|
Boney M's
Rivers of Babylon 1978 Had the Hebrews at
their Edge of Becoming Jews
The Hebrews
|
|
The Hebrews were ancient Israelites,
or Jews.
Hebrew was also their language, which
is written right to left, and originally didn't mark vowels.
Here are the
Hebrew Numbers
The English word Hebrew has its
roots in the Aramaic word ebrai or ebhrai, which might
mean from the other side of the river, indicative of an
immigrant. What river? The Euphrates comes to mind.
If we would want to nitpick, we would
call the Jewish people Hebrews from ancient times until their
release from the Babylonian Exile in 538 BC.
And then?
After the Babylonian Exile (586-538
BC) we would refer to them as Jewish people, because it was the
descendents of the Kingdom of Judah that survived the exile.
How so?
|
Ancient Israel had 12 tribes. The ten
northern tribes, aka the Kingdom of Israel, was conquered by the Assyrians in 721 BC. They assimilated and gave
up their heritage.
The other two tribes, Judah and
Benjamin, aka the Kingdom of Judah, hung in there, and then the
Babylonians came in 586 BC and later Boney M.
Hence the term Jew, from Judah, who
was the fourth son of Jacob and Leah.
Map of the Kingdom of Israel
and the Kingdom of Judah
Why did the Babylonians release the Jews?
Because the Persians, led by
Cyrus the Great, conquered
Babylon and let the Hebrews go.
Therefore:
Up to 538 BC - It's the Hebrews
From 538 BC - It's the Jewish People
The Hebrews are a Semitic tribe, as
the Hebrew language is a Semitic language, which indicates the
descendance of Sem or Shem, a son of Noah (see Bible and Torah. In the Quran,
Shem is not explicitly mentioned by name, but Noah and his sons are referenced.)
Who Was Sem?
Noah, his wife, and his three sons and
their wives, survived a divine and global Etch A Sketch shaking, aka the Flood.
Thus, mankind traces its roots back to
either one of these three sons, Sem, Ham, and Japhet:
The Semites procreated and became the
Hebrews, the Arabs, the Assyrians, and the Armaeans.
The Hamites became the Egyptians and
generally all Africans.
The Japhetites became the
Indo-Europeans.
What is Anti-Semitism?
If you are anti-Semitic, you don't
like Jews, either as a religious group or as a race. See
Hitler.
And yes, the term is inaccurate (see
above: the Semites officially include Arabs etc.) but German racists
made the word match its current meaning.
See also
Holocaust, Shoah in
Hebrew, aka the Catastrophe, in which 6 million Jews were killed.
The Jewish Family Tree In
a Nutshell
According to Bible,
Adam's
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson was
Noah, the one with the animals on a
boat.
Noah's son
Sem had himself an eighth great-grandson,
Abraham, who by the way is
revered in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
A quick recap on Abraham's origins.
Where exactly did he come from?
Map of Abraham's
Migration Route
Copyright Carta, The Israel Map
and Publishing Company, Ltd.
So then, Abraham and Sarah had a son,
Isaac.
Isaac and Rebecca had a son,
Jacob.
Jacob, gifted with the
questionable fortune of having two wives, once wrestled with a man an entire night.
It turned out the sparring partner was an angle, and for some reason it was a weak one: Jacob was winning.
In an unsportsmanlike display, the angle dislocated Jacob's thigh.
Despite injury, Jacob still didn't let go and insisted on a blessing, the angel therefore "blessed" him
and renamed him Israel, and the two split.
Hence Jacob became Israel and the
father of the 12 tribes of Israel:
See Genesis chapter 32 for all of this.
The 12 tribes of Israel were descendents of
Jacob's 12 sons:
Reuben
Simeon
Levi
Judah
Dan
Naphtali
Gad
Asher
Issachar
Zebulon
Joseph
Benjamin
By the way,
what language did Jesus speak?
Ancient
Palestine
More History
|
