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1917: The Balfour Declaration
The leaders of the British government that issued the Balfour Declaration had
grown up reading the Bible—including the part they called the Old Testament.
The declaration’s author, Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour, and its
champion, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, knew that the Hebrew Bible
was centrally concerned with the Jewish people’s connection to its Holy Land,
a fact also known to just about every other literate Christian and Jew.
They were familiar with the
verses: “And the Lord said to
Abram, ‘Go forth from your
native land and from your father’s
house to the land that I will show
you’” (Genesis 12:1). Abram’s
destination was Canaan, the
biblical term for Palestine/Israel.
“The Lord appeared to Abram and
said, ‘I will assign this land to your
offspring’” (12:7). The promise
was repeated to his son Isaac
(26:3) and his grandson Jacob
(35:12). When the Israelites were
enslaved in Egypt, God appeared
to Moses and promised to free
the slaves, declaring He would
“bring you into the land which I
swore to give to Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, and I will give it to you as a possession” (Exodus 6:8). After 40 years
of wandering the desert, the Israelites entered the promised land under Joshua,
Moses’ successor. Around the year 1,000 BCE they established a monarchy there
with a Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Two generations later the kingdom split into
northern and southern states. The former was conquered by Assyria in 722 BCE
and the latter by Babylonia in 586 BCE. The Israelites were exiled in both cases,
but while the northerners (the “Ten Lost Tribes”) disappeared, the Babylonian
exiles were allowed to return to their land when the Persians defeated the
Babylonian Empire.