[whiskeytown]

god, how technical do you want to get.....

they are both Isralies and Jews - Offically, they are decendants of the tribe of Judah, which is a member of the 12 tribes of Israel - (give or take two, since they liked to put Joseph's kids in there too)

about the timeframe of 700 BC - you had two kindgoms in the land...the northern tribes of Israel (10 of them) and the lower southern tribes, which was Judah and Benjamin, I think....

Anyways, I think the Assyrians, or the whoever...(Israel got their ass kicked a lot back then) - then came down in 706 BC, conquored the Northen Kingdon, and hauled off the 10 Northern tribes in the northern Kingdom (refered to as Israel - another name for Jacob who was the father of the 12 tribes) - into captivity - they sorta vanished from history at that point...a few freaks like Garner Ted Armstrong says the English - ergo Americans are the 10 lost tribes, but they're mostly believed to have been integrated into the society that took them. -

However, if you believe the O.T. - the Assyrans were stopped before taking Judah....angel of the Lord killed 100000 of them in one night - they were to punish the wicked northern tribes, etc, etc....anyways, a few yrs later, the Babylonians came down and took Judah and it's people into capivity for 70 yrs but let them return, didn't integrate them into their society, etc, etc... - that kept the idenity of those two tribes seperate and still around.

SO....technically, a Jew is a Religious Israeli - and Israel believes anyone who has gone thru the 3 tests of the jewish faith is a citizen of Israel and therefore can get Citizenship there/asylum, etc, etc...

but interestingly enough, those we refer to as jewish are really only about 1/6th of the original 12 tribes of Israel -

just assume the terms are interchangable, and the really religious ones are called Orthodox.

clear? - didn't think so...

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Now, an interesting story.... - God said in the OT he let the Assyrians do that cause the Israelites were worshipping Baal - remember him...some other god who they kept falling towards...Golden Calf, stuff like that... Baal worship was pretty common, and some kings even threw the idols in the Temple in Jerusalem...that pissed off God apparently, and he was gonna teach them a lesson by letting the Assyrians/babylons come in and kick some ass

and the priests of Baal - well, they had a lot of temples.... -

when the tribes of Judah came back after 70 yrs, they found a whole shitload of bodies around those shrines of Baal, touching them, thinking Baal would save them....some gory, gory stuff that had a visibly disturbing impact on the returning tribes of Judah.

after they returned - the Jewish people never even CONSIDERED Baal worship again and were solidly grounded then on in the basic tenants of the Jewish faith - so results in Jewish/Israeli meaning almost the same thing from a political/religious sentiment these days...

and interesting enough, the term "The Jews" really didn't come around till the NT - in the OT, prior to the kingdom falling in 686, they were the Isralies - the tribes of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, but not really called the Jewish people. (exept the tribe of Judah...and the tribe of Levi were called Levites, etc, etc...)

but by the NT, the tribe of Judah was pretty much the only one left...

RB