What is a Jew? (Part I) An Essay by Royce Logan

What is a Jew? (Part I) An Essay by Royce Logan

First there was Adam. Adam fathered Cain and Abel. Cain slew Abel. After Abel was dead, Adam fathered Seth. According to Eve, Noah’s wife, God told her that Seth was a replacement for Abel. (Gen. 4:25). Seven generations after Seth, came Lamech who fathered Noah (Gen. 5:29). Noah had three sons that accompanied him on the ark, Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Gen. 9:18).

Japheth, third son of Noah, had a grandson named Kittim (Gen. 10:4). Kittim was the name of the island known today as Cyprus and this island and the islands around it were taken by Japheth. These islands have been called the “isles of the Gentiles” and may be an indication of how the European race began, including the Romans who later persecuted the Jews. Genesis 10:5 tells us the descendants of Japheth divided into different nations and spoke different languages. They were also known to be sailors and to have settled other parts of the ancient world because they could sail the seas to new lands.

Ham, the second son of Noah, had four sons: Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. The land of Canaan encompassed the land that was later given to Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel by God. This land encompassed parts of what is today known as Syria in the North, parts of Lebanon, parts of Israel, and parts of Jordan. All this land is on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea and is just west of Iraq. Canaan, the grandson of Noah, also fathered the people who would later war with the Hebrews; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites (Gen. 10:16). Mizraim, the brother of Canaan, fathered the people known as the Philistines (Gen. 10:14) who also warred with the Hebrews. The descendants of Ham are most likely the people who later became the Egyptians, Africans, Orientals, and people of the Middle East as from Iraq, Syria, Turkey and India.

Shem, the first born of Noah, took the land east of Canaan, which is today parts of Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Eber was the great-grandson of Shem, great-great grandson of Noah, and therefore also descended from Adam. Eber is known as the father of the Hebrews.
If you follow the lineage of the three sons of Noah who survived the Great Flood because they accompanied Noah on the ark, you can see how these three sons could have fathered the population of the entire world, as the Bible claims in Genesis 9:19. If you are of European descent you may have descended from Japheth. Orientals, Africans, Middle Easterners and probably also Eskimos and American Indians descended from Ham. The Hebrews descended from Shem.

Six generations later, Abram is born, a great grandson removed four more times from Eber, who was the great-grandson of Shem. God decided to make a covenant (a promise, or contract) with Abram and changed his name to Abraham. God promised to make him rich and to let him have many sons and promised him that this covenant would also be for all of Abram’s descendants forever, and that his sons would become kings and create new nations.

The word Hebrew means “belonging to Eber” and Abram is the first person in the Bible called a “Hebrew” (Gen. 14:13) because he is descended from the family of Eber. Abram was born in the area known as Ur which is near the Persian Gulf and known today as Iraq. After Abram had taken a wife, Sarai, Abram’s father, Terah, took Abram, Sarai, and his grandson, Lot, and moved them all to Haran. Haran was an area north of Ur that was given to Lot’s father, Haran (Gen. 11:31). Haran was Abram’s brother.

When Abram was 75 years old, God told him to take up all his family and possessions and move to Canaan. Lot, Abram’s nephew, also had great possessions and went with him. There was a famine in the land of Canaan so Abram and Lot and their families all moved to Egypt for several years until a time came when the Pharaoh demanded they leave the land of Egypt. As they were traveling north, back to the land of Canaan, the land couldn’t support both Abram’s family and Lot’s family, so they decided to split up. Lot headed east into Jordan and settled there and his son, Moab, later established the nation of Moab. Now, remember Canaan was the land taken by Abram’s great uncle, removed four more times, Ham, the second son of Noah, and brother of Shem. After Lot had departed, God told Abram that he was giving him all the land as far as he could see in all directions. So, basically, God gave the land of Canaan to a descendant of Shem (Abram) which was still inhabited by the descendants of Shem’s brother, Ham. This land later becomes Israel.

We have to keep following this lineage to find how the Hebrews, or at least some part of the Hebrew family, became known as Jews. Although Abraham fathered many children by many wives, he only fathered one son with his Hebrew wife, Sarah, whom they named Isaac. Abram’s first son, Ishmael, was born from Hagar, an Egyptian maid of Sarai, whom Sarai sent to Abram to conceive. An angel of the Lord came to Hagar while she was pregnant and told her that Ishmael would father so many descendants that they couldn’t be counted. We now know that Ishmael became the father of Islam.

God changed Sarai’s name to Sarah when he made the covenant with Abraham. Isaac married Rebekah who gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. God blessed Jacob and later changed his name to Israel. Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel but also fathered children from each of his wives’ maidservants. Among these four women he had 12 sons; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun were sons of Leah, Joseph and Benjamin were sons of Rachel, Dan and Naphtali were sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, and Gad and Asher were sons of Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid (Gen. 35:23). These 12 sons fathered the 12 tribes of Isreal.

Israel and all his sons eventually moved to Egypt, again because of famine in the land of Canaan and because Joseph, the eldest son of Rachel, had lived there for many years and had earned the gratitude of the Pharaoh by helping the Egyptian people survive seven years of famine (Gen. 41:30). All the sons and their families died there after many years, but their children multiplied greatly until a time came that a later Pharaoh, who did not know about all the good things Joseph had done for Egypt, made slaves out of all the Israelites. The Israelites had managed to maintain their individual families based on each of their tribes. However, by the time of their escape from Egypt there were actually 13 tribes of Israel, not just the 12 we think of today. Joseph had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh who each headed their own tribe making up the thirteen tribes of Israel along with Joseph’s eleven brothers.

This concludes part one of this essay for we have now been introduced to Judah, one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and from whom the word “Jew” comes. In part two we’ll follow the descendants of Jacob out of the land of Egypt, who by that time numbered an estimated three million people.