In early August, thousands of scholars from over 30 countries convened at the 17th international colloquium. They participated in 450 sessions dealing with a large variety of topics related to Jewish learning, such as The Hebrew Calendar, Jewish Approaches to Bible Criticism, New Discoveries of First and Second-Century Synagogues in the Land of Israel, and Jerusalem Between the War of Independence and the Unification of the City (1967).

The organizers invited me to chair a session on Christians, Missions and Messianic Jews in Controversy in Eretz Israel. In my introductory words, I mentioned the famous book Jerusalem by Swedish author Selma Lagerloef, who in 1909 received the Nobel Prize in literature. In her book, Lagerloef described the life of American and Swedish millennialist Christians in the American Colony in the end of 19th century Jerusalem. Those visionary settlers, like many others before and after them, came to fulfill their dream of living in the Holy Land where the Lord Yeshua was born and ministered. However, while most of them attempted to conduct communal lives and share their property, like the first disciples (Acts...