let's take a little detour from our historical narrative to just talk a little bit about
terminology we're speaking about the continuous history of one people one ethnos and that is
the people who are known today as the jews or the jewish people note of course that this is
not a racial category because there are jews who come from all types of different races that that
make up the jewish people but it is something kind of tribal in nature because traditionally
judaism is a religion but it is passed on through one's mother that is its matrilineal in the 20th
century the reform movement added a patrilineal option to it but that will get to god willing
when we talk about the 20th century but for now uh i've been rather sloppy about referring to
these people as jews even well before they would have used this term to describe themselves and i
think that's justifiable in the sense that we are talking really about one continuous you know group
of people uh but let's just sort out the names for those of you who want to get this exactly right
so the oldest term that is used for jews is the term hebrew and this comes from the the fact that
abraham crossed over the euphrates river on his way to israel the word ivory which is used to
refer to a hebrew person comes from the word avar which means to cross over or to transverse and
we're talking about a semitic people who appear in the land of israel the ancient land of israel
but their origins from abraham are of course in mesopotamia where he comes as described in the
book of genesis from the city known as ur so the term ivory is used to refer to a person it's an
ethnos but it's also used as an adjective the term evreet is means the hebrew language for example
although it's an actually being used to all kinds of things as well so the term hebrew is the oldest
term and this is what we see especially in the earliest books of the bible however the term ivory
is often used in a retrospective fashion as well and synonymous with israelite and jew as we see
in the book of jonah in the first chapter where he says to the other members of the vote every anoki
i am a hebrew and i fear the god of heaven right so the term evry although historically it is the
oldest and it is used later on in time as well it specifically refers to this people that came from
the other side of the euphrates river now the term israelites is a little more complicated because
the name israel of course corresponds to jacob jacob the third of the patriarchs
has his name changed in a dramatic scene in genesis to israel which means one who struggles
with god fascinating kind of thing we'll talk about that later at any rate uh jacob and israel
are the same person and the bible will use the terms children of israel house of jacob
more or less synonymously although rashi will explain that based on the talmud the children
of israel first to the men the house of jacob refers to the women i mean things like that and in
fact through much of the early parts of the bible the the people who we call now jews are typically
referred to as the children of the patriarchs you know abraham isaac and jacob also known as israel
but it's also the term that's used to refer to the jews once they settled in the land of israel
after the exodus after leaving egypt and in fact we even have evidence from non-jewish sources
such as the merneptus dealy shown here that dates from the year 1209 before the common era
which has the first reference to the word israel referring to a people living in the land of israel
probably towards the northern part of the land of israel so by the time we get to the late
13th century israel is definitely used as a term by jews and non-jews for this people
hence the term israelite in english meaning one who pertains to israel the term also
attains specialist negligence because that's the name that applies to the northern kingdom
the jews in the land of israel suffer a civil war and a fracturing of their state in the 9th
century after the rule of king solomon and the southern part is called judah as shown here
and the northern part is called israel they're all still one people they recognize themselves
as being part of 12 tribes all descendants of the children of jacob israel but they call their
political entity to the north israel and you can see this in the book of kings for example there's
a lot of discussion of what that that kingdom of israel is so the term israel which is used prior
to the division of the land into two separate kingdoms it is especially used after the division
the term jews becomes especially prominent after the eighth century when the northern kingdom
is destroyed by the assyrians here you can see in this map that the the assyrian kingdom expands
and eventually uh conquers the northern part the kingdom of israel and then ultimately destroys its
sovereignty and will exile the jews from there and as you can see in this map there is a significant
portion of jews the so-called lost ten tribes who are sent into exile in assyria in particular
however uh what's not widely understood is that not all of the jews were sent out of
the land of israel by the assyrians in fact it's probably a number around 30 000 which would leave
a much larger number still in the land however under the political pressure of the assyrians many
of them fled to the south to the region known as judah right that's the southern kingdom judah by
the way is yehuda in hebrew j and y often switch between western european languages and hebrew so
a lot of those people who were from the 10 tribes in the north made their way down to yehuda where
there was considerable mixing of the peoples so much so that long afterwards you have a
description of a person who was not of the tribe of judah living in persia of course the great
mordecai who is referred to as yehudi a jewish man so it's really in this time period the 8th century
and onward when the name judah is especially associated with jews no matter what tribe they
may have come from and in fact tribal designations are gradually lost by the time you get to a few
centuries later we we have no idea which tribe any people come from except for the tribe of
levy which is another section so that's basically how we get these three terms hebrews israelites
and jews all one people uh with different names they might have used for themselves
at different points in time but they will often use earlier names to refer to themselves
at later on in time okay i hope that clarified things thank you very much for watching you