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one can understand Christianity by focusing on three questions

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1. who is Israel?

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2. who is Jesus?

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3. who is the Church?

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answering each one of the questions has implications for answering the other two

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as the three questions are intimately related

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1. who is Israel?

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the Book of Exodus Chapter 4 answers this question

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Lord says to Moses:

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go back to Egypt

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say to the Pharaoh

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Isreal is my first-born son

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let my son go that he may serve me

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if not, I will slay your first-born son

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key sentence: Israel is my first-born son

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one can best understand Israel by focusing on key stories from the beginning of the Bible

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1. story of Adam and Eve

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God allowed them to eat from every tree in the garden except one, the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil

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they do eat of this tree and are driven from the garden

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2. Cain, jealous of Abel, decides to slay him

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turned into an avalanche of violence

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becomes so bad, God considers it would have been better not to have created the world at all

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3. decides to send a flood to destroy the world

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picks out a righteous individual by the name of Noah

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hopes that the new group of humans will act better than the one that was destroyed

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4. tower of Babel

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human kind is back to its rebellious ways

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after the flood he vowed to never again to destroy the world

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yet humankind seems determined to return to its sinful ways

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5. Abraham

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Genesis 12:1-3

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Lord tells Abram to go to new land

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will make him a great nation

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with this individual, God is going to correct the errors which have beset humankind up to this point

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6. Isaac

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Abraham and Sarah give birth to Isaac

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Isaac marries Rebecca

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two children: Esau and Jacob

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Jacob is famously renamed Israel

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Jacob has just returned from a long exile

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had met his two wives, Leah and Rachel, in exile

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just before he crosses into the land of Canaan

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Jacob wrestles with an angle during the evening

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I will not let you go unless you bless me. / What is your name? / Jacob. / Your name shall be Israel

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we learn something substantial about Israel through the character Jacob

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Jacob is an eponymous ancestor

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what he does in the story reflects on the whole people that he will create

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the phenomenon of an eponymous ancestor is a frequent phenomenon in the Bible

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Levi, who became the father of all the priests known as Levites

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the figure of David who gave issue to the House of David

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the stories of eponymous individuals are more than those of individuals, they are stories which tell us about an entire institution that is to be formed

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Davidic kingship

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Levitic Priesthood

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the People of Israel