Bible Discussion Thread

41 But they took this counsel among themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the heathen, and go forth into a further country, where never mankind dwelt, THIS IS NOT TO SAY THEY WENT TO A COUNTRY WHERE NEVER MANKIND DWELT. Rather, it says they planned among themselves to do so. WHEN THE PILGRIMS left England, the first land to which "40... he carried them over the waters, and so came they into another land they were seeking a land in which "they might keep their statutes ". And in fact the region of coastal Massachusetts on which they arrived though they planned on what would become NYC! had been decimated by epidemics that had raged down the Atlantic seaboard from Nova Scotia to CT. The "hornets " had preceded them. They lived off food they had not planted. They tilled fields they had not cleared. They were Beit Israel writ large. As Joseph was to Leah 's sons, so too was America to be to the Jewish people.