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Duration: 36:15

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Today we obsess over the word Hebrew and go deep into what it means, who was and was not a Hebrew, whether it was a social or ethnic designation, what that implies about the religious and cultural mission of Israel, and what that might mean for the historicity of the Bible. In a sense, this is kind of a tangent from our wider story, but I think this is one of the really core issues that most people either wonder about, or are ignorant of and should be wondering about. If you really want to skip this, the short version is that there is a theory that the word Hebrew comes from 'Apiru, or Habiru, and while there is quite a lot of back and forth on the topic, I happen to think this is surprisingly likely, for reasons that go way beyond linguistic matters. But we also look at the other possibilities and what I think about them as well.

Notes for the episode are on the webpage at oldeststories.net

The Oldest Stories podcast tells the history and myth of bronze age Mesopotamia beginning with the first written clay tablets circa 3000 BCE. Using their stories and histories, we can learn a great deal about the people of the ancient world and see how the people of the very first civilizations were not all that different from us nowadays, except of course for the places where they were very different. The past is a foreign country after all.

This youtube channel is an extension of the Oldest Stories podcast, which is also available on any good podcasting app, or at the website http://oldeststories.net. New episodes release will be once a week each Wednesday.