# Was Judah the first Jew? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 11, 2004, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154 "2004-11-11T04:40:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Kel\_Varnsen\_Latex\_Division](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/aeb1de/32.png) [@Kel\_Varnsen\_Latex\_Division](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kel_Varnsen_Latex_Division)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/1 "2004-11-11T04:40:19Z")
Was Judah the first Jew? Does the word Jew only refer to descends of the kindom of Judah? That is the only kingdom of Hebrews that have any survivors left, correct? ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/2 "2004-11-11T04:46:45Z")
> [@Kel Varnsen - Latex Division](#): > > Was Judah the first Jew? Does the word Jew only refer to descends of the kindom of Judah? That is the only kingdom of Hebrews that have any survivors left, correct? :rolleyes: :dubious: :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Kel\_Varnsen\_Latex\_Division](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/aeb1de/32.png) [@Kel\_Varnsen\_Latex\_Division](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kel_Varnsen_Latex_Division)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/3 "2004-11-11T04:48:17Z")
What does that reply mean? ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/4 "2004-11-11T04:48:36Z")
> [@Kel Varnsen - Latex Division](#): > > Was Judah the first Jew? Does the word Jew only refer to descends of the kindom of Judah? That is the only kingdom of Hebrews that have any survivors left, correct? Also,is the first follower of Christ named Christian. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/5 "2004-11-11T04:54:55Z")
**ouryL** seems to think this is a ridiculous question. I don’t agree, but perhaps I’m interpreting the question differently. I think it’s asking whether Jews are _called_ Jews because of Judah. (Is that Judah Macabee? The Chanukah guy? I obviously don’t know much about the Bible.) At any rate, I think that Abraham is generally regarded as the first Jew (I could be wrong – see parenthetical comment above). But as far as why Jews are _called_ Jews, I have no idea. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/6 "2004-11-11T04:57:31Z")
Bear with me; this is a bit long. The Hebrews were the descendants of Eber, who was Abraham’s great-great-great-great-grandfather. The Israelites were the descendants of Jacob, who was renamed Israel. There were 13 tribes of Israelites, called the Twelve Tribes because two different systems of counting came up with 12. Of Jacob’s 12 sons, Levi fathered a group that did not have its own territory but had hereditary duties and was scattered amongst the territories of the others; and Joseph had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, each of whom a tribe was named after. So there were 12 territorial tribes without Levi, or 12 tribes including Levi but counting E & M together as “Joseph.” One of Jacob’s sons was Judah, who founded the large tribe that occupied most of the south of Israel. Due south of them was the small tribe of Simeon, which eventually got incorporated into Judah as far as political matters went. Due north was Benjamin. When the Kingdom of Israel was divided after Solomon’s death, “ten” (actually nine) tribes went with the Northern Kingdom, which kept the name Israel. Three: Judah, Benjamin, and the remnant of Simeon, went with the Southern Kingdom, which took the name Judah. The Levites were divided by which kingdom their settlements fell into. The term Jew is not used until after the return from Exile, and refers to the people who survived from the Southern Kingdom – Judahites, Benjamites, and Levites (Simeon having for all practical purposes vanished by this time). The leadership of the Northern Kingdom was taken into exile by the Assyrians, with a chunk of the people, and most of the remaining people were assimilated into the new settlers. The Southern Kingdom, which went into exile under the next conquerors, the Chaldeans or Neo-Babylonians, held together better, and resettled the entire land, north and south, when they returned under the Persians. Most scholars believe that only the leadership was taken into exile in each case, though Scripture treats it as though the whole people were. There are a couple of casual hints (e.g., Anna the Prophetess) in Scripture and Josephus that remnants of at least some the “Ten Lost Tribes” were still around. So while technically Jew probably ought to mean only “Judahite,” it in fact means any of the Israelite people from the Kingdom of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, who survived the Exile and resettled the land – including people from three or four tribes, and possibly a few relict settlements from the other tribes. In addition, of course, to this ethnic usage, it also means “practitioner of the Jewish faith,” and includes converts with no ethnic-Jewish blood whatsoever when used in this sense. Is that adequately complex an answer to what sounded like a simple question? ---
**Author:** ![Kel\_Varnsen\_Latex\_Division](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/aeb1de/32.png) [@Kel\_Varnsen\_Latex\_Division](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kel_Varnsen_Latex_Division)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/7 "2004-11-11T05:12:07Z")
Thanks. Do you why the word Jew came to be used for everyone of the (and I have no other word) “Jewish” people? If originally meant only the people of one kingdom, how it did come to represent everyone? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/8 "2004-11-11T12:28:01Z")
As noted by **Poly** , the large, remaining political entity that was still extant after the Babylonian Exile was the Kingdom of Judah. All the people in that corder of the world tended to call the people living there Judaeans, or Iudaioreans or related words, depending on the language used. The word Jew is simply the corruption of that word that made it into English (as _Juif_ made it into French while the “d” remained in the German _Jude_). The version of that country’s name that made it into English language bibles is Judea, of which one Herod was king during the infancy narrrative and over which Pontius Pilate was Roman governor aqnd another Herod (grandson?) was tetrarch during the crucifixion narrative. (Similarly, we call the people from the southern and eastern portion of the isle of Britain “English” from the group of Angles who settled there, ignoring the Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and the occasional Geat and the rest of the Nordic/Germanic invaders. It is simply a function of who is still standing when some bigger power comes around to assign the name that will be remembered.) ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/9 "2004-11-11T15:40:26Z")
In addition to what **tom** said, from the standpoint of the “mythology,” the remnants of the Southern Kingdom which returned to the land of Israel were, by then, the only descendants of Israel/Jacob that were still maintaining the covenant; that is, they were the only Jews left, so there ostensibly aren’t any (ethnic) Jews that weren’t part of that Southern Kingdom group. I think this answers your question from an historical standpoint; in terms of the story in the Bible, I would consider Abraham the first “Jew” (that nomenclature not yet extant), in that he was the one who made the original covenant with God which flowed down to his descendants, in particular his grandson Jacob/Israel and Israel’s 12 children. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/10 "2004-11-11T17:27:21Z")
Poly has it right, except for one nitpick: The Simeonites were NOT politically incorporated into Judah during the division of the kingdom. Judah only had the Benjaminites with them (and Levites as well, but they’re not generally included in the tribal count by that system). Simeon’s inherited territory was within Judah’s, and I’m not certain precisely how that worked out with them being in the Northern Kingdom, but all indications from Biblical sources (which is where all of this comes from in the first place) is that Simeon was not part of the Southern Kingdom. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/11 "2004-11-11T19:49:48Z")
I was under the impression that when the northern kingdom fell, most of the folks living there were not taken away into exile (just the leadership) and that they went south to live in the southern kingdom. Therefore many of the people of the northern kingdom survived and kept covenant by being absorbed into Judah. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/12 "2004-11-11T20:29:00Z")
Ahunter3: > [@](#): > > I was under the impression that when the northern kingdom fell, most of the folks living there were not taken away into exile (just the leadership) and that they went south to live in the southern kingdom. You might be confusing the Northern Kingdom exile with the fact that the exile of the Southern Kingdom occurred in three waves, one of which was the exile of the leadership (known euphemistically as the “carpenters and locksmiths”). There were some members of Northern Kingdom tribes who came to the Southern Kingdom, but they were a very small minority. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/13 "2004-11-11T20:35:09Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > Simeon’s inherited territory was within Judah’s, and I’m not certain precisely how that worked out with them being in the Northern Kingdom, but all indications from Biblical sources (which is where all of this comes from in the first place) is that Simeon was not part of the Southern Kingdom. The people who say that say so because Chronicles, after naming the cities of Simeon, says “These were their cities unto the reign of David”,taking the meaning that during the reign of David, they lost those cities to the tribe of Judah. ---
**Author:** ![kniz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/14 "2004-11-12T01:05:35Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > There are a couple of casual hints (e.g., Anna the Prophetess) in Scripture and Josephus that remnants of at least some the “Ten Lost Tribes” were still around. On November 22, 2000 **Nova** aired a program about what may or may not have happened to the 10 lost tribes of [**Israel**](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/) A companion [site](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/listseason/27.html#2706) has this to say about **“Lost Tribes of Israel”:** > [@](#): > > **At the heart of Jewish tradition lies the haunting mystery of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Ever since their defeat and banishment by the Assyrians in 722 BC., the Lost Tribes fate has inspired countless claims to Jewish ancestry by groups scattered on every continent. But now, surprisingly, new advances in genetics are dispelling myth and fantasy, and raising a curtain on the forgotten reality of the dispersal that happened so many centuries ago. This story will follow the first attempt to use the new tests to investigate a seemingly improbable African candidate for a Lost Tribe. It will dramatize a scientific quest that leads from the gene labs of London to the remote bush country of Zimbabwe and the lunar-like desert wilderness of southern Yemen.** ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-judah-the-first-jew/274154/15 "2004-11-12T04:33:12Z")
I hope that NOVA’s show was more accurate than their come-on. The Lemba (the group found in South Africa) have shown a strongly suggestive connection to the Jews through DNA testing. However, their origins are not supposed to have been dating to the Exile, but are tied to the Jewish merchants who settled Yemen in the period probably just after the return of the aristocracy from the Babylonian Captivity. This would indicate that they were not related to the displaced persons of the Kingdom of Israel by a matter of 200 years or more, but are more likely to have originated from Judea as people who had become merchants durnig the exile and attempted to expand into new markets,