# Names for Jewish and pre-Jewish groups **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 10, 2021, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780 "2021-05-10T19:23:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ALOHA\_HATER](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@ALOHA\_HATER](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ALOHA_HATER)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2021, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780/1 "2021-05-10T19:23:04Z")
There are names over history: Jews, Israelites, Judahites, Hebrews, and others. Which names go with which time periods? ---
**Author:** ![FinsToTheLeft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finstotheleft/32/2930_2.png) [@FinsToTheLeft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinsToTheLeft)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2021, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780/2 "2021-05-10T19:38:52Z")
I know that Hebrews was used until the middle of the 20th century like the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, our version of the YMCA. I’m looking at my grandparent’s marriage certificate from 1926 and they are both listed as Hebrew under Religion. ---
**Author:** ![ALOHA\_HATER](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@ALOHA\_HATER](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ALOHA_HATER)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2021, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780/3 "2021-05-10T19:40:21Z")
I’m talking about historical groups. Like “before period X, group Y did not exist, but the Z did.” ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2021, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780/4 "2021-05-10T19:53:01Z")
The Maccabees (AKA, Judean ISIS) were real nudnicks around 167BCE to 35 BCE. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2021, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780/5 "2021-05-10T20:46:02Z")
The Israelites are the descendants of Israel, which was another name for Jacob. I don’t know what Israel himself, or his father Isaac, or his grandfather Abraham, would have identified themselves as. The Israelites were then further divided into twelve tribes, from Israel’s twelve sons. Ten of those twelve tribes are lost to history, having no descendants left, or at least, no descendants who identify as such. One of the two that remains is the Tribe of Judah, which is the origin of the word “Jew” and its cognates. Moses came a number of generations after Israel, and laid down the Law that the Jewish people thenceforward followed. I’m pretty sure that there’s a specific word for the group that starts at that point, though I’m not sure which word that would be… “Hebrew”, maybe? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2021, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780/6 "2021-05-10T21:52:27Z")
> [@ALOHA\_HATER](#): > > There are names over history: Jews, Israelites, Judahites, Hebrews, and others. Which names go with which time periods? The names are cumulative, not sequential. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were Hebrews; the people Moses took out of Egypt were both Israelites (AKA Children of Israel, AKA Israel) and Hebrews; and the descendants of the tribe of Judah are Jews, Israelites and Hebrews at the same time. Jewish literature, both religious and secular, uses all three terms interchangeably. If you want to nitpick, then “Israelites” refers to the period up to the Babylonian Exile, while “Judeans” and “Jews” refers to the Persian period and later, although as I said, all terms were still used. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2021, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780/7 "2021-05-10T22:10:25Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Ten of those twelve tribes are lost to history, having no descendants left, or at least, no descendants who identify as such. Not quite. The tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh survive. > **[Samaritans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans)** > > Samaritans, (/səˈmærɪtənz/; Samaritan Hebrew: ࠔࠠࠌࠝࠓࠩࠉࠌ‎, romanized: Šā̊merīm, transl. Guardians/Keepers \[of the Torah\]; Hebrew: שומרונים, romanized: Šōmrōnīm; Arabic: السامريون, romanized: as-Sāmiriyyūn) also known as Israelite Samaritans, are an ethnoreligious group who originate from the ancient Israelites. They are native to the Levant and adhere to Samaritanism, an Abrahamic ethnic religion similar to Judaism, but differing in several important aspects. > Samaritan tradition claims the group... ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2021, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780/8 "2021-05-11T00:03:51Z")
Huh, I had thought that the Samaritans were descended from Ishmael (brother of Israel). @Alessan, what name (if any) is applied to the people of Moses? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2021, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780/9 "2021-05-11T05:09:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Huh, I had thought that the Samaritans were descended from Ishmael (brother of Israel). No, those would be the Ismaelites, who - according to both Jewish and Muslim tradition - are the ancestors of the Arabs. > [@Chronos](#): > > @Alessan, what name (if any) is applied to the people of Moses? “Israel” or “Children of Israel” (the latter of which is often translated as “Israelites”). ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2021, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-jewish-and-pre-jewish-groups/941780/10 "2021-05-11T15:02:21Z")
So the other tribe thought to have survived is the Levites? I know traditional Jews believe that there is still a meaningful distinction between Levites and other Jews. The Levites, traditionally, would be the tribe most closely related to Moses, though not all his direct descendants. The stuff about the ten lost tribes isn’t really historical or even Biblical, though. It’s doubtful whether the orderly division of the land into tribal regions as described in the Bible ever reflected reality. It’s also highly implausible that, after conquering the Kingdom of Israel, the Assyrians would literally have transported the entire population to Assyria, and the Bible itself never makes that claim. Presumably the ones who cared about remaining Jews eventually made their way south to the Kingdom of Judah and the others assimilated, alliteratively, into Assyria. To whatever extent the tribal narrative of the Bible reflects historical reality, today’s Jews are certainly not descended exclusively from any one of them.