Hebrew

The Hebrews were an ancient people of the Levant. In the Canaanite language of the local Phoenician/Philistine culture ca. 2000BCE, "Ibri" means "the people from the other side (of the Jordan River)," but anthropologists are not convinced that the Hebrews arrived from anywhere, but could just as easily have sprung up from native roots. Archeologically and biblically, the Hebrews were the ancestors of the Israelites, and thus of the modern Jews. (Look up "Khazarians" for a potential exception--a presumably Mongolic tribe said to have voluntarily converted to Judaism in the 1st millennium CE in order to make peace with the surrounding Muslim kingdoms: a forehead-slapping contrast with today's Middle East.)

The Hebrew people spoke the Ancient Hebrew language, a Semitic tongue closely related to Arabic and Aramaic, as well as many other modern languages in the region. It was heavily influenced by the Canaanite language of the civilization in which they lived.

The Jewish religion or Judaism is the religion developed by the Hebrew people around this same time. Judah was a leader of one of the Hebrew tribes and the region which they all eventually occupied in aggregate became known as Judea. "Jew" is simply the same word with phonetic shifts into English. In German the same word is Jud, which shows its roots more obviously; the adjective is umlauted into juedisch (sorry got no umlauts on this browser) which was flattened into yidish in the German dialect of the European Jews of the Middle Ages. That dialect eventually diverged into a separate language which we customarily spell with two D's.

To go back, by the beginning of the Common Era the Hebrew people were generally called Jews, or the version of that word in the local language. The Jews have always had a practical streak and readily adopted the language of the dominant community in order to get along as well as possible and transact business. For a couple of thousand years centered on that date, the lingua franca of the Middle East was Aramaic, so the Jews spoke Aramaic. Hebrew was kept alive in the liturgy and since they have always held literacy in high regard a great many Jews could read, write and recite Hebrew.

Hebrew was not a living language for more than 2,000 years when the modern State of Israel was created. But since it was a common religious language for all Jews, not to mention its sentimental value, it was revived as a modern language--with a highly degenerated phonetic paradigm resulting in many silent and duplicate letters--and taught to all citizens of the new country. There are now three generations of Israelis who are native speakers of "Modern Hebrew," which contains verbs like dizengof, meaning "to watch the pretty girls" (as they walk out of Dizengof's Department Store in their new clothes).

Depending on whom you ask, you might be told that the primary meaning of the word "Jewish" is about the Jewish religion. The secondary meaning is Jewish culture, which is an amalgamation of ancient religious rites, ancient cultural customs, and things that have been assimilated in a variety of homelands during the Diaspora such as borsht, gefilte fish and klezmer music.

The third meaning is Hebraic ancestry. Hitler of course placed ancestry first and counted anyone who had one Jewish grandparent. (Yes, an obviously illogical recursive definition.) Although the Israeli "Law of Return" places great importance on ancestry (using a much different algorithm from Hitler's), the Jews themselves often don't. If you convert to their religion with sincerity in your heart and do your best to live according to its principles, you're one of them, welcome to the tribe. If you simply marry into a Jewish family, go to Temple only on major holidays, host the occasional Seder, raise no objections to your children having bar and bat mitzvahs, and avoid bringing dishonor to the tribe (by being simply a good person rather than a perfectly religious one), by the time you die you might be remembered fondly as a Jew, what the heck.

DNA analysis of "Jewish" people from around the world tells a chaotic story, which is no big surprise since they've been just about everywhere and intermarried with just about everyone. But it seems to indicate that they are most closely related to the Palestinians and the Lebanese. More historical irony!

 

Jewish people are (more or less) the descendants of the Hebrews. Some authorities simply define the distinction as: "The Jews are the modern Hebrews."

No one uses the name "Hebrew" to mean an ethnic group any more. Even the ancients are more likely to be called "Jews" than "Hebrews," except by anthropologists. The only time I heard a modern person refer to himself as a Hebrew was on a Christian televangelism show. They were interviewing a man of Jewish ancestry and tradition who had converted to Christianity.

But "Jewish" is more than ethnicity. Every ethnic group has a culture so we talk about "Cherokee culture" or "Italian culture." But part of being Jewish is also the religion. That, I think, makes the name unique as an ethnic identifier.

You're not going to get an easy answer to this question from me or anyone else. There are people who call themselves (and are called) Jewish who don't know one iota about the religion. There are people who call themselves (and are called) Jewish who are not even slightly descended from the ancient Hebrews. And there are people who call themselves (and are called) Jewish who have none of the food, music, or other cultural identity. "Jewishness" is complicated and ambiguous.

 

To say that the Egyptians are still there is like saying that the Britons are still there. The people who now inhabit the modern country named Egypt are not the descendants of the Ancient Egyptians, any more than the Anglo-Normans who inhabit modern "Angle Land" are the descendants of the Celtic people who lived there up until the end of the Roman Era. In both cases there is argument over how many of the original people survived and were assimilated into the conquering nation and its gene pool versus how many were driven out, killed off, or marginalized into attrition. But in both cases there was a huge discontinuity in ethnicity and a total replacement of one culture by another. The Egyptian language, for example, is extinct and was replaced by Arabic.

 

Don't confuse the lady. She asked for the meanings of the names "Jew/Jewish" and "Hebrew" in modern language. No one refers to the Jewish people of the Common Era as "Hebrews." Not historians, not anthropologists, not sociologists, not news reporters, not politicians.

The only time I've heard contemporary people referred to as "Hebrews" was on one of those wacked-out Christian fundamentalist TV networks. We have no respect for those on SciForums because they are antiscientific and they have no place here.

The Hebrews were an ancient people in the era before about 2000BCE. Their modern descendants of the Common Era are Jews. In the period from 2000BCE to 0CE, you can call them either but most people call them Jews.

Absolutely no one talks about "Hebrew culture" unless they're talking about ancient times. No one at all talks about "Hebrew holidays." They're "Jewish holidays."

Hebrew is a language, or a person who lived in ancient times. The modern people and their culture are Jewish. As Wikipedia puts it, the ancient people were Hebrews, the people of the Bible were Israelites, and the modern people are Jews.

Your definitions are wrong. Sorry!

 

I generally cite Wikipedia because it's a source everyone has access too. "The world is wrong" is a valid expression of your feelings, but when you're on the Linguistics board and you're talking about the meaning of words you can't possibly expect anyone to take you seriously. Language is a consensus or it doesn't work. Nobody gets to make up their own meanings of words. It is you who are wrong. "Hebrew" has a specific meaning and it refers to a language and an ancient culture. No one uses it any differently. If you do, you will be universally misunderstood. You cannot make it mean something it does not.

Nonetheless that part of your post is reasonable. We do need ways to identify groups of people that are less ambiguous. I know people who are militant atheists, who think Israel should be shut down, who are of 3/4 "Gentile" ancestry, and who don't even like knishes, who nonetheless still call themselves "Jewish" and are recognized as such by the "Jewish" community.

The part of your post that is not reasonable is the insult. Insulting another member (including a Moderator) is a violation of the rules. I generally try to overlook such things and say, "It's just a bad joke or a misfired attempt at sarcasm," but in this case it clearly was not. I have in fact contributed well-researched and well-sourced material to Wikipedia and corrected the errors of others. You have been given a Warning which will expire in ten days.