sentences: "Jew" originally meant a person from the nation of Judah (called "Judea" by the Roman Empire), which came into existence after the reign of King Solomon, when the nation of Israel was divided in two.Those from Israel prior to then – the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, as well as the Patriarchs from whom they descended –- were not "Jews" in this technical sense, but Jewish historians still refer to these earlier ancestors as Jews.