Terminology Pet-Peeve: Israelites and Jews

The Jews, as a people, come into existence after the return from exile in Babylon in c. 539 BCE. Before that, they are Judahites and Israelites. It's an easy distinction to miss, but there IS a difference. I've heard the ancient Israelites referred to as Jews a few times lately from pulpits (I listen to podcast sermons, not just my local pulpit, so no indirect finger pointing). The "Jews" did not leave Egypt with Moses, conquer Canaan, and establish the kingdom of Israel. (I realize Jewish tradition, esp. the Passover haggadah, links ALL Jews to the experience of Exodus. That's a theological issue, not a historical one.)

After the kingdom splits in two (under Rehoboam, Solomon's inept son), the two kingdoms are Israel and Judah. The inhabitants of the northern kingdom were Israelites, not Jews. The inhabitants of the southern kingdom were Judahites. Both peoples are ancestors of the Jews. After the northern kingdom was taken into exile in 722 BCE, the southern kingdom received a large population bump, so Judah under Hezekiah and the following kings until the exile probably included tribes of Israel and Judah together.

If you're reading Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, or the New Testament, the people are Jews. If you're reading the books of Samuel, Kings, or most of the prophets, they're not Jews. Better to refer to them as Israelites when unified or in reference to the northern kingdom (Elijah was a northern prophet, for example). Referring to the people of the southern kingdom as "Jews" would be marginally acceptable. For a good discussion of the transition from Israelite to Jew, listen to Michael Satlow's podcast series "From Israelite to Jew" found on his blog or through iTunes.

Text Criticism Terms

Those of us involved in Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible like to throw around certain terms to describe the textual phenomena that we see in the Masoretic Text (MT). Early on in my grad studies, I found myself hopelessly confused about that terminology. Words like homieoteuleton, homeoarcton, dittography, haplography, parablepsis, and Vorlage were thrown around like everybody knew what they meant and had been using them in everyday speech for years. I wish I'd known where to find a list of those terms with definitions (most are in Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible - if you're in the same position I was).

Here's a quick and basic guide to those terms and their typical meaning:

Parablepsis, haplography, homeoarcton, and homieoteuleton all refer to a similar phenomenon. Words or letters get skipped. Parablepsis means the scribe's eye skipped over some text. It's usually caused by homeoarcton (skipping between words with similar looking beginnings) or homieoteuleton (skipping between words with similar endings). Haplography just refers to letters being not written.

Dittography means a word or phrase was written twice. I've done that before with writing "the" twice and and not not noticing it it in in proofreading.

Vorlage is a German term that refers to the master copy that a text was taken from. We usually use it to refer to the original language text behind a translation. We only have the translation but we try to figure out what the Hebrew text they were using looked like. This is mostly used in relation to ancient translations where we don't have a copy of their original text. For modern translations, we usually have the original that was used to make the translation.

The Etymology of God and Allah

Here's another example of how the internet can foster the spread of misinformation. I happened upon a blog post that re-posted in full someone else's rant about why Christians should not use the word "Allah" as a name for God. To stop the spread of misinformation, I won't link to it. I fully agree with them that the current associations of the name as the proper name of the god of Islam make it unacceptable as a generic name for God. But why would English-speaking Christians need to use an Arabic word for God anyway? In today's world, it would simply cause confusion -- making it seem like the two biggest world religions really worship the same god (they don't).

However while the main point of the rant was correct, the post itself included a very glaring error of Hebrew etymology intended to discredit the word as a deity's name. They said that the Arabic word "Allah" was the same as (i.e., cognate to) the word for "oak trees" in the Hebrew Bible. This is completely incorrect. The terms are not related. The Arabic word is cognate to 'Eloah, a rare Hebrew synonym for El or Elohim, both used as generic words for "god." The same is true in English -- we can use "god" generally like "the Greek gods" or specifically as "God" to refer the Judeo-Christian God. One of the Hebrew words for "oak tree" is 'elah which looks similar to the Aramaic cognate of 'Eloah which is 'Elah. The spelling looks the same in my English transliteration, but there are differences in the original script. I suppose that similarity is possibly the source of the mix-up. (Side note on historical grammar: In Arabic and Aramaic, the last vowel in 'allah or 'elah is a historically long /a/. That's how we know for certain that 'elah "oak" in Hebrew is not related because historically long /a/ shifted to /o/ in the Canaanite dialects. This resulted in the /o/ vowel we have in 'eloah and 'elohim in Hebrew.)

At any rate whatever the origin of the word "Allah," it no longer carries a neutral connotation as a general word "god." As such, it would be inappropriate to use it for any deity except the god of the Quran. In the same way, it would be inappropriate to refer to any deity as YHWH except for the God of the Bible. One can read a good theological discussion of the differences between YHWH and Allah here. (that is, it's more articulate than the rant that I'm not linking to.)

Good Text Criticism Word

The M-W Word of the Day for today has a familiar ring for text critics. The word is "haplology" \hap-LAH-luh-jee\ , the "contraction of a word by omission of one or more similar sounds or syllables." Haplology is more commonly used to refer to spoken language. We're more familiar with the term as it relates to written language, "haplography" -- the accidental omission of a letter or group of letters that should be repeated. When we come across problems of haplography in the Hebrew Bible, we usually assume a scribal error. I wonder if some of the instances of haplography visible in the text could be instances of haplology, that is, based on a different pronunciation, not a writing mistake. I don't know if this is the case. I'm not sure how one would detect the difference, but I'll keep thinking about it.

Hebrew Bible or Old Testament? What's the big deal anyway?

It seems appropriate for my first substantive entry to deal at the same time with general issues of blogging about religion and specific issues of terminology in the study of the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. The ease with which one can create a blog is at the same time really cool and really scary. It's cool because ideas worth sharing can be immediately published for all to see. It's scary because misinformation can be shared just as easily. The subject of religion, particularly dealing with the Bible, is especially prone to receive comment from all kinds of people who know little or nothing about their subject matter. I don't understand why. I would not choose to post my thoughts on subjects that I was unfamiliar with. No posts will be found here on mechanical engineering, computer science, quantum physics, or the like. Yet, many people continue to emphatically state their opinions and interpretations on biblical questions with apparently little or no regard for factual accuracy.
The inspiration for the present commentary came from a blog entry that I stumbled across dealing with the use of the term "Hebrew Bible" to designate what is called the "Old Testament" (OT) by Christians and the "Tanakh" by Jews. The writer there was commenting on a recent news article that advocated the use of the terms "Hebrew Bible" for the OT and "Christian Bible" for the New Testament (NT). The objection was that "Hebrew Bible" implied the Bible was only for the Hebrews (i.e. Jews) and that "Christian Bible" implied the Bible was only for Christians and that Christianity was a separate religion. This obscured the universal message of the Christian Gospel found in the NT. My initial impulse was to offer a corrective comment on the person's blog. I saw that many comments had been left on the blog, so I hoped that perhaps someone had already politely offered correction. The problem, unfortunately, extended much further than just the initial reaction to the possible implications of terminology. The writer went on to offer an account of Jewish history from the biblical period onward that would be almost completely unrecognizable to anyone who has taken a Bible survey class or an introduction to Judaism. Now I don't expect 100% accuracy from non-professionals commenting on the Bible, but it would be nice to detect their awareness of their own limitations. Nothing of the sort occurred. Imaginative history was recounted as fact. The comments, rather than offering serious correction, perpetuated the uninformed nature of the discussion. (Alarming since there were many comments..."the blind leading the blind" came to mind.) It quickly became clear that a corrective comment would be impossible due to the enormity of the factual inaccuracy. There is also the fact that innocent attempts at constructive criticism on blogs or message boards are often misconstrued as "flaming."
I cannot comment on the factual problems in their historical account without quoting or linking to the entry (something I am not inclined to do because of the likelihood that my comments will be misconstrued). I also do not wish to be directly critical of the few people involved in the post there. I am not against interested lay people sharing their opinions. My goal is teaching interested lay people. A well-informed opinion is much more compelling and persuasive than an ignorant rant. Therefore, I will limit myself to a discussion of the terminology that sparked their discussion in the first place. This serves the dual purpose of giving me a chance right off the bat to explain some of the terms that I will use in these posts.
First, to my knowledge, alternative terms for the NT such as Christian Bible, Christian Testament, Second Testament, etc. have not really become mainstream in academic work on the NT. This is likely because most NT scholars are either Christian or come from a Christian background. The term "Hebrew Bible," however, for the OT has become mainstream in academic circles to refer to the canon of Scripture common to Judaism and Protestant Christianity. This terminology is necessary in the field because both Jewish and Christian scholars work on this body of text. The terminology is a convention adopted to allow for common dialogue about the text. Contrary to the mistaken assumption of the blog mentioned above, the term "Hebrew" in Hebrew Bible refers not to a people but to a language. Everyone should be able to agree that we are working on a canon of Scripture written in the Hebrew language (except for a few chapters in Aramaic). For this reason, I have no difficulty using the term Hebrew Bible when I am in an academic setting and the term Old Testament when I am in a confessionally Christian setting. Each term is appropriate in its setting. "Hebrew Bible" does not imply the Bible is only for the Jews. The Jews call their Bible the Tanakh (an acronym for "the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings" in Hebrew). In Christian theology, the Old & New Testaments represent the progressive unfolding of divine revelation first to Israel, then through Israel to the world. "To the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Rom. 1:16). To be fair, I will admit that this was in fact the main point of the blog I found commenting on terminology, but it was inappropriate to attack the term "Hebrew Bible" as obscuring that theological point. "Hebrew Bible" was coined to provide common ground for Jews and Christians to talk about the OT/Tanakh without getting hung up on theological points.
In the Hebrew Bible, the people of Israel are rarely called "Hebrews." There are about 32 instances, most of them occur in Genesis, Exodus, and 1 Samuel. It is noteworthy that the use of the term almost always reflects the perspective of foreign peoples. We have an Egyptian's reference to Joseph in Gen. 39:14 and 41:12. We have Jonah introducing himself in Jon. 1:9. We have the Philistines' perspective in 1 Sam. 29:3. The most common internal designation for the people (that is, the name they use for themselves in the Bible) is either "children of Israel," or "Israel," or "Ephraim," or "Judah." "Children of Israel" (lit. "sons of Israel") alone occurs around 500 times (e.g., Exod. 1:7, 11:10, etc.). The earliest extra-biblical reference to the Israelites comes from an Egyptian stele dating to around 1200 BCE which mentions "Israel" in a list of peoples or cities defeated in Canaan by Pharaoh Merneptah.
The term "Judahite" is used for people from Judah in the biblical books that reflect the period starting around 700 BCE or so. This is the designation that led to the modern name "Jew." For the record, the term "Judah" or "Yehud" or "Judea" was the name of a tribe of Israel and later a province of Persia, Greece, and Rome. The name "Jew" is not a racial slur (contrary to one of the emphatic comments on the aforementioned blog entry). It is the name they use for themselves in much of the post-exilic biblical literature, especially the book of Esther.
The bottom line is that the word "Hebrew" in present-day usage typically refers to the Hebrew language, not the Jewish people. At best, it could be taken as an archaic synonym for "Jew." The biblical usage of the term is rare when compared to the use of "children of Israel" (30 vs. 500). Even there, the context almost always reflects the perspective of foreigners, probably a regional designation kind of like referring to oneself as an "American" rather than as an "Iowan" when overseas. Therefore, the use of the term "Hebrew Bible" should not be taken to imply a Bible that is exclusively for the "Hebrews."
Agree? Disagree? Think I'm making too big a deal of this? I welcome all comments - and I'm open to correction - so let me know what you think.