tt In the tii'ne of Eusebius, when the (hnliuction betweer, 'Hebrew' and 'Hellenist' was hardly rej^irilfd by a cientile Christian, even Philo can be called a Hebrew by birth (t» >-t»#< iiiK^tHtf 'K.:p«7«f h, UH II. Iv. 3X For oth'er examples of 'K^PAttt. Uflirtrvs, being used in the widest national sense, »<■« I'lut. SyitijMjt. iv. qu. 6. 1 ; I'ansanias, i. 5, g 6, v. h, % 'i, and 7, fi 4, vi. 24, $ 8, X. V2, i 0 ; Appian, civ. i 71 : Porphyry, n'/. I'yth., Leiplit;, ISIO, p. 2'i (if tile nadlntf is (rt'nuine) ; To--. IIUI. v. J.
\\ (juiden;oprobabiliussit Hel>rjH>stAtii(uan) Hfl>envosdi<-t<'S, an taiiquom Abrohoios, lucritoquiurilur, Aug. Vtuut. in OVti.$ -4 ; cf. Kuseb. Prop. Evung. x. 14.
ii 13;' i> represented by 13K In recent htyxim lexicon* but this U because there Is no diSerentiaJ sigo for either ■ oi | at the beginning of a syllable.
526
HEBREW
HEBREW
flora the worship of false gods and tlie pleasures service of the God of all and
' Hebrews ' and their most famous ancestor Qiay have assisted in limitin}; the term to them.
ii. Ebir (Tjy Gn lO-'"-'" 11"-", 1 Ch l>»- '»•»)• is a much more plausible explanation. Assuming ftim to be a real person, it would be a patronymic, used in two forms, (a) Hebrew ("i^i'), (b) bine 'Eher (Gn 10=') ;t cf. bine Lot (Ps 83"), aiid bine Israd.X
iii. From "lav as verb or preposition, designating the Hebrews as those who have come across, or who bflong properly to the land across, some well- known boundary. Euseb. (Pr(ep.Evang. vii. 8, xi. 6) ])refers to any other a spiritual interpretation, that the Hebrews were tliose who had passed over
"lip c ' ' " of the tlesh to the the life of true wisdom and piety. But this is hoiniletical, not scientitic. Three natural bound- aries have been suggested.
(n) The Ked Sea. 'Why was Moses to say to Pharaoh, The LoRD God of the Hebrews hath met with us? Because they had crossed over the Ked Sea ' (Exod. R. %Z middle, by a Rabbin, conceit).
(h) The Jordan. So Wellhausen (/*r. u. Jiid. Gcsrh. p. 7, 1894), wlio thinks it was given to them by their neighbours in Western Palestine after they had crossed over. He thinks, however, that in old usage the term was so extended as to in- clude the Edoniites, with whom the Hebrews were originally united. Thus ' Hebrews ' would mean those who dwelt in:!? "OV, ef. Gn 50'° and often (so Stade, Lehrb. % 16 ; Kautzsch [doubtfully], Heb. Ovum. % 2i).
(o) Euphrates. (I) In the sense that thi' Hebrews o.'uiie from the east of Euplirates to the west, i.e. wlien Abraham crossed it from Haran on the way to Canjiau. So Drigi'ii (in Field's Hex. on Gn. xiv. 13) TcpoTTjy (LXX) KoKilrai 6 'A/3paA^, inn^r) awb TTJs XaXSafwc xwpas Stairepdtra? t^i' MetroTOTaM'a*', f]\Oev eii rd fx^pri tCiv Xava.valon'. Tliis was also the refer- ence of Augustine's word, transjlurinlis (Quccst. Gen. % 2'J), and presumably of Aquila's Trepatrrit, wliich Field tliinks was formed by liira from T^pav rather than -irepiu (irepdr?;!) [to definitely correspond to the Hebrew ('l^yn not ■■i?l'C)]-§ ' Hebrew' will thus, according to this derivation, be from i;ii; in the same meaning that it has in me eher lanndhdr (1 K 14"), and perhaps in the phrase 'ebre ndltdr (Is 7")ll (so Dillm. on Gn 11'-).
(2) In the sense that the Hebrews went from west to east, the standiioint of the speaker beinj;, that is to say, east of Euphrates. So Hommel in the Appendix to his Anr.ient Hebrew Tradition : illus- trated by the ^lonumenls, 1897 (contrast his earlier opinion, p. 238), after comparing Glaser's investiga- tions of Min.ean inscriptions with cuneiform docu- ments. Ho supposes that Ebir 7idri{=Eber han- nO.-hdr of the Bilile, 'Ibr nahardn Minaean) was originally the region between Borsippa and Ur, I.e. on the west of the lower Euphrates, including the adjoining Country of the Sea to the southward. This is the region, therefore, indicated in Jos 24^ as the home of Abraham and the Western Semitic tribes who trace their origin to him. It was
• Augustine (see note tt p. 325) prefers it In Retract, il. { 16, De Civ. xvi. } S ; cf. Euseb. Prtpp. Evang. vii. 6.
t Sliem is here called "lay 'J3"V3 "JK JJ, unless with Ball (Haupt's OT) *J3*7r is to be considered aa an interpolation by P.
t Savce (Expos. Timet, Mar. 1897, p. 258) su^ifesU th&fEl>cr= Bab. Ebar, * a priest.' If so, and if ' Uelirews ' be derived from it. the paronomasia in 1 S 137 (common text) is due to a faulty pliilologj".
§ Fiirst (Lex. l.v. nnj') tliiiiks that ' Hebrew" was limited to the Israelites by V6*r hanwihdr gradually changing into 'ibcr hayyard^ (Jordan). So to Jews r, ■wipaia. was naturally ICasteni Palestine (Jos. often, e.g. Ant. xill. il. 3, cf. Ti/j<»» rati 'Io^i«,tfw, Mk 101) and wifietUi,e an inhabitant of that province (Jos. iij II. XI. 4).
C Nisibis in Mesopotamia is described as being i* rn vt/xtiat rf wf*( T» y.yf^t, T»t«u« (Steph. Byz. «, p. N.r,^.().
'across the River' to the Babylonians among whom Abraham or his forefathers came, and ha was called 'Ibri, as belonging to that land Ebcr, the term travelling with him und his descendants. In this way we can understand that (o) Ebir ndri is used of the country west of Eujihrates (and even of Palestine in an inscription of <-. 1100 B.C.); {ji) the biblical Eber han-nuhdr in, perhaps, all other places than 1 K 14'° means the same : (y) Ebcr in Nu 24'" need not mean either the Hebrews (so most commentators) or those non-Assyrian peoples who lived east of Euphrates (Dillm.), but a district in the north-west of Arabia.*