Does judea still exist

Answer 1

During biblical times, the tribe of Judah settled in the area of Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, and this area was called Judah.

During the period of the Israelite monarchy, the Land of Israel was split into two kingdoms: the kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah.

When the Romans took control over the Land of Israel they named it the province of Judea. This was the name used for Israel until the end of Roman domination over Israel (614 CE).

Today the name Judea is applied to the area south of Jerusalem which is part of the West Bank. Israelis often refer to the West Bank as "Judea and Samaria."

Answer 2

AnswerIsrael, the land of the Israelites was destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. Many of the Israelites were deported and gradually assimilated into the local populations, losing their ethnic identity. Their descendants would be among the Arabs of Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Others were able to flee south into the smaller kingdom of Judah and were gradually assimilated into the Judahite population, and their descendants would be among the Jews of today.

Having largely depopulated Israel, the Assyrians repopulated their new province, now called Samaria, with other captives, particularly Arabs. The descendants of these immigrants and the remnant Israelites who had remained in the countryside, became known as Samarians, then later as Samaritans. They adopted an early version of Judaism, but most eventually became Jews, and their modern descendants are also among the Jews of today.

Judahite tradition held that there had once been a United Kingdom of Israel, and therefore that the people of Judah were themselves descendants of the Israelites, not just the people of the defeated northern kingdom. However, scholars are divided on whether there really was a united Israelite kingdom. The distinguished archaeologist Israel Finkelstein says that the two peoples were always separate, with separate cultures and dialects.

So, for various reasons, the descendants of the original Israelites can still be found among the Jews of today, but also among the Arab people of the region. Jews living in modern Israel are known as Israelis.

Answer 3

Yes; the Hebrews are today the Jewish people.

In classical Jewish sources such as the Torah, Jews are spoken of as a nation (with shared ancestry), with Judaism being the national code of living.
Today we often use the term ethno-religious group (not "race") to describe the Jewish people. Jews have certain elements that are common to all ethnicities, such as a common language, particular customs of association, a shared history, and a common ancestry. Jews are descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives. Despite their diversity, Jews are related to each other (as has been demonstrated by DNA analyses of far-flung Jewish communities).
At the same time, Judaism is a religion, because it's defined in dictionaries as the religion of Moses; the religion of the Torah, which includes people born Jewish as well as non-ethnic Jews who became converts. See also:

Are_Hebrews_Jews_and_Israelites_the_same_people

Answer 4

Over the past 15 years, geneticists have identified links between the world's Jewish communities that point to a common ancestry. There can be no doubt that the ancient Hebrews are represented to a significant extent in the DNA of most Jews alive today. Still, the origin of one of the most important Jewish populations, the Ashkenazim of central and eastern Europe, remained a mystery.
A new genetic analysis, in the journal Nature Communications, points to European women as the principal female founders, and to the Jewish community of the early Roman Empire as the possible source of the Ashkenazi ancestors. A team led by Martin Richards of the University of Huddersfield in Britain took a fresh look at Ashkenazi lineages by decoding the entire mitochondrial genome of people from Europe and the Near East. Their finding reinforces the idea that many Jewish communities in Europe were founded by single men who married and converted local women.

Unlike the Y chromosomes, which bore patterns typically found in the Near East, mitochondrial DNA used to study maternal lineage showed no common pattern. In several of the smaller Jewish communities, it clearly resembled that of the surrounding population. It wasn't clear, however, whether this was true of the Ashkenazim.

This uncertainty seemed to be resolved by a survey published in 2006. Its authors reported that the four most common mitochondrial DNA lineages among Ashkenazim came from the Near East, implying that just four Jewish women were the ancestresses of nearly half of today's Ashkenazim. However, decoding DNA was quite expensive at the time, and the authors of the 2006 survey analysed only a short length of the mitochondrial DNA in all their subjects.

Now, with the entire mitochondrial genome in hand, Professor Richards and his researchers estimated that at least 80 per cent of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry comes from women indigenous to Europe, and 8 per cent from the Near East, with the rest uncertain.

A Hebrew bloodline exists in the Ashkenazim Jews of today, but this is now recognised to be substantially diluted by intermarriage. Some Middle Eastern Jews would be descended from Arabic converts to Judaism, but they would be impossible to identify through DNA, as Arabs are so closely related to Jews.

Answer 5

Yes. The Nazis slaughtered about two-thirds of all Jews in Europe, but the other third lived - as well as Jews in the US and other countries.

Answer 6

Yes. There are are roughly 14 million Jews in the world with 80% split between the United States and Israel.