Are the Jews or the Arabs the chosen people? Who is committing genocide, ethnic cleansing and holocaust? The Arab-Israeli Conflict will define the future of civilization, for the rest of the 21st century. The future of history hangs on whose claim is just? Who has entitlement to the land, especially Jerusalem? The Jews recite the Torah. The Muslims recite the Koran, the Christians hopefully recite the Sermon on the Mount and stay out of it. In any case they all have a commonality. They are scriptural religions, and legalistic; everything is by the book, they believe in the letter of the law; if the bible says stone the criminal or adultery. Thats what they will do and have no qualms about it. This also includes ownership over the holy land demanded by the Koran and given in the Torah. This is real estate at stake. We are standing on holy ground.
Only in Jesus Christ due we find liberation not in the worship of a literal book, scroll, paper, parchment or the place that it represents. I once threw my bible on the ground in class to demonstrate that Jesus is the Living Word, the bible is only a witness, the written word, inerrant only in the original autographs. We scribble all over our bibles and underline the text and make notes. Muslims would never do that to the Koran, the text must stay fresh. A leather-bound bible made of acid free paper will last hundreds of years. But our paper back bibles begin to disintegrate after forty years. Do we bring corruption to the Word of God by having sloppy and literally corrupt bibles? This is a rhetorical question. This does not deny the bible’s authority to speak to us. We are still accountable to its message whenever we hear it. The stories of drama in bible are not yet finished. A literal bible would have a literal interpretation. The grass of the field will be burned up but the Word of God will never perish. This was a teaching trick I learned from reading Zen Buddhism, except they used to burn the Buddhist scriptures and deface statues for effect.
The Muslim are bibliophiles, they adore a hard copy of the Koran. The Koran is literally recited and worshiped. In Muslim belief holy scripture and that includes the bible must never touch the ground. That would pollute its glory. And the Jews venerate the Torah. Biblical Literalism is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Faith salvation, however or salvation according to the Spirit, not the letter of the law brings the drama of the bible to fulfillment of prophecy in the reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles. The Jews and Arabs may destroy each other over whose interpretation of the bible is correct? Who has the real written scroll? Imagine a nuclear war over who has rights to the holy land over whose interpretation of the bible is correct? Doesn’t this prove that we still live within biblical times or at least the middle-ages? Modernity that is the belief that technology is brining us it a new age of global cooperation is a lie and we are just as malevolent today as they were in the first century, or the Stone Age. Proof positive that there is no such thing as inevitable or technological progress in history. We are right back to where we began.