Mizrahi Jews description, and prefer to identify themselves by their particular country of origin, or that of their immediate ancestors, e. g., "Moroccan Jew", or prefer to use the old term "Sephardi" in its broader meaning. Some modern Arab Muslims and Christians are probably descendants of biblical/ancient Jews who later converted to Christianity and Islam. Today, many identify all non-Ashkenazi rite Jews as Sephardi - in modern Hebrew "Sfaradim", mixing ancestral origin and religious rite. This broader definition of "Sephardim" as including all, or most, Mizrahi Jews is also common in Jewish religious circles. During the past century, the Sephardi rite absorbed
Sephardi Hebrew the Ashkenazi pronunciation was derived from that of Palestine in Geonic times (7th-11th centuries) and that the Sephardi pronunciation was derived from that of Babylonia. The theory was supported by the fact that in some respects, Ashkenazi Hebrew resembles the western dialect of Syriac, and Sephardi Hebrew resembles the eastern dialect: Eastern Syriac "Peshitta" as against Western Syriac "Peshito". Ashkenazi Hebrew, in its written form, also resembles Palestinian Hebrew in its tendency to "malē" spellings (see Mater lectionis). Others, including Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, believed that the distinction is more ancient and represents the distinction between the Judaean and Galilean dialects