Jews

I find it funny when people say, "Abraham was the first Jew," or something to that effect. I find it funny because, technically, it is not true. The statement would be similar to saying that Abraham was the first Christian or that Jesus was the first Jesuit. The statement claims that what follows is the same as what came before, and that a part is the same as the whole. Let me explain.

"Jew" is the English word denoting a socio-religious ethnogroup. The English word derived from Old French juiu, which derived from Latin and Greek ioudaios (yew-DYE-oss). Ioudaios, in turn, was the Greek translation of the Hebrew yehudim, plural, or yehudi, singular, "a Jew." However, yehudi did not have the same valence as modern English "Jew."

In the Hebrew Bible, yehudi did not denote the Chosen People as a whole. Rather, yehudi designated a member of a particular tribe of the ancient Israelites. Yisrael, or Israel, was the name given by God to Isaac's son Jacob. Jacob, aka Israel, was the father of the nation of Israel. Israel had twelve sons. These twelve sons became the twelve tribes of Israel. Each son of Israel had many descendants and many people in each tribe.

One of the sons of Israel was Judah, or Yehudah, Hebrew יְהוּדָה (which could be pronounced either yeh-hoo-DAH or yew-DAH, depending on the dialect or emphasis). יְהוּדָה derives from the Hebrew word יָדָה, which means "cast or shoot forth praise." יְהוּדָה, then, means, "praised." Yehuda's birth was described thusly: "And she conceived again, and bare a son: and she said, Now will I praise the LORD: therefore she called his name Judah; and left bearing" (Genesis 29:35 KJV). Thus, the name Judah/Yehudah is related to the Hebrew word for praise.

Hebrew denotes a member of a people group with the suffix -iy and the plural -iym. Thus the descendants of Yehudah were called Yehudim. An individual descendant of Yehudah is a Yehudi, יְהוּדִי.

Most plural suffixes when referring to a people group are translated into English as -ites, as in "Sodomites" or "Canaanites," meaning, respectively, the inhabitants or members of the city of Sodom, and the inhabitants of the land of Cana'an. יְהוּדִים, then, could be translated as Yehudites (or, Judahites or Judites). Whenever the Hebrew Bible mentions יְהוּדִי, it is referring to a Yehudite, that is, a descendant of Yehudah.

In the history of ancient Israel, the nation experienced exile and deportation. The northern kingdom, composed of ten tribes, took on the name Israel and had its capitol at Samaria. The southern kingdom, composed of only two tribes (Judah and Benjamin), took on the name Judah and its capitol at Jerusalem. The northern kingdom of Israel, and its ten tribes, was exiled and deported in the year 722 BCE by King Sennacherib of Assyria. The biblical narrative records that "in the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and he placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes" (2 Kings 17:6). Assyria took Israel and deported them to the north-eastern reaches of the (Neo-)Assyrian Empire. Henceforth, the ten tribes became dispersed in the world and no longer lived in the land of Israel. (Assyria brought newcomers to replace the Israelites in the land and these became part of the Samaritans.) However, the southern kingdom of the Yehudites still lived in the land of Canaan for two more centuries.

The Yehudites, also, were taken captive, but in the year 586 BCE. (It should be stated that for both the Israelite and Yehudite exiles, not *every* individual was taken; just the more urban and important population—the rural folk were largely left in the land, hence the disparaging Hebrew term am ha-aretz, "people of the land," hicks.) The Yehudites were taken to Babylon and there they lived for about seventy years, in the (Neo-)Babylonian Empire.

In the year 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus the Great took over the Babylon Empire and started the Persian Empire. Cyrus allowed the Yehudites to return to Yehudah and rebuild their temple to God. The Yehudites were no longer imprisoned exiles in Babylon. Many of the exiled Yehudites, however, stayed. The story of Esther is about Yehudites who stayed in the land of exile (and the Ahashverosh/Xerxes of Esther would have been Cyrus' son). The books of Ezra-Nehemiah, however, are about the Yehudites who returned to Yehudah. "In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah the prophet might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom…Whoever among you of all his people, may his god be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is is Judah, and let him rebuild the house of the LORD, the god of Israel–he is the god who is in Jerusalem" (Ezra 1:1, 3). The Yehudites returned to Yehudah and they rebuilt the temple and they lived their lives in the land. The returned Yehudites, however, looked down upon the non-exiled Yehudites and the Samaritans (the intermarried descendants of the Israelites), referring to them as the am ha-aretz, which is a derogatory term similar in valence to American English "hicks" or "rednecks." The returned Yehudites began codifying their religion and canonizing their sacred literature. The Yehudites lived in the land for four or five centuries, through different ruling empires and kingdoms, until the Romans kicked them out in 70 CE/AD.

During that time, the Greek language was spread among the Yehudites because the Alexander the Great conquered the region in 333 BCE. Some of the Yehudites, then, began speaking Greek. The Greek-speaking Yehudites were called "Hellenizers," after Hellas, the Greek word for "Greece." In Greek, the Yehudites were called Ioudaioi, in the plural, or Ioudaios, in the singular. The land inhabited by the Yehudites was Ioudaia in Greek. The religion of the Yehudites was called Ioudaismos (yew-dye-EES-moss). These are terms that the New Testament, in Greek, uses in reference to the Yehudites.

Finally, when the Yehudites were again exiled from Yehudah in 70 CE by the Romans and scattered abroad in Europe over the following centuries, the word Yehudite or Ioudaios began to be less and less referring to a people and their land, but simply a people-group. Whereas Yehudite originally meant inhabitant or descendent of Yehudah, it begun to be understood as "a member of the people-group that worships one god and practices Judaism." The word became more and more a social and religious label than a geographic or national label. Hence the word "Jew." As we discussed, Yehudi became Ioudaios which eventually became French juiu which became English Jew.

The important thing to remember, then, is that, technically, Jews are only 1/12th of the Chosen People of Israel. Jews do not equal Israel, they are a part of Israel. (All Jews are Israel, but not all Israel are Jews). And so are the Samaritans, and the remaining descendants of the twelve tribes. So the next time someone says, "Abraham was the first Jew," remember, no, he was the ancestor of Jews, *and* all the other Israelites. However, until the LORD gathers all the dispersed from across the face of the earth and brings them back to Jerusalem, the Jews will be the only visible Israelites.

When people use the word "Jews" for all of Israel, they are actually using a figure of speech known as synecdoche, where the part stands for the whole. I can understand why people do so (for convenience), but as a scholar it bothers me. So as long as people know that they are using a synecdoche, it is fine to do so, but your audience may not know.