The first thing I do note is the assertion "...it's plain Jesus is addressing the Jews as Israel, his lost people. Jew and was Israel synonymous." This means the author is making the easy and traditional mistake of not properly separating the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. To fail to account for the migrations of the Northern Kingdom after their escape from Assyria is a fatal flaw in any analysis. To say they just "assimilated" is the lazy way out. To say "Jesus was really saying something else" is to ignore the mounting archeological evidence that they were the same people as the Celts and accept intellectual defeat.
It is unfortunate the Bible uses words and phrases like "Israel", and "Children of Israel", and many more to mean different things at different times and different places. Without parsing them carefully to identify their intended subjects leads to all sorts of mischief.
-Regards
May you be blessed in your study of God's Word.
It is unfortunate the Bible uses words and phrases like "Israel", and "Children of Israel", and many more to mean different things at different times and different places. Without parsing them carefully to identify their intended subjects leads to all sorts of mischief.
Actually, I see this as one of the many beauties in God's Word, it causes me to depend on Him all the more...as He tells us in
2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
One really has to submit to the authority of the scriptures and have a teachable heart. That, praise God is the work of the Holy Spirit.
1 John 2:27 But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
Acts 17:10-12 10 And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. 12 Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.