WHERE DOES THE DESIGNATION "HEBREW" COME FROM"

The chosen people of God were referred to by several names in the Bible. So before giving a somewhat non-answer to this question, let us quickly review them.

Israel

As descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob, renamed Israel (meaning “he strives with God” or “God strives”) in 32:28, they were sometimes designated the tribes of Israel, Israelites, or just “Israel” (see Genesis 34:7). The earliest non-biblical reference to this name being applied to a combined people comes from an Egyptian inscription dating to around 1230 BC. (F.F. Bruce) The picture becomes a little more complicated after the period of the divided kingdom. Thus, Israel sometimes denotes the Northern Kingdom only and sometimes both north and south.

Even more confusing is what happens in New Testament times. For example, the term “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16) may refer to either believing Jews only, or Christians of both Jewish and Gentile backgrounds. Then we come to Paul's equally controversial statement in Romans 9:6 that “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.” (See my post “Will all Israel be saved?”)

Judah

Moving down one generation from Jacob/Israel, we come to his fourth son, Judah. His tribe inherited the largest area of land in the southern region of the Holy Land. It was in that manner that the Southern Kingdom was named Judah after the kingdom split in two. It was during this period that “Jew” (yehudi) first began to be used to refer to the inhabitants of Judah (beginning in II Kings 16:6). However, non-Jews used the term when referring to the descendants of all twelve tribes.

After the return from exile, the loyal Jews tended to settle in this territory, leaving the Samaritans and other mixed groups to occupy what was the Northern Kingdom. Thus, after this time “the true Jew came to be used for all descended from or identified with the ethnic or religious Jews, whatever their race or nationality” and began to parallel the much more ancient designation “Israelite.” (Ehrlich) Similarly, Yamauchi states that even the faithful remnant who lived in north of Judah but chose to worship at the temple in Jerusalem were called Jews (II Chronicles 30:1-18). And Jeremiah uses the term “Jew” to refer both to the Jews in Judah (Jeremiah 32:12) and those living in various dispersed lands as well (Jeremiah 40:11)

Moving forward to New Testament times, the meaning of “Jew” alternated between being a reference to all Israelites or used as a pejorative term for those ethnic Jews who opposed the spread of the Gospel message. One must look carefully at the contexts in which this term occurs in order to distinguish between the two meanings.

Hebrew

And then we come to the earliest designation of all for the collected people of God: Hebrew. For example, in Josephus' History of the Jews, he only uses the term “Hebrew” in his description of their early history and then “Jews” for all later periods. (Yamauchi)

D.A. Knight notes that practically all of the references to “Hebrews” in the OT are found in a context in which the name is used to distinguish the Jews from neighboring tribes, whether Israelites or non-Israelites are speaking. We even see a remnant of this meaning in the NT when it is used to distinguish Jews who have retained their Jewish culture and language rather than adopting a Greek way of life (Acts 6:1) or when Paul is addressing a primarily Greek audience concerning his own strictly orthodox Jewish upbringing (Philippians 3:5).

What is the origin of the word “Hebrew?” Both J. A. Knight and R. Mayer state that its etymology is “uncertain,” and I am sure that the other authors I consulted would wholeheartedly agree, even if they didn't chose to use that particular descriptive designation. There have been at least four separate approaches to solving this problem, and some of them may be interrelated:

1. The designation “Hebrew” (hibri) may come from the verb habar meaning “to cross over.” In that case, it would refer to the crossing over the Euphrates River (Joshua 24:3) or the Jordan River (Genesis 50:10). “The Septuagint translates 'Abram the Hebrew' in Genesis 14:13 as 'Abram, the one who crossed over.'” (Knight)  R. Meyer says that this term came to be generally applied to any outsiders.

2. Another view is that the word arises from a person named Eber, who is said to have been the grandson of Shem and the ancestor of Abraham (Genesis 10:21, 24-25; 11:14-17). One problem with this view, pointed out by Knight, is that nowhere in the Bible is it mentioned that this is the source of “Hebrew.” In addition, Eber was the father of several other Middle East cultures as well as the Hebrews.

3. A third possibility often mentioned is that the etymology of the word comes from the Sumerian word hapiru, which referred to “a diverse group people with an inferior social status, living mostly on the fringes of settled civilizations from Mesopotamia to Egypt, and there is evidence of them in numerous sources throughout the second millennium B.C.E.” (Knight)   Fleming characterizes these people as a sometimes dangerous “group of social renegades.” Again, there are no sources directly linking these people with the Jews.

4. Fleming opts for the early second-millennium term habiru, which was used in Mari to refer to “the mobile community that travels in the back country with the flocks.” Mayer notes that since they did not have a permanent home or many possessions, they sometimes “entered into the service of the settled population on a contracted basis..as servants.” This could very well fit the description of the nomadic patriarchs. This view has the additional advantage over view #3 in that the consonant “p” does not have to be changed to “b,” a problem that some scholars treat as insurmountable while others have apparently found ways to easily justify.

To end this complicated history on an even more complicated note, Paul uses the terms “Hebrews,” “Israelites,” and “seed of Abraham” interchangeably in II Corinthians 11:2. So obviously the last word on this subject has not been heard quite yet.