Hebrews

The Hebrews (Hebrew: עִבְרִיִּים / עִבְרִים, Modern: ʿĪvrīm / ʿĪvrīyyīm, Tiberian: ʿĪḇrīm / ʿĪḇrīyyīm; ISO 259-3: ʕibrim / ʕibriyim) 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 Phoenicians or other ancient Semitic-speaking civilizations, such as the Shasu on the eve of the Late Bronze Age collapse.^[1] It appears 34 times within 32 verses of the Hebrew Bible.^[2][3] Some scholars regard "Hebrews" as an ethnonym,^[4] while others do not,^[5][6] and others still hold that the multiple modern connotations of ethnicity may not all map well onto the sociology of ancient Near Eastern groups.^[7]

By the time of the Roman Empire, the term Hebraios (Greek: Ἑβραῖος) could refer to the Jews in general (as Strong's Hebrew Dictionary puts it: "any of the Jewish Nation")^[8] 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.^[9]

In Armenian, Georgian, Italian, Greek, Kurdish, 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.^[10][11]

With the revival of the Hebrew language in the 19th century and with the emergence of the Yishuv, the term "Hebrew" has been applied^{[citation needed]} to the Jewish people of this re-emerging society in Israel or to the Jewish people in general.