Plagues? More of a Moses thing. Then again, he was Jewish, too

Well, technically, Moses was a Hebrew.

Interesting etiology there- “Hebrew” from a common Semitic word of the time- “Hapiru” meaning “lower class” or “landless peasants”. The first time we see the word in an extra-biblical source is in a correspondence between an Egyptian military officer posted on the Eastern frontier- and Pharoah. It dates from the 14th century bce, and warns Pharoah of uprisings of “hapiru” in the border area.


One cannot speak formally of “Jews” until the “Exilic period” (597-540 bce) when Hebrew intelligencia was carted off to captivity in Babylon for decades. It was in Babylon, denied worship in Jerusalem, that they developed the institution of the synagogue and its teachers (rabbis), and also began adding the prophetic books to the [now] Jewish canon. From this point, they refer to themselves as Jews.

Here ends a true “thumbnail sketch”. Just remember that anything that can fit in a nutshell probably belongs there.

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