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Boney M's
Rivers of Babylon 1978 Had the Hebrews at
their Edge of Becoming Jews
The Hebrews
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The Hebrews were ancient Israelites,
or Jews.
Hebrew is 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?
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Ancient Israel had 12 tribes. The ten
northern tribes, aka the Kingdom of Israel, checked out after having
been 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 with 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.)
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 zoo 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, so bravo.
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.
Now Jacob, blessed with the
questionable fortune of having two wives, happened to be wrestling
with a man an entire night, and he was winning. Turned out his
sparring partner was an angel, but a weak one, whose only way out of the fight was by
way of cheating. He dislocated Jacob's thigh.
When Jacob still didn't let go (points
for tenacity,) the
angel "blessed" him and renamed him Israel, and the two
split.
Which proves the point that if you can't convince with pain,
you can probably still bribe with money or, as in this
case, promising fame.
Future mobsters learned from this
episode and handled it more smartly by starting with offering money
and fame first before crushing bones.
Now then, 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
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