A Concise Explanation of the Creation of the Jewish People
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The Old Testament accounts found in the Book of Genesis demonstrate that there was a rivalry between Jacob and Esau. Esau, it is also clear, was a race-mixer who had taken wives of the Canaanites and the Ishmaelites (Genesis 36). The rivalry between the brothers later turned into a national enmity among their descendants, and the Edomites were eventually enslaved by the Israelites (1 Chron. 18), and later revolted (2 Chron. 21). When the Chaldaeans finally took Jerusalem and destroyed the city, we find that the Edomites were in league with them, and are blamed for the temple’s destruction (Psalm 137:7-9; 1 Esdras 4:45 in the Septuagint).
When the Israelites moved into the land of Canaan, they were instructed to destroy all of the Canaanite peoples. They failed to do this, and were warned that harm would later come to them because of this failure (Num. 33:55; Josh. 23:13; Jdg. 2:3). It is evident that both in Jerusalem and elsewhere, the later Israelites did indeed have a problem with infiltration and race-mixing by the Canaanite tribes (Jer. 2:13, 21-22; Ezek. 16:3, 45 et al.). This was one of the chief reasons for their chastisement and removal.
The prophecy found in Ezekiel chapters 35 and 36 discusses the fact that the Edomites had moved into the lands of Israel and Judah after the removal of the Israelites by the Assyrians and Chaldaeans (cf. Ezek. 35:10). The theme of the prophecy found in Malachi chapters 1 and 2 is that Jacob is distinguished from Esau, and that the sacrifices of the priests are not acceptable, because the covenant is with Levi. With this Malachi fully infers that there were (or that there would be) priests who should not have held the office.
In the Biblical records after the Assyrian and Chaldaean deportations of the Israelites, concerning the return of merely 42,000 or so Israelites to Jerusalem we have only the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and a few of the Minor Prophets. These books are focused upon the activities in Jerusalem over a short period of time, and concerning the rest of the country, or concerning the time from approximately 455 to 3 BC, in the Bible we have nothing. It is evident, in Ezra and Nehemiah, that these returning Judaeans did struggle to maintain their race and keep themselves separate from the Canaanites and Edomites in the neighboring districts. Yet this attitude did not prevail, and with the works of the first-century Judaean historian Flavius Josephus and the apocryphal 1 Maccabees along with secular sources we can fill in some of the historical gaps between the testaments.
From Greek and Roman records, we can see that from the Hellenistic period all of the southern portions of the land once known as Judah and Israel were called Idumaea, after the Edomites. Strabo, the early first century Greek geographer, attests that the Idumaeans were “mixed up” with the Judaeans, and that they “shared in the same customs with them” (Book 16). From Josephus it can be determined that shortly before 130 BC, the reigning Maccabean high priest (who had all the authority of a king), John Hyrcanus, decided to conquer all of the surrounding cities of ancient Israel inhabited at that time by Edomites and Canaanites, and to either convert them to the religion of Judaea (first called “Judaism” by the Greeks) or to let them leave the land, or to be slain. (Maccabee was a name given to the Asamonean dynasty of high priests who ruled Jerusalem from about 150 BC down to about 36 BC, when the last of them was slain by Herod.) Josephus states that from this point these Edomites became “none other than Judaeans” (Antiquities, 13:257-258, 13:395-397 et al.). Therefore we see with certainty the fulfillment of Ezekiel 35.
Judaea from 130 BC forward was a multiracial polyglot of a nation. The first Herod, an Idumaean by race who usurped power from the Maccabees, bribed the Romans for the kingship and from that time the temple priesthood at Jerusalem was used as a political tool. Both Josephus and the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius admit that many of the priests were not worthy of the distinction under the former Levitical traditions, and the veracity of Malachi’s prophecy becomes quite clear with their testimony. The usurpation of political control in Jerusalem is the primary reason for all of the division recorded in the New Testament. In Romans 16:20 and 2 Thessalonians, Paul alludes to the temple priesthood as “satan” (which means “the adversary”), and this is also attested to in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9. Yahshua Christ informs the priests and other leaders in many places that they are the children of the adversary, and that they are not His people, i.e. Luke 11:47-51, John 8:33-47 and John 10:26. In Romans chapter 9, Paul makes a clear distinction between Israelites of Judaea and the Edomites of Judaea, calling the one “vessels of mercy” and the other “vessels of destruction”. It can be shown from the New Testament that many of the original Israelites of Judaea converted to Christianity during the ensuing years, losing their identity as Judaeans. The Edomites never converted, clinging to their traditions found in the Talmud – which has absolutely no authentic connection to the ancient Hebrew religion. Today these people, and all of their many proselytes and those whom they have intermarried with, are known as Jews.
William Finck
Christogenea.org
The following is an excerpt from the article on Edom found in the Encyclopedia Biblica, Volume 2, column 1187 (roughly page 33 of the 803 page edition). It was published in 1899, and the author of this particular article was David Davidson. These paragraphs are found under the subtitle End of Edom.
Davidson’s words help to show that while scholars have long known to be true what we ourselves profess: that today’s Jews are Edomites, and not Israelites, they nevertheless failed to realize the impact this situation had in relation to the New Testament period and the nature of Jewry thereafter.
From Davidson’s article, the End of Edom:
At length Judah gained the victory over Edom. John Hyrcanus first wrested Adora (q.v.) and Mareshah (q.v.) out of the hands of the Edomites (Jos. Ant. xiii. 9. 1, BJ i. 26). About the end of the second century B.C. he compelled the whole Edomite nation, it is said, to adopt the practice of circumcision, and the Jewish Law (Ant. xiii. 9. 1, xv. 7. 9). Henceforth they were included among the Jews (ib., Strabo, 760). Idumaea is several times mentioned as a district belonging to Judaea (e.g., Jos. BJ iii. 35).
The conquest, however, did not prove a blessing to the Jews; for, in consequence of those events, it came about that the ill-starred family of Antipas, the dynasty of the Herods, whom we should no doubt regard, in accordance with the common opinion, as of Edomite origin (see Jos. Ant. xiv. 10. 3, BJ i. 6. 2; cp Mishna, Sota, vii. 8) , made themselves masters of Judaea and of all Palestine, and thus were enabled to plunge the Jews into great misfortune. The Edomites also had reason to regret their union with their former rivals. Considering themselves Jews in the fullest sense, the fierce and turbulent inhabitants of Idumaea (Jos. BJ iv. 4. 1, 5. 1) eagerly joined in the rebellion against the Romans, and played a prominent part both in the intestine struggles and in the heroic but altogether hopeless resistance to the enemy (ib. iv. 4f: 8. 1, 9. 5 f., v. 9. 2, vi. 2. 6, 8. 2). Thus Edom was laid waste with fire and sword, and the nation as such ceased to be. Even the fact that the Edomites had at length become Jews was soon completely forgotten by the exponents of Jewish tradition. The frequent denunciations of Edom in the OT caused the name to be remembered only as an object of hatred, and hence the Jews came at an early date to employ it as a term indicating Rome, the most abhorred of all their enemies. And yet many of the Jews, it would seem, must have had Edomite blood in their veins ; for we may reasonably assume not only that the Edomites, after they had adopted Judaism, intermarried largely with their co-religionists, but also that those Edomites who survived the final catastrophe, whether in the condition of slaves or otherwise, were regarded as Jews both by themselves and by the outer world (cp Chuza).
Jos. - Flavius Josephus
Ant. - Antiquities
BJ - Bellum Judaica
Click here for a facsimile of a page from Encyclopedia Judaica, Volume 10, p. 23, published in 1971 which admits that "Jews began in the 19th century to call themselves 'Hebrews' and 'Israelites'", among other things.
Click here for a facsimile of pages from The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia which admits the absorption of the Edomites by the Judaeans on pages 593 and 594, as detailed above.
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Comments
Josephus and the conversion of the Edomites under John Hyrcanus
This is from Antiquities of the Judaeans, Book 13, paragraphs 254-258:
Josephus and conversion of Edomites etc under Alexander Jannaeus
Unfortunately, the apocryphal 1 Maccabees ends just as John Hyrcanus I had become high priest in Judaea. As it is portrayed in 1 Maccabees, before the time of Hyrcanus the Judaeans had persistently attempted to drive out all of the Canaanites and Edomites from the lands which had formerly belonged to Israel, in the times up to the Assyrian and Babylonian deportations, but they had little success keeping them out. So evidently, it was Hyrcanus who had changed that policy, and began converting them instead, but the account is only found in detail in Josephus.
Here, we see that the policy was continued and even expanded by Alexander Jannaeus, who was high priest some time after Hyrcanus, from about 103 to 76 BC. This is from Josephus' Antiquities of the Judaeans, Book 13, paragraphs 395-397:
Ostensibly, since Pella was destroyed for refusing to convert to Judaism, then all of the peoples of these other places, Canaanites and Edomites, did agree to convert to Judaism. This is the caused of all the division among the people during and after the ministry of Christ, and these are the so-called "Jews" of today.
Josephus: It was Edomites who defended the temple against Rome.
This is a purposeful near-duplicate of a comment found here: Idumeans vow to preserve temple before the siege of Titus. The following paragraph is from Flavius Jospehus' Wars of the Judaeans, Book 4, paragraphs 270-282, in regard to the last days of Jerusalem circa 70 AD:
Many of the true Israelites had become Christians by this time, and having the words of Christ, had abandoned Jerusalem and fled into the mountains. Those who remained, would have joined their fate to these Edomites who defended the temple against the Romans, and failed.
Strabo of Cappadocia on the mixture of Judaeans with Edomites.
Strabo of Cappadocia, whom I have often also referred to as Strabo the Geographer, was a Greek historian and geographer who died circa 25 AD, just a few years before the time of the ministry of Christ.
Describing the world as it was known to him, Strabo said the following, in Book 2, Chapter 2, paragraph 2 of his Geography:
Then further on where he described Judaea in more detail, the words of Strabo fully corroborate the testimony of Josephus in relation to the Judaean absorption of the Edomites, even if Strabo had an imperfect view of the internal history of Israel and Edom from the time of the Old Testament:
After this, Strabo went on to discuss Moses for several paragraphs, where he had respected him as a man, although he gave a rather odd condensation of the religion of Moses from a pagan Greek perspective. So it is evident that Strabo had never read the Greek texts of the Old Testament, however that makes his testimony concerning Judaea and the Edomites all the more valuable, since he evidently had no biases.
Evidence that the geographer Ptolemy corroborated Strabo on Edom
In a work attributed to Ammonius Grammaticus, a 4th century AD professor of grammar at Alexandria, there is a citation from the Greek geographer Ptolemy, who lived in the 2nd century AD. The work is titled Περὶ ὁμοίων καὶ διαφόρων λέξεων, which in English means Concerning Similar and Different Words. Here in our References section we have made a facsimile copy of the book available, under the title Ammonius - Concerning Similar and Different Words.
On page 73 of the first section of this volume [page 135 of the PDF], there is a citation from Ptolemy which we shall reproduce in facsimile form here:
We have no earlier English translation of this passage. Ptolemy's Geography as it is found at the Lacus Curtius project is very much incomplete. There is a commercially available edition published by Dover Publications in 1991, which is a reprint of an edition published by the new York Public Library in 1932. In the Preface to that edition we read in part that "It is not a little surprising that there has never appeared a complete English, German, or French translation of his work in this field..." That Preface was written by the original translator, Edward Luther Stevenson, and it is highly criticized, even lambasted, by the editors of Lacus Curtius, who reproduce many Greek and Latin texts for the University of Chicago.
So I can only offer my own translation of the passage in question:
Footnotes provided by the editors of the edition of Ammonius cited here generally support the citation.