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The Hebrew tribes formed a United Kingdom called Israel, named after the patriarch Jacob who was given the name of Israel by an angel (as The Bible relates in Genesis ch. 32), which means "he who contends with God". Jacob had 12 sons (Genesis ch.29 and 35), for whom the tribes were named - Dan, Judah, Benjamin, etc.

Eventually, there was a civil war and the kingdom of Israel split into 2 countries - Israel in the north, and Judah in the south. The kingdom of Judah was named after the tribe of Judah, the largest of the Israelite tribes, which were the people of the southern kingdom along with the much smaller tribe of Benjamin.

Israel was conquered by the Assyrian Empire in 740 BC, and the ten tribes were taken and scattered across the empire to assimilate them, denying them their own language, customs, and religion so their descendants would become Assyrians. That's what Assyria did to all conquered nations. Hence, the "ten lost tribes of Israel". That left only Judah (and Benjamin), the last surviving Israelite tribes.

Judah was conquered later by Babylon, and the people of Jerusalem - the skilled and educated populace - were taken captive to Babylon. From that point onward in the Bible, they were referred to as Jews (Hebrew: Yehudim), which is the short form of Judean, meaning a person from the tribe and/or kingdom of Judea.

In most languages, including Hebrew and Latin, the word for Jew and Judean are the same. The word "Judaism" means "the religion of the Judeans". So the word Jew is one that came from Jewish history.

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