A Quote by Max Nordau

We find collected in this book [The Bible] the superstitious beliefs of the ancient inhabitants of Palestine, with indistinct echoes of Indian and Persian fables, mistaken imitation of Egyptian theories and customs, historical chronicles as dry as they are unreliable and miscellaneous poems, amatory, human and Jewish-national, which is rarely distinguished by beauties of the highest order but frequently by superfluity of expression, coarseness, bad taste, and genuine Oriental sensuality.
I am interested to learn that a group of distinguished men and women is to be formed to spread knowledge and appreciation of the rehabilitation which is going forward in Palestine under Jewish auspices, and to add my expression to the sentiment among our people in favor of the realization of the age-old aspirations of the Jewish people for the restoration of their national homeland.
Coolidge expressed his "sympathy with the deep and intense longing which finds such fine expression in the Jewish National Homeland in Palestine."
The Bible is an ancient text from an ancient context. We live thousands of miles and thousands of years away from that context, which also represents different cultures. Archaeology is a modern means of revealing both the lost record of the ancient world, and the historical and social world of the Bible. While the purpose of archaeology is not to prove the historicity of the people and events recorded in Scripture, it can help immeasurably to confirm the historical reality and accuracy of the Bible and to demonstrate that faith has a factual foundation.
The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology.
His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
It has been estimated that of the world Jew population of approximately fifteen millions, no fewer than five million are in the United States. Twenty-five percent of the inhabitants of New York are Jews. During the Great War we bought off this huge American Jewish public by the promise of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, held by Ludendorff to be the master stroke of Allied propaganda as it enabled us not only to appeal to Jews in America but to Jews in Germany as well.
The renaissance movement and social reformers have taught us that superstitious beliefs and customs should be challenged and opposed.
I'm no longer religious, but the Bible fascinates me. Hardly anyone reads it anymore, but it's got everything: it's a book of poetry, it's a book of principle, it's a book of stories, and of myths and of epic tales, a book of histories and a book of fictions, of riddles, fables, parables and allegories.
I am by nature the most intolerant and insular Englishman... If you happen to be a person like that and you learn from evidence (which you are prepared to accept) that in the past you have been a Chinese, an Egyptian, a Persian, a Red Indian... you begin to assume a somewhat less exclusive view of these our fellow men.
I find it exciting to get any historical material from the ground. As you know, I love to put ancient Israel and its literature into their ancient contexts. And to rebuild - that is, to me, a very exciting historical task.
No nation is better than its sacred book. In that book are expressed its highest ideals of life, and no nation rises above those ideals. No nation has a sacred book to be compared with ours. This American nation from its first settlement at Jamestown to the present hour is based upon and permeated by the principles of the Bible. The more this Bible enters into our national life the grander and purer and better will that life become.
Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure ... There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.
Truth, when we are fortunate enough to find it, is like bad-tasting medicine. It rarely comes as a pleasant surprise, because if it surprises us, it means we've been denying it for some time and have a lot of beliefs based on falsehood. It's hard to give up those beliefs.
Jordan is Palestine. The capital of Palestine is Amman. If Palestinian Arabs want to find their political expression, they will have to do it in Amman.
The Bible itself is a book that constantly must be wrestled with and re-interpreted. ... Bible interpretation is colored by historical context, the reader's bias and current realities. The more you study the Bible, the more questions it raises. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says.
The Talmud derives its authority from the position held by the ancient (Pharisee) academies. The teachers of those academies, both of Babylonia and of Palestine, were considered the rightful successors of the older Sanhedrin...At the present time, the Jewish people have no living central authority comparable in status to the ancient Sanhedrins or the later academies. Therefore, any decision regarding the Jewish religion must be based on the Talmud as the final resume of the teaching of those authorities when they existed.
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