramatic social
transformation that took place in the people of the central hill country
of Canaan around 1200 BCE, with no signs of violent invasion or even of
peaceful infiltration of a clearly defined ethnic group from elsewhere."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine
