Promised Land

[note 1] God is claimed to have spoken the following promises to Abraham in several verses of Genesis (the first book of the Torah), which a modern English Bible translates to: Later in what is called the covenant of the pieces, a verse is said to describe what are known as "borders of the Land" (Gevulot Ha-aretz):[1] These allegedly divine promises were given prior to the birth of Abraham's sons.

The Torah's subsequent Book of Exodus describes it as "land flowing with milk and honey" (Exodus 3:17) and gives verses on how to treat the prior occupants and marks the borders in terms of the Red Sea, the "Sea of the Philistines", and the "River", which a modern English Bible translates to: The Israelites lived in a smaller area of former Canaanite land and land east of the Jordan River after the legendary prophet Moses led the Israelite Exodus out of Egypt (Numbers 34:1–12).

Moses anticipated that their God might subsequently give the Israelites land reflecting the boundaries of the original promise – if they were obedient to the covenant (Deuteronomy 19:8–9).

Shawnee/Lenape scholar Steven Newcomb argued in his 2008 book Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery[11] that Christendom's discovery doctrine was also the same claim of "the right to kill and plunder non-Christians" found in this covenant tradition, whereby "the Lord" in Deuteronomy told his chosen people how they were to "utterly destroy" the "many nations before thee" when "He" brought them into the land "He" had discovered and promised to "His" "Chosen People" to "possess", and that this "right" was woven into US law through the 1823 Johnson v. McIntosh Supreme Court ruling.

[13] And according to Muslim tradition, Islam's founding prophet Muhammad was a Hanif (true monotheistic believer of the religion of Abraham).

[14] African-American spirituals invoke the imagery of the "Promised Land" as heaven or paradise[15] and as an escape from slavery, which could often only be reached by death.

[citation needed] The imagery and term also appear elsewhere in popular culture, in sermons, and in speeches such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 "I've Been to the Mountaintop", in which he said: I just want to do God's will.

Some zealous writers, to give the land of the Hebrews some political importance, have exaggerated the extent of Palestine; but we have an authority for us that one can not reject.