Scot,
What do you mean: “at the end of the (Paul’s) Present Age”? Paul’s lifetime?
The question you raise in this post is an important one for Romans, especially 9-11.

Scot,
Intriguing. I like this other possibility as certainly contextual to Paul.
I think I understand your paragraph about northern Israel in the Diaspora, as the way “all Israel” will be saved in the unification of the twelve tribes. A curious view, though intriguing. Look forward to more.

Jeff,
I edited it a bit to the New Age.

Interesting. I’ve been trying to study this recently too. I think our conclusions will also effect the way we look at the Gen. passage about blessing Israel. And, what does being “pro Israel” really mean in our current age. Does it mean we are pro-ethnic Israel, or pro-elective Israel…

Preach it, Scot! I of course am very sympathetic to this kind of thinking. Well done! I have never heard this view espoused, but I think there is much in favor of it. We as NT scholars need to be thinking much more long these first-century Jewish lines, with all its concreteness.

This follows well with James Scott’s argument that Paul was influenced by the table of nations of Genesis 10. Scott argues that Paul means “all nations” (the 70 nations of Genesis 10) not “all gentiles” in Romans 11:25. Paul was thinking in geographical terms.
Scot,
Is it possible to argue that Paul’s quote of the OT (11:26ff) is meant to support his belief that Israel can be re-united after the gospel has been preached to the 70 nations and not as a future prediction? In other words, the covenant has been renewed and the promise of the Isaiah quote has been fulfilled.
Thi

Scot, you wrote:
“Why don’t we at least try to think of “Israel” referring not to either ethnic Israel or elective Israel but as northern Israel out in the Diaspora? Why not think of Paul’s mission to be right along what others have always believed within Judaism? Namely, that in the New Age there will be a unification of the twelve tribes? A revival of ancient northern Israel and flocking back to the Land? Then, “all Israel” will be saved.”
I’m intrigued and interested in the significance of understanding Rom 9-11 within the context of Paul’s place of ministry, but I have questions about details in this paragraph.
- Does Paul’s use of “Israel” as recorded in Acts (or any other NT use of “Israel”) fit with “Israel” = No.Israel in the Diaspora?
- Where’s a source for Judaism believing that the 12 tribes would be reunited?
- Most significant, how does the return of Northern Israel to the land equate (or relate) to salvation of “all Israel” in Paul’s mind? What’s the nature of this “salvation”?

Just to clarify, you are meaning northern AND southern Israel no? Not northern Israel vs Gentiles as the only two groups. I have never seen Paul as making a distinction between the 12 tribes… when he refers to Israel I always assumed he was referring to all 12… except where he deliberatly talks of ‘spritual Israel’. Similarly in Revelation.

Jacob said: “Where’s a source for Judaism believing that the 12 tribes would be reunited?”
Bond of brotherhood between southern kingdom of Judah and northern Kingdom of Israel broken (Zech: 11:14)
The two houses to be joined in the last days. (Ezek. 37:21, 22). “I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land. And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall no more be two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all.”
It is interesting to note that the restoration of the people to the land and the reunification of the tribes into one nation are given as a pre-requisite to the reign of God’s anointed king.

Jacob, I forgot to point you to a source. Check out EP Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, and read his section on the twelve tribes. It is all over the prophets and Jewish literature.

This is interesting — I share some similar thoughts here:
http://pantelism.com/TheNations.htm

Since the dominant metaphor for the tribes is their relatedness in a family tree, so to speak, what part of the trunk exactly
| Rom. 11:23 | And even those of Israel, if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.
are they coming back (“again”) to? Isn’t the “shoot of Jesse” one tree, to which our Lord himself regrafted the Samaritans (who’d rejected the chosen people of Judah), and then at Pentecost charged the disciples with grafting all the Gentiles to the same trunk as the Patriarchs such as Moses and Elijah he’d encountered on Mount Tabor? As Hosea poetically prophesied:
| Romand 9:26 | And in the very place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be told that they are ‘children of the living God’.
Unlike branches, roots of the great sacred tree of Israel cannot be pruned, they remain ‘elect’
| Heb. 11:28-29 |”as regards election they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” .
in the ‘promised land’ (salvation as promised, in the sacred sap (Romans 11:17) of grace rising in Christ’s tree, the Church). Roots however do not prevent some branches choosing to be ” broken off” (11:20) through their own “unbelief” and this is the ‘remnant’ we speak of today as Israel. This metaphor of tree-as-relationship-in-faith born of a Gomer-like family tree pervails in the Catholic orthodox understanding, even when pervailing Evangelical wisdom conflates it with a geographical entity.
Indeed Paul and his contemporaries were collating the genealogical records (the scriptural canon Christians would later learn to call the Bible) to support the primacy of the New “expanded” Covenant of Salvation at the same time those who had fallen away into their “pure” (ie Jesus-and-Samaritan-excluding, Messiah anticipating) branch compiled what we came to call the Pentateuch-OT to define how they understood the remnant trunk Israel ought be maintained in its pre-Christ form.
With all the painful wounds we children of Gomer have inflicted on each other, may we permit ourselves more pride than Paul himself? Certainly not, in these days where our Ishmaeli cousins remind us that “not all the descendants of Abraham count as his children”. Must we not do our utmost to defend the ancient and vibrant Christian witness in the Holy Land for the sake of all those the souls on the broken branches too … ? Most Assyrians, Chaldeans, Coptics were Christians for seven hundred years before Mohammed’s Manichean syncretisms led so many astray … and the stresses of defending the land Jesus trod rent East from West in schisms that keep us divided and in pain. Keep praying John 17:21 like we mean it and let the sap flow up into the branches Amen!

Thanks for the references.
I’m still wondering about the meaning of “salvation” in this passage as it relates to the Northern Tribes returning to Palestine.

Jacob,
It would have to do with their inclusion in Christ and finding redemption for Israel through him.