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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=XS7itdfgNnU

Over the weekend, an interview between Tucker Carlson and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has been making the rounds. The general thrust of the Interview is: Mike Huckabee is something called a "Christian Zionist", that is:

Steelman: An evangelical protestant Christian who recognizes the unique place in history and theology that The Jewish people occupy, and recognizes that Israel has a Right to Exist.

Strawman: An evangelical protestant Christian who worships the Jews as the main character of history and society, and sees the rest of the world as second-tier citizens who exist to support the work of Jewish people.

The interview attempts to answer what Christian zionism is, what Mike Huckabee believes, etc.

After listening to this, it seems as though Mike is not doing a great job of hiding the fact that he is closer to the strawman than the steelman on this one. Some points:

  • Huckabee hosted a meeting with Johnathan Pollard, an Israeli who stole US state secrets and sold them to Israel, and subsequently Russia during the cold war. Pollard currently lives in Israel, and Huckabee has been criticized for hosting a meeting with him.

  • Israel is currently a safe haven for sex criminals (or accused sex criminals). There is a not-insignificant number of men who have been charged with sex crimes in the US, who flee to Israel, and are protected by the Israeli government from extradition to the US. Or more specifically: the US simply ignores these people once they are safely in Israel. Tucker confronts Huckabee about this.

There are a few other things like this, Tucker also asserts that the Iraq war was done on behalf of Israel. The entire interview is quite spicy, and I recommend listening to it.

The "money" quote, however, is one where Tucker is pressing Huckabee on what Israel is, what "a right to exist" is, and what the borders that Israel is entitled to are. Tucker quotes the bible passage that Huckabee is citing to justify Israel's ownership, and points out that the land indicated in the passage is substantially larger than the land Israel currently claims. Tucker's question is, essentially: "if Israel has a right to the land they currently occupy due to this Bible passage, then don't they actually have a right to a majority of the entire Middle East, due to the same Bible passage"

Huckabee's response is, essentially: yes they do. If they want to take it, then that would be fine.

Hard to overstate what a big deal this has been over the weekend. This undermines 30 years of US foreign policy with regards to the ME, and vindicates every fear that every ME nation has had with regards to their own defense, their desire for a nuclear weapon, etc. It's my opinion that this is bad enough that Huckabee needs to be very publicly fired immediately, and that a lot of reassurance needs to be made to these other countries that Huckabee is essentially in a cult, that his insane beliefs do not in ANY way represent the beliefs of the broader US government, and that we will never allow another member of his cult into any position of power within the US government.

The problem: none of that is true. Yes, from my perspective (a Catholic) Huckabee is in an insane, anti-christian cult with absolutely insane beliefs. My (somewhat unrelated) point is that this is why you need The Church. But there are plenty of people in The US Government who think this way. Ted Cruz is another one, who was also interviewed, also disastrously, by Tucker.

Where this, the Cruz interview, and the general discourse around Israel is heading is: what is Israel, exactly? Why does the US support them so much? What was the Iraq war, actually? If we are really using The Bible to dictate foreign policy, then what implications does that have? (I don't think the bible at all supports Huckabee's idea here, btw. I think this is Zionists essentially preying on a very specific type of protestant)

Tucker also asserts that the Iraq war was done on behalf of Israel.

I believe it was in "The Hundred Years War on Palestine" that Rashid Khalidi laments that the PLO hitched itself so tightly to Saddam's Iraq. I remember thinking, "wow, what colossally bad luck that the Palestinians would rely on the one country in the Middle East that just so happened to be invaded by the United Sta... OHHHHHHH"

Saddam getting invaded was probably overdetermined, and there wasn’t really another option for Palestinian backing, but it’s certainly suspicious that that’s how it lined up.

Huckabee actually lobbied for the release of Pollard from 2011-2013, despite Pollard costing an estimated 3-4 billion dollars in 1990 dollars, so almost 10 billions dollars. The pardon encourages spying among would-be spies, who now have the hope that they will be released as well. And they will see the hero’s welcome afforded to Pollard.

IMO Christian Zionism falls apart on every important level. It is absent from the writings of early Christians, who more often see the destruction of Israel as the wish of God (Justin Martyr); Constantine turned Jerusalem into a Christian city and forbid Jews from entry; and Paul writes in Hebrews 8:13 that the first covenant is “obsolete” and “near-vanishing”. More importantly, Zvi Eckstein’s economic analysis of the Jewish people argues that poor Jewish agriculturalists after the first century converted to Christianity, with most of them later converting to Islam. But Christian Zionism says that the Christian Palestinians — the very people who stayed in the land for generations, whose DNA are nearly as close to Iron Age Israelites as Samaritans, the literal descendants of the extended kin of Jesus — they do not deserve to return to their land. Would Jesus really support the descendants of the Pharisees living in the homes of the expelled descendants of the very first Christians?

Huckabee also does adverts for an organization called the Fellowship of Jews and Christians. It is very exploitative (great documentary), essentially just guilting and nudging poor Christians to send all their money to Israel. And they do!

IMO Christian Zionism falls apart on every important level. It is absent from the writings of early Christians, who more often see the destruction of Israel

Agreed. But this is common weakness of most of the protestants who tend to ignore church history for obvious reasons, when they want to minimize everything up until Martin Luther. The fact is, that current Rabbinic Judaism is relatively modern offshoot of traditional or biblical/sacrificial Judaism which ended 70 AD with destruction of the Second Temple and with rabbis doing the sleight of hand, where they supposedly wrote down oral Torah by year 200 AD. Funnily or interestingly enough, the current Rabbinic Judaism is direct evolution of Pharisees by adopting most of the Pharisaic doctrine, while many other pharisees including apostle Paul turned into Christianity as the fulfilment of Pharisaic hope in form of Jesus as messiah.

It really seems strange to have bunch of protestants who basically say that it is not Jews like Apostle Paul - or any other apostle or Jesus himself as they were all Jews - but it is blokes like Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi who are the true authority over oral Torah and thus biblical tradition. Heck, it is even worse as it is not only the modern rabbis who are supposed to be the legitimate continuation of old testament tradition, but it is also government of state of Israel who posses such an authority and legitimacy for some reason, including legitimacy of doctrines like belief in coming of Jewish messiah, which would be directly against core Christian belief in Jesus as the true messiah and fulfillment of the old law. It is insane.

I mean most people have no understanding of history especially in the ancient world, so missing any history before the enlightenment is to be expected. The understanding of Luther is basically “read the Bible, fought the pope, founded Protestant faith.” It’s rare that anyone other than history majors could give a non-cartoon version of an event that happened before 1800.

I feel the Christian Zionists are just an Israeli op. Contributions to churches are private and it’s in Israel’s interest to fund them. You would need only one goy middle man, and even the pastors would have no idea that they are funded by Israel. Megachurch leaders always seem sociopathic, so this would be an easy to op to accomplish. Remember Israel once donated a jet to Jerry Falwell Sr.

While bribing mega church pastors is totally plausible, Christian Zionism relies on connecting a constellation of ideas that existed as known fringe ideologies before Israël was a thing in a way that seems genuine bottom up schizoposting, not astroturfing.

The problem: none of that is true. Yes, from my perspective (a Catholic) Huckabee is in an insane, anti-christian cult with absolutely insane beliefs. My (somewhat unrelated) point is that this is why you need The Church.,

Unfortunately, not any more. Since Vatican II Catholic church repudiated 1800+ years of teaching and moved to "dual track" salvation mode.

To be precise, you linked THE GIFTS AND THE CALLING OF GOD ARE IRREVOCABLE which has the power of reflection and thus it is not an official doctrine or dogma. In fact it is highly disputed and disagreement is absolutely tolerated and if held, it is still in full communion with catholic teaching.

Christian antizionism is not repudiated, however- thé sitting pope is quite clear about not liking Israeli foreign policy very much, and neither he nor Cardinal Pizzaballa say much about Israël’s right to self defense.

Dual track salvation is also very controversial within the church, if more or less tolerated. It is definitely true that recent church leadership has not opposed it.

Yes, from my perspective (a Catholic) Huckabee is in an insane, anti-christian cult with absolutely insane beliefs. My (somewhat unrelated) point is that this is why you need The Church.

I would like to gently propose that history suggests that merely having The Church doesn't prevent people in power from developing ideas about Palestine that might be considered by many unusual or harmful, and that despite your understandably vehement theological disagreements with Huckabee he's probably more your ally (theologically and otherwise!) than most.

The Church is the authority that can recognize a flaw and correct it. It does take a really long time (this is a feature not a bug).

The Church of Mike Huckabee likely won't exist in any recognizable way in 100 years, but the Catholic Church will remain, as it has for the last 2000 years. Go to a Byzantine rite Divine Liturgy, or a TLM, and you'll be participating in the mass the same as it existed (largely) 1000 years ago. The Novus Ordo is not on its surface recognizable, but still points to the same things, and the church teaching remains consistent all the way back to the Church Fathers.

Thé novus ordo missae is actually very recognizable to a time traveler from ~1900, or even 1700. It just wouldn’t come off as a Catholic service(although it also doesn’t look much like a low church Protestant service, either).

No further commentary.

Surely this fine establishment is above vagueposting. I'd be interested to know what would make it recognizable to a time traveler if it doesn't resemble either of these. High-church Protestant?

It would look a lot like an Anglican or relatively higher church Lutheran service- thé more common forms of Protestantism in the Victorian era. It would not look like Victorian high church Anglican or Anglo Catholic services, those would have looked more like a Latin mass.

Of course an actual Lutheran clergyman would notice the strong and striking differences in structure. But the aesthetics are very similar.

The Church of Mike Huckabee likely won't exist in any recognizable way in 100 years

To my point, Huckabee's tradition, like the Catholic one, is distinctly and recognizably Christian. His views on the Jews and/or eschatology is not meaningfully more unusual or anti-Christian than the views of many historical Catholic religious leaders. In fact, it's unclear to me that the Christian Zionism at issue here isn't shared by many American Catholics, who are about as likely as Jews to say that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God. (Perhaps this dovetails into what I've posted before about the dangers of Catholic triumphalism, although note that I am rather optimistic about the future of Catholicism in the states.)

Anyway, if it matters, I Googled one of the churches Huckabee preached at (Beech Street First Baptist Church) and found that it was founded in 1904. Pretty okay odds it makes it to 2126. Likewise, I'd be surprised if the Southern Baptist Convention (founded 1845) had disappeared in 100 years, barring eschatological events or the like. The idea of Christian Zionism, of course, goes back much further than either institution.

Now, from my perspective, what's shared by the diverse Christian groups is more important than what divides them. The vast majority of Christians are, well, Christian. It's in that sense that I suggest that Huckabee is your ally, your meaningful disagreements aside.

There are many Christian Zionists that believe some flavor of dispensationalist premillennialism theology.

I find supersessionist covenant theology, where 'Israel' finds its fulfillment in the Church making The Church the "new Israel" or "true Israel" much tidier.

You even undersell the depth of Jonathan Pollard's betrayal, who was one of the most damaging spies in US history. Pollard's professed motive was that he believed the US wasn't doing enough for Israel. Huckabee meeting with Pollard is a feature not a bug, as Huckabee's worship of Jews is the fundamental job requirement for his US government position.

The most unfortunate part is that what you call the "strawman" of Christian Zionism is actually the only internally coherent position a Christian can hold... like, don't you believe the Bible is divinely and literally true? It's a fatal flaw in the Christian blockchain that the Torah really does reduce to race worship of Jews symbolically represented by their tribal god Yahweh, like Zeus was a tribal god representing the European tribes worshipped by him. I don't see how you could believe the Old Testament and also not agree with Huckabee's perspective.

I understand where HUCKABEE is coming from, it's Tucker Carlson who pussyfoots without saying what he actually means. Is Carlson saying that Yahweh did not promise the land to the Jews? Or is he saying that Yahweh did, but for diplomatic reasons we shouldn't acknowledge it? Why doesn't Carlson then just say "I agree with you but we shouldn't say it out loud because it's not politically expedient", why act shocked if he believes it as well? The best I can infer is that Carlson is saying Yahweh did promise the land to the Jews but the Israelis are not Jews- although he does not say that directly, he makes the argument indirectly by saying "Netanyahu came from Europe."

Carlson incessantly says we can't criticize Jews collectively for their collective behavior, but his approach to antisemitism is a critique of literature he himself claims to hold is true.

I grew up Christian, I understand well the dynamics and how going to a Catholic church is not even close to the same as a sermon from Mike Huckabee. But are you really equipped to challenge Huckabee when he clearly has the bible on his side and you believe the bible as well?

The real problem is that your "strawman" of Christian Zionism is internally coherent within Christianity, and it's actually the Christian antisemitism professed by Carlson that's incoherent.

With that said, for all of Carlson's denials that he is antisemitic he has put himself in a very dangerous position, he has put himself squarely in that camp and none of his meager qualifications or groveling "I hate Rome too because they killed Jews, I'm not antisemitic!" is going to work. I don't understand Carlson's motives. He is either Red Pilled and trying to subversively promote anti-semitism or he's just trying to gain market share from the surge in anti-semitism among young audiences. If it's the latter he's going to have a Come to Jesus moment very soon, if it's the former then he's just demonstrating how Christianity is a blocker from properly engaging that tribe.

Yahweh didn't promise anything to the Jews, Yahweh is literary fiction- ancient capeshit, and the bible is Jewish race propaganda. That's a hard pill to swallow as a long time former Christian myself, but watching the "Carlson vs Huckabee dialectic" on the eve of another major war for Israel just shows how the Christian perspective is unable to grapple with the forces we are dealing with, it is captured by the Torah on both the anti-semitic and philo-semitic side of the debate.

Well in general Christianity is rather incoherent on the topic. The book of Acts and some of Paul's letters are incredibly anti Jewish. Paul's more public facing letters are more conciliatory but when talking to his followers he calls the law slavery, makes insinuations about eunuchs and calls circumcision mutilation of the flesh. This is why some early Christians like Marcion discarded the old testament entirely because it doesn't really gel with the new at all. Especially given Paul's incredible hostilely towards Judaism,.

I think Carlson just doesn't care that much about religion or the Bible that much, but even so the vast majority of Christians don't believe those promises to Abraham apply to the modern day. Christian Zionism is essentially a solely American phenomena. The Crusaders certainly didn't think Jerusalem belonged to the Jews.

Here is my mea culpa to you, SecureSignals. If you had told me that a US Ambassador would talk up a greater Israel on TV, I would have dismissed you as a crank. I had underestimated the insanity of the Christian zionists - who I feel are not even Christian at this point, but crypto-Jews of a strange and bizarre breed. I fell on the normie side of not believing incredibly ridiculous things that were nevertheless true and I apologize to you for previous impolitenesses.

You were more directionally correct than I was and I must humbly update my priors.

On behalf of westernized secularized half-Jews, let me assure you that we find Christian Zionists like Huckabee just as weird and creepy as you do.

The best I can infer is that Carlson is saying Yahweh did promise the land to the Jews but the Israelis are not Jews- although he does not say that directly, he makes the argument indirectly by saying "Netanyahu came from Europe."

Carlson, like most people who are not Middle Eastern politics or demography nerds probably believes that all Israeli Jews are of European origin. In reality, Ashkenazis are shrinking minority.

the Torah really does reduce to race worship of Jews symbolically represented by their tribal god Yahweh (…) Yahweh didn't promise anything to the Jews, Yahweh is literary fiction- ancient capeshit, and the bible is Jewish race propaganda.

You are making a pretty weird claim here, and one that doesn't seem necessary to the rest of your point at all (the validity of which I don't intend to get into at this time). Are you really saying that ancient Jews did not believe in the literal existence of God — that the average Hebrew didn't have an earnest belief in the existence of an almighty supernatural being manifest within the Holiest of Holies — that only Christians got into the bad habit of taking the Bible literally even at this very basic "is the character of God meant to be, like, real" level? Why? What does that have to do with anything? Surely your argument would work much the same if we simply posit that the Torah was written to be taken literally, with all its assertions that Yahweh is a very real guy and he really does like the Hebrews best.

I don't even dispute your anthropological characterization of Yahweh as a "tribal god", exactly. But that's ethnography, not theology. It doesn't follow that the writers of the Old Testament themselves understood God as a mere metaphor. The Ancient Greeks also largely believed in the supernatural, even if they understood that the word-for-word details of Homer were fictional and the "real" gods might not be such anthropomorphic characters as the epics portrayed. There's nothing odd about that — most Christians today believe that the Devil really exists but is probably not a big red man with horns who makes pacts signed in blood. There is every reason to think that ancient Jews understood their own mythology in much the same way.

Ethnography and theology are two sides of the same coin, as are myth and ethnogenesis. They are tokens that influence the genetic evolution of the tribe.

Are you really saying that ancient Jews did not believe in the literal existence of God

Yes the vast majority of them did believe the stories, but the ones creating the stories had political motives. There is a distinction to be made between believing the myths and believing the myths. Does Netanyahu literally believe them? Or does he believe in them insofar as he identifies with them and uses them to organize a people to attain geopolitical objectives? It doesn't really matter what Netanyahu believes, he is a product of those myths and he is using them to change the world, and those same myths are indispensable in ensuring the loyalty of foreigners like Huckabee and Ted Cruz: people who are supposed to represent me by the way, but they do not- the bible tells them to be loyal to Israel it doesn't tell them to be loyal to me and mine.

You are making a pretty weird claim here, and one that doesn't seem necessary to the rest of your point at all

It is necessary for my point, because people just dismiss Huckabee as being some outlier that provides an incidental justification for a "straw man", rather than Huckabee's loyalty to Israel being a feature, not a bug of Christianity. And Carlson's opposition, also rooted in Christianity, is forced to accept the same fictional truths Huckabee uses to justify his perspective. How can Christians debate this if they agree God promised them the land?

For Christians, does the New Law not fulfill and surpass the Old Law? Do Christians Zionists abstain from shellfish and pork?

Christians claim thew New Law represents the "completion" of the Old Law. But no branch of Christianity claims the New Law supplanted the Mosaic covenant. Jesus himself said he did not come to abolish the law, and Christian doctrine is that the First Covenant is living and they are outside of it.

The New Law actually was a practical mechanism for bringing Gentiles in the fold of Yahweh. Conversion would be quite difficult if you demanded they get circumcised and are unable to eat their traditional diet or at the tables of their pagan neighbors. It was Paul's innovation of the New Law that allowed Christianity to flourish.

But Christians believe in the Mosaic Covenant and the Abrahamic covenant. Huckabee is the one that treats these seriously, Carlson is the one that doesn't present a coherent position rooted in the bible and instead just balks.

But no branch of Christianity claims the New Law supplanted the Mosaic covenant

I’m not sure about this. There is a natural law which is found in the Decalogue, and in this sense there is still a “law”; but this is still fulfilled in Christ, in the sense that faith / obedience will wind up satisfying the natural law.

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2021/documents/papa-francesco_20210811_udienza-generale.html

Against those who urged the Galatians to obey the precepts of the Law of Moses, Paul replies that the Law was always in the service of God’s Covenant with his people. The Covenant was itself based not on the observance of the Law but on faith in the fulfilment of God’s promises. Now that God has definitively fulfilled those promises in the paschal mystery of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, those who believe in the Gospel are set free from the demands of the Law. The newness of the Christian life, then, is born of our response to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who brings the Law to fulfilment in the new commandment of love.

AFAIK the majority of early Christians believed two things: that the law was given to Israel because of the hardness of their hearts, and that the law was a “tutor” until Christ came as a Law unto Himself. Eg, Justin Martyr:

we know that the ordinances imposed by reason of the hardness of your people's hearts contribute nothing to the performance of righteousness and of piety.

Regarding natural law:

"For [God] sets before every race of mankind that which is always and universally just, as well as all righteousness; and every race knows that adultery, and fornication, and homicide, and such like, are sinful; and though they all commit such practices, yet they do not escape from the knowledge that they act unrighteously whenever they so do

It was Paul's innovation of the New Law

It seems like it was Jesus' wish as well:

“Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit.  And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.  Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’  And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.  When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

English Standard Version Catholic Edition (n.p.: Augustine Institute, 2019), Mt 21:33–41.

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.  And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”

English Standard Version Catholic Edition (n.p.: Augustine Institute, 2019), Mt 21:43–44.

Jesus said He came to fulfill the law. When something is fulfilled, is it still happening or is it over?

ˈfɪl) vb -fils US or -fills, -filling, -filled tr 1 to bring about the completion or achievement of (a desire, promise, etc.) 2 to carry out or execute (a request, etc.) 3 to conform with or satisfy (regulations, demands, etc.) 4 to finish or reach the end of he fulfilled his prison sentence

-Collins English Dictionary

Jesus's parable of the rejection of the son of god is playing on preexisting themes from ancient Greek theater. Here is wikipedia's summary of Euripides The Bacchae (405 BC):

The tragedy recounts the Greek myth of King Pentheus of Thebes and his mother Agave, who were punished by the god Dionysus (who is Pentheus's cousin) for rejecting his cult. The play opens with Dionysus proclaiming that he has arrived in Thebes with his votaries to avenge the slander, repeated by his aunts, that he is not the son of Zeus. Disguised as a foreign holy man, the god intends to introduce Dionysian rites into the city, but the Thebans reject his divinity and king Pentheus orders his arrest.

Eventually, Dionysus drives Pentheus insane, luring him to the mountains. The play ends with the women of Thebes, driven by Dionysus's orgiastic frenzy, tearing Pentheus apart, while his mother Agave bears his head on a thyrsus to her father Cadmus

So the son of Zeus appears as man as a character in the play, tries to introduce Dionysian rites into the city, gets his divinity rejected by the local elite, the elite get slaughtered by intoxicated female cult-followers. Dionysus was the god of wine, and Jesus's first miracle is turning water into wine.

Jesus said He came to fulfill the law. When something is fulfilled, is it still happening or is it over?

Two months ago, Israel hosted an "army" of 1,000 pastors to "Support Israel, Combat Antisemitism". CBN News provided some coverage/summary in a short 4 minute video.

The Christian Broadcasting Network was founded by Pat Roberson, and their channel has 2.7 million subscribers.

The whole video is worth a watch, because if you watch the video you will see the core theme, the message being sent to the pastors, is that God does not renege on his promises. Esoterically that sends the signals to the pastors that they owe their allegiance to Israel. But the CBN anchor also emphasizes that as a takeaway in his short monologue summary of the "lessons" from this summit:

God keeps his covenant, and as Christians we need to recognize that the covenant with Abraham and Moses continues on to this day. He does not change, he is the Lord, he changes not. When he promises something, when he makes a covenant, he fully intends to keep it until that day. Now as a Christian I really enjoy the New Covenant, it was a covenant that was made with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but I have to recognize Christianity is a Jewish religion and Jesus was Jewish, and the New Testament was predominantly written by Jews who came to realize that Jesus was the Messiah.

... Paul states plainly that all Israel will be saved. Why? Because God keeps his promise.

Although the emphasis is distinctly evangelical, the actual message is consistent with Catholic Doctrine as well.

The New Law did not abolish the old covenants, it was a practical set of compromises to enable the diffusion of Christianity created by Paul, not Jesus.

Jesus's parable of the rejection of the son of god is playing on preexisting themes from ancient Greek theater. Here is wikipedia's summary of Euripides The Bacchae

If you squint you can kind of see a reference but this is a huge stretch. The only thing that seems the same is the "undercover boss" concept? But this is hardly the only example of such even in Greek mythology.

There's enough symbolism involving wine in the Old Testament, like with Melchizedek, the fact that other surrounding pantheons had gods of wine isn't surprising.

Meanwhile, the parable is an exact reference to Isaiah, the part of Isaiah dating to the 8th century BCE:

Let me sing for my beloved
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
and he looked for it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.

And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem
and men of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard,
that I have not done in it?
When I looked for it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?


And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and briers and thorns shall grow up;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.

English Standard Version Catholic Edition (n.p.: Augustine Institute, 2019), Is 5:1–6.

I assume Jesus was more familiar with Isaiah than Dionysus in his earthly life.

Paul states plainly that all Israel will be saved.

I agree a lot with what you quoted from Pat Roberson, except for the idea that "Paul states plainly that all Israel will be saved." That relies on a typical Protestant misreading of Paul and Salvation.

The New Law did not abolish the old covenants, it was a practical set of compromises to enable the diffusion of Christianity created by Paul, not Jesus.

I did not say abolish, Jesus said fulfilled. If you do not recognize the difference between the two words then I don't know how much further we can go here.

I tend to agree with Joe Heshmeyer here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tVl5FgXNbws?si=10HXwZshfSsDc8Zr.

I suggest that the right answer on the relationship with Israel and the Church - on the relationship on the old and new covenant - is more nuanced, more subtle, and harder to explain, by virtue of being the right answer. And that you see the difficulty of articulating this even within the pages of the New Testament.

Basically, Judaism is special compared with other religions in that they actually received Special Revelation from God. All religions have some kind of revelation of God through their conscience, reason, and the witness of creation. But God revealed Himself more profoundly in the Old Testament, and the Jewish people today still have access to that special revelation.

Does the old covenant save? There were elements of the Mosaic law that were Preparatory for the Messiah and now the Messiah has come. Those are fulfilled you don't need to observe them and in fact observing them now may be a sign of a lack of fidelity. It maybe a sign that you don't really believe the Messiah has come.

Acts 4:12 says that there is no salvation except through Jesus. In Genesis God tells Abraham that He has made him "a father of many nations." Gentiles are also children of Abraham. The Biblical answer is not that the Jews and the Gentiles are saved though separate means. Nor is it that the Jews are saved by biology. Rather that Jews and Christians are both saved through faith in the one God. Someone who has the Faith of Abraham is the son of Abraham. Christian salvation is tied to Jewish history, however there is no religious pressing need for Jews to have possession of the territory of Israel.

There's enough symbolism involving wine in the Old Testament, like with Melchizedek, the fact that other surrounding pantheons had gods of wine isn't surprising.

They had a god of wine who took human form and visits Thebes claiming to be the son of Zeus, performs miracles, but is rejected by the King who is then torn asunder for denial of the son's divinity.

The NT has a god who takes human form, turns water into wine, visits Jerusalem claiming to be son of Yahweh, gets rejected by the pharisees, and the divine punishment of the pharisees is prophesized in the parables. It's more than an incidental similarity.

In the Bacchae Dionysus escapes prison through a divinely summoned earthquake, in Acts Paul and Silas escape prison from a divinely summoned earthquake, and Jesus's resurrection is associated with a divine earthquake in which Jesus escapes from his tomb.

Ancient Dionysian rites entailed followers consuming the essence of their god:

The wine they drank was for them potent with divine power--it was the god himself, and the very quintessence of divine life was resident in the juice of the grape. This the devotees of Bacchus knew as a matter of personal experience when, after drinking the wine, they felt a strange new life within themselves. That was the life and power of their god. Their enthusiasm was quite literally a matter of having the god within themselves, of being full of and completely possessed by the god. So they themselves described it in their own language (entheos, enthusiasm). They might be intoxicated; but they felt themselves possessed by the god. The drinking of wine in the service of Dionysus was for them a religious sacrament... So Euripides could say that he who knows the Dionysian mysteries "is pure in life, and revelling on the mountains, has the Bacchic communion in his soul."

The devotees of Dionysus had other realistic means of attaining to communion with their god. They had a sacrament of eating as well as a sacrament of drinking. This rite was the "feast of raw flesh." To be an initiate into the mysteries of Dionysus one must be able to avow... "I have .... Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts."

I assume Jesus was more familiar with Isaiah than Dionysus in his earthly life.

The entire NT was originally written in Greek, I would assume the writers were familiar with myths from the Greek Dionysia.

Acts 4:12 says that there is no salvation except through Jesus. In Genesis God tells Abraham that He has made him "a father of many nations." Gentiles are also children of Abraham.

Esau was a child of Abraham, and his divine inheritance was swindled by Jacob. The early Rabbis associated the descendants of Esau with the nation of Rome.

The parallels with Greek stories would be more intriguing if there weren't the same allusions/foreshadowing from the Hebrew Scriptures which were written earlier than the Greek Stories.

The New Law actually was a practical mechanism for bringing Gentiles in the fold of Yahweh. Conversion would be quite difficult if you demanded they get circumcised and are unable to eat their traditional diet or at the tables of their pagan neighbors. It was Paul's innovation of the New Law that allowed Christianity to flourish.

This did not stop Islam.

That's because Islam spreads by conquest, not by evangelism. They don't ask you nicely if you'd like to convert, they kill you if you don't.

The early Islamic conquests definitely didn't do that (unless you were pagan). Hence people of the book and all that. Most of the Middle East was Christian until the early modern period.

And places like Indonesia did convert by evangelism.

Christianity also spread this way throughout much of history. Germany, Spain, and South and Central America aren't Christian because of gentle proselytism.

Spain has been majority Christian since the Roman Empire; thé caliphate failed at converting the majority of the population.

It’s fair to see the inquisition as ethnic cleansing of the former occupying elite, but not mass conversions- because there simply weren’t a huge number of Muslims or Jews.

I'm not going to pretend I have a definitive answer to this or that I have direct access to primary sources, but I will say your assertion doesn't square with the histories I've read - there I've seen claims that somewhere between 50-80% of the population of al-Andalus were either Iberian converts or muslim transplants from the arabic world/the maghreb, particularly so in the southern bits around Cordoba and Granada. What sources do you have that claim otherwise?

I dislike Islam as much as the next Christian, but Islam doesn't exclusively spread by conquest. For example its spread to Indonesia (the largest Islamic country in the world) was largely done through trade and evangelism.

Different people different circumstances. IIRC it was Paul who even said that Christians could eat meat that was sacrificed as a pagan offering. I'm pretty sure my auntie would have a heart attack if I served her steak from a cow that was sacrificed to Jupiter, but there was a practical motivation for this new set of rules, which came from Paul and not Jesus (Paul never met Jesus, except in a vision).

The New Law was an optimization for cultural diffusion of Christianity in Pagan Rome, and the rules provide enough leeway to have made it happen. Paul made Christianity as much as Jesus.

You don't need to go into new law/old law. the old law itself is incompatible with SS's claims.

The Old Law: if you don't properly worship Yahweh (symbolically representative of Jews) you are cursed. And if you do properly worship Yahweh (Jews) you will be blessed. I can hear my own political representatives restate that framework to curse their own race and nation for turning against Israel.

Yahweh is not synonymous with Jews. Yahweh frequently demonstrates his supremacy by cursing and punishing the Jews, according to the Jews' own scriptures. As for the Christian perspective, "We must obey God rather than men", told to the Jewish authorities by the fathers of the Church. Nor, IIRC, did the early Christians defend Jerusalem from the Romans, and there's a solid argument that they were following Jesus's instructions when they declined to do so.

Leviticus 26 is Yahweh telling the jews that if they fail to obey him, he will punish them grievously. Your model is that worship of Yahweh requires worship of the jews, but Leviticus 26 demonstrates that Yahweh himself states that the Jews suffering under a curse is part of his will. Why should I as a Christian commit to protecting Israel if God himself has stated it is his will that they not be protected?

Leviticus 26 is Yahweh telling the jews that if they fail to obey him, he will punish them grievously

The Moab stele makes the same claim about Chemosh. This isn't actually incompatible with the people being punished being the chosen of that God. Hell, it's kind of the point. Divine favoritism comes with a cost.

my point is that believing a people are "chosen" isn't an argument for giving them whatever they want. What if they behaved badly to the God who chose them, and thus are being punished by him?

In Genesis God promises Abraham, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse".

Both Huckabee and Carlson believe Yahweh made this promise, but only Christian Zionists take this seriously. How could you believe in the bible and not take that seriously? Carlson says "Oh I, uh, don't curse Israel because Gold told me not too, I just don't think Netanyahu is a real Jew or Israel is the Israel mentioned by God." He is pigeon-holed into this anti-semitic canards that don't get to the truth of it: that is hostile foreign propaganda-myth, it's not true. Don't believe it, because if you believe it you are being manipulated into doing someone else's bidding for their own benefit and not yours. Huckabee and Ted Cruz believe it, Carlson believes it but he just suffers cognitive dissonance trying to square it with his own newfound antisemitism.

In Genesis God promises Abraham, "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse".

Yes. How does this promise to Abraham overwrite the numerous subsequent and far more detailed formal covenants God makes with the Israelites throughout the rest of the Old Testament? It is you and Mike Huckabee who are not taking the text seriously. Those of us who do are not greatly troubled by this notion, and have not been for centuries.

Carlson says "Oh I, uh, don't curse Israel because Gold told me not too, I just don't think Netanyahu is a real Jew or Israel is the Israel mentioned by God."

There is no particular reason to believe that post-sack-of-Jerusalem Judiasm is a valid continuation of the previous religion. There is likewise no particular reason to believe that the modern state of Israel is in any metaphysical sense the valid successor to the ancient state of Israel. The temple is gone. The Ark is gone. The Altar is gone. There are no sacrifices any more. There are, as far as I'm aware, no priests. No holy-of-holies, and so on. You are attempting to justify a scriptural interpretation that holds up one verse and shoves down a thousand other verses, as though this one verse were the entirety of the bible. This is a very bad way to do scriptural interpretation, but again, your interest does not appear to be in accurately understanding the will of God or even the text as a literary document, but exclusively pushing your monomaniacal agenda.

He is pigeon-holed into this anti-semitic canards that don't get to the truth of it: that is hostile foreign propaganda-myth, it's not true.

So he's stupid for believing his sort of anti-semitism when really he should prefer your sort of antisemitism? Have fun with that.

Meanwhile, in the real world, serious belief in Christianity does not require one to be a Zionist. The prominence of Christian Zionism is a historical fluke emerging from a confluence of social factors, it has largely run its course, and it will not, I think, be coming back in the future.

There are, as far as I'm aware, no priests.

C'mon.

Also, Jewish prayers refer to the sacrifices in the Temple even if actual sacrifices are not possible.

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How could you believe in the bible and not take that seriously?

It's pretty straightforward in the NT that the meaning of Israel is superseded by the Church.

Which branch of Christianity professes this? Not Catholicism, certainly not Protestantism. They believe the NT extended salvation, not that the nation of Israel was abolished or that the Gentiles are now among the nation of Israel.

Even if some Christian believes that, just imaging the cognitive dissonance: "I don't like or support Israel because they are claiming to be Israel but are not, I am Israel now, I am the real Jew- not Netanyahu." Even if you believed that, you are just operating in this little universe that shrouds your perception of what is going on here.

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The most unfortunate part is that what you call the "strawman" of Christian Zionism is actually the only internally coherent position a Christian can hold...

This is an absurd statement on multiple levels.

As a bare existence proof, it's notable that most of the history of Christianity as a religion, it has not exhibited anything approaching the strawman behavior you are claiming is required for internal consistency.

In terms of actual theology, your claim appears flatly incompatible with the 26th chapter of Leviticus, as well as many, many, many other passages. You do not actually know what you are talking about even a little. You are hostile toward jews and you want everyone else to be more hostile toward jews; you say whatever you think will nudge those listening in the direction of greater hostility.

And how exactly is Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz droning on about "Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed" contrary to Leviticus?

The 26th chapter of Leviticus is laying out the same framework for the Mosaic Covenant, which is a genetically-inherited blood covenant between the Jews and Yahweh. I am not aware of any Christian sect that claims this covenant does not or no longer exists- I've seen anti-Semitic Catholics claim that Jesus broke the Mosaic covenant, but that's contrary to their own Church teachings.

The Mosaic covenant is one of the most stark "main characters of history" assertions in the body of human mythological canon, and it's remarkable that billions of non-Jews hold it as true. That has real-world consequences, like when we are faced with actual life and death geopolitical standoff we have two Christians debating Genesis.

I think this is Zionists essentially preying on a very specific type of protestant)

I think "preying" is kind of an overstatement here. A better way to put it -- in my opinion -- is that Israeli leadership, and Zionists in general, correctly sense extreme hostility from many parts of the world and are not in a position to be picky about whose support they accept.

I'm surprised that even the strawman doesn’t invoke eschatology here.

The strawman drawn here is actually kind. The Strawman of a Christian Zionist is something like:

The Jews must regain control of Israel as a prerequisite of the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. We wish well to Israel as a nation for this reason, but this will ultimately not go well for the Jews in Israel: 144,000 will convert to Christianity last minute beating the buzzer, the rest will be damned to eternal hellfire.

I do agree that all positions of biblical Christian zionism are bad, ignorant, and evil.

A quibble, the 144,000 would be proselytizing, they're the beginning of the conversion not the end.

I've never heard it that way, but I'm sure the prots have different versions of everything. The way I've generally heard it is that they're all going down except for the 144,000 who are saved.

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