Replies

I'm sorry, but they are not at all the same thing. Look at them on a historic time line. The Tribe of Judah, named of course after Judah, goes way back to the time Judah was living. There was no land of Judea at that time, and no Jews. Judah himself was not a "Jew". There would be no Jews for another ~1,500 years.

The word for a member of the Tribe of Judah is Yehuda. The word for Jew is Yehuda. The word for a citizen of the Kingdom of Judah is Yehuda. The word for Judean is Yehuda. They are all the same word.

The word "Jew" is an English word that did not come into existence until hundreds of years after the Bible was written. Your statement that Judeans in Babylon did not receive the name Jews is completely meaningless.

Howz that again? Either they are or they are not.

Go back and read what I said. I said that they are not unaccounted for. That means they are accounted for.

After the failed revolt against Romans, Babylonia became the largest Jewish community in the world. Why was that? Because there had been a large Jewish population there all along, since the captivity.

The second largest Jewish community was Egypt, where there had also been large numbers of Jews living since they fled there to escape Nebuchadnezzar's army in the 6th century BC. We know that there were Jews living there before the fall of Israel to the Romans, because historians tell us that the Septuagint was widely distributed to Jews in Egypt.

The diaspora did not begin when Israel fell to the Romans. It had already existed for centuries.

>They are all the same word.

That has no effect on history, and that is what we are talking about.

>The word "Jew" is an English word that did not come into existence until hundreds of years after the Bible was written. Your
statement that Judeans in Babylon did not receive the name Jews is completely meaningless.

History is never meaningless, except when attempts are made to "revise" it.

>After the failed revolt against Romans, Babylonia became the largest Jewish community in the world. Why was that? Because
there had been a large Jewish population there all along, since the captivity.

The word Jew (English equivalent) was attributed only to those who CAME OUT OF Babylon. (And subsequently those who the Jewish community accepted or acknowledged as Jews.) To that exent you are certainly correct.

>The second largest Jewish community was Egypt, where there had also been large numbers of Jews living since they fled there to escape Nebuchadnezzar's army in the 6th century BC. We know that there were Jews living there before the fall of Israel to the Romans, because historians tell us that the Septuagint was widely distributed to Jews in Egypt.

These were initially Judeans, not Jews. By definition. The word "Jew" as we know it today in English was a specific designation given only to those who returned to Jerusalem at the END of the Babylonian captivity.

>The diaspora did not begin when Israel fell to the Romans. It had already existed for centuries.

The Southern Kingdom diaspora began with the Babylonian captivity. The Northern Kingdom diaspora began with the Assyrian captivity. My interest is almost entirely in the Northern Kingdom. So with the clarifications given above I will close with the same statement which caused you to take issue:

Since only ~50,000 Judeans returned from Babylon, that leaves another half million unaccounted for. Technically they are not Jews since only those who returned from Babylon were accorded that name, but they certainly were Judeans, and essentially the same people.

If "Yehuda" is the word for both Tribe Judah and the Southern Kindom, it could not have come into being until the tribes split into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. This would be because the Southern Kingdom included Tribe Benjamin and Levite priests and teachers.

The word Jew appears in the Bible and the Septuagint when refering to this combination of tribes. Therefore it's a word symbol meaning the House of Judah, composed of the above mentioned tribes. The English word "Jew" was in fact coined centuries after the Bible was written. It was the term used to translate, I presume, "Yehuda" into that language.

"Jews" wouldn't have come into being until the split of Israel into the two Houses, and then wouldn't have had any meaning until the House of Judah was forced to integrate with other no-Israelite peoples. Therefore every reference to Biblical characters before the split of kingdoms, and in reality, before the capture of Judah by the Babylonians, as "Jewish" is not accurate.

When God gave the House of Judah over to Babylon, the Babylons would have a word to refer to these people, which would translate to "Jew" if refered to now. So, in that case you would be right. All those foreigners who knew the House of Judah would have had a word meaning that combination of tribes.

Once the House of Judah became part of the Roman Empire, the Roman word symbol would be translated now into "Jew" in English, refering to the tribe composition of that House. During this period was the birth and the life of Jesus, which is why the New Testament refers to translated word "Jew". The House of Judah was the only part of Israel there at the time.

The whole bone of contention around "Jew" and "Jewish" is that all of the tribes of Jacob (Israel) are being called Jews now, when in fact that word, in English, came to mean the remnants of the House of Judah. There were two tribes in the House of Judah, with their compliment of Levite priests, and ten tribes in the House of Israel, with the rest of the Levite priests. The majority of Abraham's seed through Jacob is still in the World; they are still inheritors of the covenant and they are not Jews.