Carried over from this thread (especially from page 3 onward):

http://www.islamicity.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13894&PN=1 - http://www.islamicity.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13894&PN=1

This discussion of some of the differences between the two terms, Jews and Israelites, is already underway.  I said, in the other thread (linked above), that I think that this part, wherein (forum member) Believer quoted Prophet Ezekiel and thus steered us backward in time, should be spun-off into this Interfaith Forum and here it is.

I might also say, as a caveat and at the outset, that, from my personal religious standpoint and sense of conviction, however admittedly jaded and even suppressed both may sometimes be, I can think of hardly anything more repugnant -and I might add idolatrous- than to either conceive or perceive the God of the Universe as being little more than an invisible, granted all-powerful real estate agent for Zionism.  For what it is worth, this is exactly the impression that I get, for example, whenever I listen to one of AIPAC�s men in the pulpit, John Hagee, sermonize.  I really consider them less �sermons� than public displays of a sort of programmed knee-jerk for an "Israel" which remains poorly, or obliquely, defined.  That said, let us continue.

I wrote:  �The Jews, then, are not the sum total of Israel, though in the final analysis they would be part, and the Kingdom of Judah is not the Kingdom of Israel.� 

TruthRealm responded by writing:  �The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah are both Hebrew Kingdoms.�

Truncating the genealogy somewhat, the word Hebrew comes from Eber, son of Shem, and father, ultimately, of Abraham (Genesis 11:27).  Abraham, son of Eber, was an Hebrew, as were therefore, and climbing down the family tree, his two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.  Isaac begat Jacob (Israel), who begat the 12 sons, or tribes, one of whom was named Judah, from whence, as I understand it, etymologically comes the word �Jew.�        

TruthRealm wrote: "The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah are both Hebrew Kingdoms.  As you [Servetus] noted, 10 of the 12 tribes in the northern kingdom and the other to the southern. So when referring to Jews, it refers to Hebrews, of either of the 12 tribes, of either kingdom.�

That, to me, is as confused as it is confusing.  From the standpoint of Biological classification, and by way of analogy, the phylum is not the order and the genus is not the species.  If the veracity of the report of the biblical book of Kings can be accepted -and a concession, on this Islamic board, it would certainly be- I think that when Rehoboam, for instance, assembled the house of Judah (and Benjamin) to fight, he recognized clearly enough the difference between it and the house of Israel against which he reportedly fought (1 Kings 21:21).

Sign-Reader wrote:  �With this kind of logic any wonder Jesus's genealogy is so messed up in NT!�

That was at once, yek-dem, as subtle as it was witty!   

Serv