All these names are used to designate members of the elect family and chosen race; but they are very capable, as they are very well worthy, of being discriminated.
Ἑβραῖος claims to be first considered. It brings us back to a period earlier than any when one, and very much earlier than any when the other, of the titles we compare with it, were, or could have been, in existence (Josephus, Antt. i. 6. 4). It is best derived from עֵבֶר, the same word as ὑπέρ,Etym. Note. 22 ‘super;’—this title containing allusion to the passing over of Abraham from the other side of Euphrates; who was, therefore, in the language of the Phoenician tribes among whom he came, ‘Abram the Hebrew,’ or ὁ περάτης, as it is well given in the Septuagint (
When, however, the name Ἰουδαῖος arose, as it did in the later periods of Jewish history (the precise epoch will be presently considered), Ἑβραῖος modified its meaning. Nothing is more frequent with words than to retire into narrower limits, occupying a part only of some domain whereof once they occupied the whole; when, through the coming up of some new term, they are no longer needed in all their former extent; and when at the same time, through the unfolding of some new relation, they may profitably lend themselves to the expressing of this new. It was exactly thus with Ἑβραῖος. In the N. T., that point of view external to the nation, which it once always implied, exists no longer; neither is every member of the chosen family an Ἑβραῖος now, but only those who, whether dwelling in Palestine or elsewhere, have retained the sacred Hebrew tongue as their native language; the true complement and antithesis to Ἑβραῖος being Ἑλληνιστής, a word first appearing in the N. T. (see Salmasius, De Hellenisticâ, 1643, p. 12), and there employed to designate a Jew of the Dispersion who has unlearned his proper language, and now speaks Greek, and reads or hears read in the synagogue the Scriptures in the Septuagint Version.
This distinction first appears in Acts vi. 1, and is probably intended in the two other passages, where Ἑβραῖος occurs (
It will be well however to keep in mind that this distinction and opposition of Ἑβραῖος to Ἑλληνιστής, as a distinction within the nation, and not between it and other nations (which is clear at
This name Ἰουδαῖος is of much later origin. It does not carry us back to the very birth and cradle of the chosen people, to the day when the Father of the faithful passed over the river, and entered on the land of inheritance; but keeps rather a lasting record of the period of national disruption and decline. It arose, and could only have arisen, with the separation of the tribes into the two rival kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Then, inasmuch as the ten trbes, though with worst right (see Ewald, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, vol. iii. part i. p. 138), assumed Israel as a title to themselves, the two drew their designation from the more important of them, and of Judah came the name יְהוּדִים, or Ἰουδαῖοι. Josephus, so far as I have observed, never employs it in telling the earlier history of his people; but for the first time in reference to Daniel and his young companions (Antt. x. 10. 1). Here, however, by anticipation; that is if his own account of the upcoming of the name is correct; namely, that it first arose after the return from Babylon, and out of the fact that the earliest colony of those who returned was of that tribe (Antt. xi. 5. 7): ἐκλήθησαν δὲ τὸ ὄνομα ἐξ ἧς ἡμέρας ἀνέβησαν ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος, ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰούδα φυλῆς ἧς πρώτης ἐλθούσης εἰς ἐκείνους τοὺς τόπους, αὐτοί τε καὶ ἡ χώρα τῆς προσηγορίας αὐτῆς μετέλαβον. But in this Josephus is clearly in error. We meet Ἰουδαῖοι, or rather its Hebrew equivalent, in books of the sacred canon composed anterior to, or during, the Captivity, as a designation of those who pertained to the smaller section of the tribes, to the kingdom of Judah (
It is easy to see how the name extended to the whole nation. When the ten tribes were carried into Assyria, and were absorbed and lost among the nations, that smaller section of the people which remained henceforth represented the whole; and thus it was only natural that Ἰουδαῖος should express, as it now came to do, not one of the kingdom of Judah as distinguished from that of Israel, but any member of the nation, a ‘Jew’ in this wider sense, as opposed to a Gentile. In fact, the word underwent a process exactly the converse of that which Ἑβραῖος had undergone. For Ἑβραῖος, belonging first to the whole nation, came afterwards to belong to a part only; while Ἰουδαῖος, designating at first only the member of a part, ended by designating the whole. It now, in its later, like Ἑβραῖος in its earlier, stage of meaning, was a title by which the descendant of Abraham called himself, when he would bring out the national distinction between himself and other peoples (
For indeed the absolute name, that which expressed the whole dignity and glory of a member of the theocratic nation, of the people in peculiar covenant with God, was Ἰσραηλίτης. It rarely occurs in the Septuagint, but is often used by Josephus in his earlier history, as convertible with Ἑβραῖος (Antt. i. 9. 1, 2); in the middle period of his history to designate a member of the ten tribes (viii. 8. 3; ix. 14. 1); and toward the end as equivalent Ἰουδαῖος (xi. 5. 4). It is only in its relations of likeness and difference to this last that we have to consider it here. This name was for the Jew his especial badge and title of honour. To be descendants of Abraham, this honour they must share with the Ishmaelites (
When, then, we restrict ourselves to the employment in the N. T. of these three words, and to the distinctions proper to them there, we may say that Εβραῖος is a Hebrew-speaking, as contrasted with a Greek-speaking, or Hellenizing, Jew (which last in our Version we have well called a ‘Grecian,’ as differenced from Ἕλλην, a veritable ‘Greek’ or other Gentile); Ἰουδαῖος is a Jew in his national distinction from a Gentile; while Ἰσραηλίτης, the augustest title of all, is a Jew as he is a member of the theocracy, and thus an heir of the promises. In the first is predominantly noted his language; in the second his nationality (Ἰουδαϊσμός, Josephus, De Macc. 4;
[The following Strong's numbers apply to this section:G1445,G2453,G2475.]
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