FROM THE DAWGHOUSE….
What is the origin of Israel?
ASK AUGUSTINE
by Paul A. Tambrino, Ed.D., Ph.D.
The earliest occurrence of Israel in the Bible may be found in Genesis 32:28, where the angel who wrestled all night with Jacob says, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” Israel is from a Hebrew root literally meaning “he that strives or prevails with God.”
According to Genesis 33:20, when Jacob settled with his family in a parcel of a field at Shalem “he erected there an altar, and called it Elelohe-Israel” which literally signifies “God the God of Israel.” As Jacob became Israel, so his descendants through his twelve sons became the tribes of Israel and the Israelites.
Israel was the name that the Hebrews applied to themselves as a compact and organized religious, social and political group. After their occupation of the Promised Land their country was known as Israel.
However, the term is also used in the Bible in a narrower sense. When Israel was divided by civil war in the time of Rehoboam and Jereboam, the northern kingdom alone retained the name Israel, while the southern kingdom was called Judah. From that time on we read of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah, although the inhabitants of both kingdoms continued to be called Israelites in the older and broader sense of the inhabitants of the old land of Israel.
How did the word Jew originate?
The word Jew is derived from Yehuda (Judah), the name of the fourth of Jacob’s twelve sons. The territory in Palestine occupied by the tribe of Judah was called Judah and its inhabitants the children of Judah.
After Israel was split into two kingdoms, the southern section, comprising Judah, Benjamin and Simeon, was known as the kingdom of Judah. About 586 B.C. the kingdom of Judah was destroyed and the Babylonians carried many of the inhabitants away into captivity. Sixty years later, under the protection of Persia, a remnant of the children of Judah returned from Babylonia and established a Hebrew commonwealth at Jerusalem. This state, like its predecessor, was called Judah.
Since it was the only independent Hebrew state in existence it became the sole representative and repository of the religion of the Israelites. The inhabitants of Judah (Yehuda) called themselves Yehudim in Hebrew and Yehudaye in Aramaic. To the Greeks and Romans Yehuda became Iouda and Judea and the inhabitants Ioudaios and Judaei respectively.
The name of the inhabitants of the Hebrew commonwealth passed through the following successive linguistic stages: Hebrew Yehuda, Greek Ioudaios, Latin Judaeus, Old French Juieu, and English Jew. One of the earliest known uses of the English form Jew is dated 1175 A.D. The term occurs only a few times in the King James Version of the Old Testament and then only in connection with the later historical period. Its first occurrence is in II Kings 18:26-27, where the tongue spoken by the people in Jerusalem, then besieged by the Syrians in the time of Hezekiah, is referred to as the Jew’s language. Another early use of the term is in Jeremiah 34:9. Even in Ezra and Nehemiah the terms Israel and men of Israel are used interchangeably with Judah and Jews.
Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, begins to refer to the Hebrews and Israelites as Ioudaioi (Judeans of Jews) in the time of Samuel. For centuries adherents of the Mosaic faith who lived in Judea were called Jews, while those of the dispersion were called Israelites.
Jew is used in the New Testament in both the specific and the general sense. For instance, John 7:1 says, “After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.” Since Jesus Himself and all His disciples were Jews, this clearly means that Jewry was Judea proper and the Jews were the Judeans.
In the course of time, Jew came to be applied to any adherent of the Mosaic faith, regardless of the tribe from which one was descended. Beginning as the most restricted and specific of the three terms Hebrew, Israelite and Jew, the last ultimately became the most general in its application, and at the present time it is applied to the descendants of all Hebrews and Israelites who have retained their religious, racial and lingual characteristics.
