A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations/Hebrews

*HEBREWS, the posterity of Eber, the ancestor of Abraham (Gen. xi. 16-26) and the Jews. So Paul, being by both parents a Jew, calls himself an Hebrew of the Hebrews, Phil. iii. 5, Some think, however, that the term was used in allusion to its original import, a pilgrim or stranger; so they read, Gen. x. 21. Shem was the father of all the children not of Eber, but of passage or pilgrimage, i. e. of all pilgrims. See Heb. xi. 12—16.