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The Hebrews (; ) were an ancient Semitic-speaking people. Historians mostly consider the Hebrews as synonymous with the Israelites, with the term "Hebrew" denoting an Israelite from the nomadic era, which preceded the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah in the 11th century BCE. However, in some instances, the designation "Hebrew" may also be used historically in a wider sense, referring to the or other ancient Semitic-speaking civilizations, such as the Shasu on the eve of the Late Bronze Age collapse. It appears 34 times within 32 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Some scholars regard "Hebrews" as an ethnonym,Douglas Knight, "Hebrews", The Oxford Companion to the Bible: "An ethnic term, it antedated the common sociopolitical names Israel or Judah in the monarchic period, as well as the more ethnoreligious appellative Jew in later times." while others do not, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, p.567, "Hebrew, Hebrews... A non-ethnic term" Collapse of the Bronze Age, p. 266, quote: "Opinion has sharply swung away from the view that the Apiru were the earliest Israelites in part because Apiru was not an ethnic term nor were Apiru an ethnic group." and others still hold that the multiple modern connotations of ethnicity may not all map well onto the sociology of ancient Near Eastern groups.
By the time of the Roman Empire, the term () could refer to the Jews in general (as Strong's Hebrew Dictionary puts it: "any of the Jewish nation") or, at other times, specifically to those Jews who lived in Judea, which was a Roman province from 6 CE to 135 CE. However, at the time of early Christianity, the term instead referred to Jewish Christians, as opposed to the Judaizers and to the gentile Christians.Acts 6:1: "Now in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution." - among other texts).
In Armenian, Georgian, Italian, Greek, Kurdish language, Serbian, Russian, Romanian, and a few other languages, the transfer of the name from "Hebrew" to "Jew" never took place, and "Hebrew" (or the linguistic equivalent) remains the primary word used to refer to an ethnic Jew.English "Jewish Museum of Venice" translates Italian Museo Ebraico di Venezia. - See for example:
With the revival of the Hebrew language in the 19th century and with the emergence of the Yishuv, the term "Hebrew" has been applied to the Jewish people of this re-emerging society in Israel or to the Jewish people in general.
The most generally accepted hypothesis today is that the text intends ivri as the adjective (Hebrew suffix -i) formed from ever (עֵבֶר) 'beyond, across' (avar (עָבַר) 'he crossed, he traversed'), as a description of migrants 'from across the river' as the Bible describes the Hebrews. It is also supported by the 3rd century BCE Septuagint, which translates ivri to perates (περατής), a Greek word meaning "one who came across, a migrant", from perao (περάω) "to cross, to traverse", as well as some early traditional commentary. Wilhelm Gesenius considers it the only linguistically acceptable hypothesis. The description of peoples and nations from their location "from across the river" (often the river Euphrates, sometimes the Jordan River) was common in this region of the ancient Near-East: it appears as eber nari in AkkadianA Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, Jeremy Black, Andrew George, Nicholas Postgate, page 64 Example: definition of eber nari in Akkadian-language Treaty of Esarhaddon King of Assyria with Baal King of Tyre (British Museum, London, UK) and avar nahara in Aramaic (both corresponding to Hebrew ever nahar), the Aramaic expression's use being quoted verbatim in the Bible, for example in an Aramaic letter sent to the King of Persia in the Book of Ezra Ezra 4:11, New American Standard Bible: "To King Artaxerxes: Your servants, the men in the region beyond the Euphrates River" (Aramaic: enash avar nahara). or in the Book of Nehemiah, sometimes rendered as Trans-Euphrates.
refers to [[Shem]], the elder brother of Ham and [[Japheth]], and thus the first-born son of [[Noah]], as the father of the sons of [[Eber]] (עבר), which may have a similar meaning.
Some authors such as Radak and R. Nehemiah Who Were the Hebrews? argue that Ibri denotes the descendants of the biblical patriarch Eber (Hebrew עבר), son of Shelah, a great-grandson of Noah and an ancestor of Abraham, hence the occasional Anglicisation Eberites. Others disagree, arguing that the Eberites and Hebrews were two different ethnicities, with the former specifically inhabiting Assyria. Nonetheless, the descent of Hebrews from Eber is acknowledged.
Since the 19th-century CE discovery of the second-millennium BCE inscriptions mentioning the Habiru, many theories have linked these to the Hebrews. Some scholars argue that the name "Hebrew" is related to the name of those Nomad Habiru people recorded in Ancient Egypt inscriptions of the 13th and 12th centuries BCE as having settled in Egypt. Other scholars rebut this, proposing that the Hebrews are mentioned in later texts of the 3rd Intermediate Period of Egypt (11th century BCE) as Shasu, while some scholars consider these two hypotheses compatible, Ḫabiru being a generic Akkadian form parallel to Hebrew ʿivri from the Akkadian equivalent of ʿever "beyond, across" describing foreign peoples "from across the river",See above the discussion of the Akkadian and Aramaic expressions eber nari and avar nahara respectively, corresponding to Hebrew ever nahar, being widely used in the ancient Near-East. where the letter ayin (ע) in Hebrew corresponds to ḫ in Akkadian (as in Hebrew zeroaʿ corresponding to Akkadian zuruḫ). Alternatively, some argue that Habiru refers to a social class found in every ancient Near Eastern society, which Hebrews could be part of.
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia the terms Hebrews and Israelites usually describe the same people, stating that they were called Hebrews before the conquest of the Land of Canaan and Israelites afterwards.
Professor Nadav Na'aman and others say that the conflation of Hebrew with Israelite is rare and is only used when Israelites are "in exceptional and precarious situations, such as migrants or slaves." Professor Albert D. Friedberg similarly argues that Hebrews refer to socioeconomically disadvantaged Israelites, especially in the context of the Book of Exodus and Books of Samuel.
In , Abraham is described as Avram Ha-Ivri which translates literally as "Abram the Hebrew." Hebrew, in this context, might refer to Abraham's descent from Eber. It might also refer to Abraham's Hebrew language or his status as a migrant from the "other side of the river".
Theologian Alexander MacLaren believes that Hebrew was a nickname for all migrants who migrated to Canaan from the other side of the Euphrates River (or the Jordan River), from the perspective of the 'long-settled' aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan.
In some modern languages, including Armenian, Greek language, Italian language, Romanian, and many Slavic languages, the name Hebrews (with linguistic variations) is the standard ethnonym for Jews; but in many other languages in which both terms exist, it is currently considered derogatory to call Jews "Hebrews".Yitzhaq Feder, in an online-article (c. 2013), " Don't Call Me Hebrew! The Mysterious Origins of the First Anti-Semitic Slur" suggests the term's present-day derogatory quality goes back to the origins of writing about the Jewish people.E. G. Kraeling, " The Origin of the Name Hebrews", American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 58/3 (July 1941): 237-253.
Among certain left-wing or liberal circles of Judaic cultural lineage, the word "Hebrew" is used as an alternatively secular description of the Jewish people (e.g., Bernard Avishai's The Hebrew Republic or left-wing wishes for a "Hebrew-Arab" joint cultural republican state). It is also used in some circles as a secular description of people of Judaic cultural lineage who practice other religions or none, including Hebrew Catholics.
David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, believed that the Hebrews were the indigenous inhabitants of Canaan that joined Abraham's religion, after he settled in the region. He also believed that not all Hebrews joined Jacob's family when they migrated to Egypt and later, birthed the generation of Hebrews that endured the The Exodus.
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