All Israelis Are Not Jews

Very neat to hear this news....

This also would knock out the false doctrine that ALL of the OT gentiles were not saved...Can you imagine Abraham and Sara going to hell just because they were not JEWS?

 

"Hebrew" is the more common OT name. Calling Abraham not a Jew is not that helpful. He is the father of the Jews. He is the one through whom the promise came.

The use of Judah, Israel, Jacob, and Ephraim (as well as a few others) in prophecy usually all refer to the same entity--the descendants of Abraham. We could look at individual passages if you have some in mind.

 

All of Israel that migrates back to Jerusalem accept the name of Jew or Judaism. Even the Benjamin tribe that was in nothern Israel, eventually accepted the name of Jew. IMO

 

Are there any Israelis in the OT?

I believe that term refers to people with citizenship or residence in the nation of Israel founded in the 1948.

Descendents of Israel (and through him Abraham) are usually referred to as Israelites. Hebrew was also a term used to refer to them because that is the language they spoke.

After King Solomon, the kingdom of Israel split into the northern kingdom of Israel (10 tribes) and the southern kingdom of Judah (Judah and Reuben). The "Yehudi" or Jews is a name for people in the southern kingdom, referring to the dominant tribe in the south.

In the Babylonian and Assyrian conquests, the northern kingdom pretty much got demolished, dispersed, lost their culture and remnants were absorbed into the southern kingdom of Judah. The culture and dominant religious expression that survived and arose after the capture and exile of the southern kingdom of Judah is now what we recognize as Jewish culture and Judaism.

By NT times when Revelation was written, Jew was synonymous with Israelite or descendant of Abraham through Israel (Jacob).


It is true that not all Israelis are Jews. Christian, Muslim and atheist/agnostic Israelis are some of the other larger religious groups, some of them being Jews by birth but not religion. There are probably many other minority religious expressions and ethnicities who are citizens/residents of the nation of Israel.