What Does Hebrew Mean?1

摘要

In the New Testament, there are several references to a language called Hebrew which can only mean Aramaic. But who were the ‘Hebrews’, particularly in relation to ‘Israelites’ and ‘Jews’? We suggest that the failure on the part of non-Aramaic speaking non-Jews led to the incorrect identification of Aramaic as the ‘Jewish’ language (then known as ‘Hebrew’) and thus of Jews as ‘Hebrews’. Neither the Bible nor (overwhelmingly) the rabbinic literature identify as ‘Hebrew’ the language now known by that name. But the Jewish Bible does mention Hebrews, who are often identified in modern research as ancient Israelites. More probably however, the designation means inhabitants of the area known since neo-Assyrian times as ‘Beyond the River’, Trans- Euphrates, Aramaic ‘abar nahara, whence the short name ‘Hebrew’ or ‘Transite’. Very many of these Aramaic speaking and circumcizing ‘Hebrews’ were assimilated into the Hasmonean kingdom and thus became identified also as ‘Judaeans/Jews’, while both Israelites (Samarians) and Judaeans were equally part of the ‘Hebrew’ population of Trans-Euphrates. The Bible recognizes the ancestor of this ethnos in Abraham, to whose descendants the territory of Trans-Euphrates was promised. When, then, did ‘Hebrew’ come to be generally adopted as the name for the language of the Bible? This is hard to say, but it may have been as recently as the nineteenth century.