Tag Archives: Jordan

Even before the Korean War, the United Nations had proved that it could take effective action to control serious conflicts. It first took such action in the conflict over Palestine. During World War I, the British had ousted the Turks from Palestine. When the war was over, the League of Nations placed that land under the authority of Britain. The British then issued the famous Balfour Declaration, which promised the Jewish people that Palestine would someday become their homeland, but the Arabs of Palestine and the surrounding countries strongly objected to this and year after year passed without the British making good their promise. During and after World War II, Britain refused to allow Jewish refugees from Europe to enter Palestine. In 1946 Jewish terrorists began to stage raids against the British army and a year later Britain turned the Palestine problem over to the United Nations. The General Assembly set up a special committee to investigate the situation and make recommendations and several months later the committee delivered its report. It recommended that Palestine be divided into two independent states, one Arab and one Jewish. Although the Arabs, who formed a majority of the people in Palestine, said they would never allow the existence of a Jewish state, the General Assembly approved the committee’s report. Britain was expected to carry out and enforce the recommendations. Instead, the British suddenly left Palestine in the spring of 1948 and war broke out between the Arabs and the Jews. The Palestinian Arabs were supported by troops from the surrounding countries of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Egypt, but the Jewish army, which included many hardened veterans of World War II, won battle after battle. With every victory, the Jews added to the territory originally granted them by the United Nations special committee. Most …

ALL THAT is known about Jesus of Nazareth appears in the first four books of the New Testament. These books, written many years after his death, are called the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. There are differences of detail in each and the events of his life are not always reported in only one or two of the books, others in all of them. The gospels of Matthew and Luke, for example, begin with the birth of Jesus to a virgin named Mary. The gospels of Mark and John begin with events that took place some thirty years later. In general, the life story of Jesus is the same in all four gospels. Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, probably about 6 B.C. Almost nothing is said of his childhood, except that he lived in a village called Nazareth in the province of Galilee with his mother Mary and her husband Joseph. Joseph was a carpenter. As a boy, Jesus probably served as his helper and became skilled in making such things as yokes for oxen, bins, chests, beds and kneading troughs. In his home, Jesus spoke the common language of the Jews, which was Aramaic. The synagogue served both as his school and as his place of worship. There he studied the Scriptures and probably learned his prayers in the ancient Hebrew tongue. We are told that during his youth he “increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man.” Jesus was thirty years old when John the Baptist began preaching in the valley of the Jordan near the Dead Sea. John was believed to be a prophet. From Galilee and from all the other provinces of Palestine, people came in large numbers to hear him. …