Inbox: Jews and Israelites

A reader writes, “Jew does not mean Israelite and not one verse in scripture says so.”

If you search the words “Israel” or “Israelite” in combination with the word “Jew” in a concordance, you will find no single verse of scripture that contains both. In this, I suppose, our reader is correct when he writes, “Not one verse in scripture says so.”

He’s right: Not one single verse says it. I can absolutely do it in two, though.

Two Little Verses

Here they are. Both verses are the testimony of the apostle Paul, in which he describes his own situation. The first is from the pen of the historian Luke in the book of Acts:

“Paul replied, ‘I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no obscure city. I beg you, permit me to speak to the people.’ ”

The second is from Paul in his letter to the Romans:

“I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.”

So then, if you believe in the inspiration of scripture, at least in some cases a Jew is an Israelite. Paul was both, and he plainly said so, despite the fact that by his own testimony he was actually from the tribe of Benjamin rather than from Judah, the tribe that gave us that lovely word “Jew”. This was the case by the first century, and it remains correct biblical usage today. In scriptural parlance, “Jew” and “Israelite” are currently interchangeable.

The Biblical History of the Word “Jew”

This was not always the case. I invite our readers to take a trip with me to either of two earlier posts on the subject, which I will not bother to reproduce today. These posts describe how the word “Jew” has changed its meaning over the centuries. Originally, the word referred to someone descended from the tribe of Judah. Later, “Jew” designated any citizen of the kingdom of Judah, including Israelites from any tribe allied with it. Later still, after Judah lost its kingdom, a “Jew” was anyone from the former kingdom, wherever he might live throughout the world. Finally, as in the case of Paul, “Jew” and “Israel” became effectively synonymous. You find this usage from Malachi onwards to the end of our Bibles.

So then, the correct way to put it is like this: Jew did not ALWAYS mean Israelite at every point in history. Today, there is no meaningful distinction between the two expressions. Sometimes Jew does mean Israelite, whether we like it or not. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. Word meanings evolve over time. The word “Jew” has done just that, and scripture testifies to the change.

More than Language

Now, I’m quite sure our reader had more on his mind than arguing a linguistic technicality. In the same comment, he recommended this website, which you need to Google-translate from Dutch to English to read. The home page plainly states its purpose:

“Our goal is to inform our people of their identity as Israelites.
We believe that the people of Northwest Europe are the physical descendants of Israel.

History has proven that we, Northwest Europeans,
are physical descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel.”

This is a claim that’s been floating around for centuries, often paired with the assertion that today’s Jews living in Israel are mostly or entirely not genetically of Israelite stock. I am entirely uninterested in getting into that here. Such claims can neither be falsified from the pages of scripture nor verified with any degree of certainty by anyone but a geneticist, and perhaps not even then. For Christians, debating either issue is an utter waste of time, let alone making them our raison d’être.

Thankfully, the Lord knows who are his in every sense, though I truly doubt anyone else does.