Thought that ‘tis the season to send this out before some other half-baked cleric restarts the “Christ was a Palestinian” nonsense.
Palestine: What’s in a Name?
Mike Walker, Col USMC (ret)
One thing you see a lot of by the current generation of left-leaning and often hard-left history professors is the word “Palestine.” The reasons are many but almost always based on leftist ideologies and causes.
Which is why these historians are loath to use the words Canaan or Judah or Judea or Israel or – God forbid – the Holy Land during the Crusader Era. And they never ever use the ancient name Zion. Instead, the word Palestine (and ideally only Palestine) is inserted as often as possible.
Why?
Sadly, they aim to trick their audience into believing there was and always has been a land called Palestine. Further, their current goal is to delegitimize the state of Israel by supplanting its history with a misleading and often false narrative.
Here is the truth: the word “Palestine” is a European invention for the region that began with Alexander the Great’s conquests, then adopted under the Romans, and lastly when the British took over at the end of World War I. Beyond those European periods of conquest, going back over 3,000 years, the region was never called Palestine.
Significantly, during Islamic rule, the Greco-Roman word “Palestine” (in any of its forms) never was used.
And unsurprisingly, the longest and most enduring titles of the Jewish homeland were Hebrew or Hebrew adaptations centered on the names Zion, Israel and Judea.
So how about some history?
Perhaps the earliest form of the word Palestine begins some 3,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, around 1150 BCE, with P-R-S-T or Peleset used to describe what we call Philistines. And the Assyrians also made reference the Pilitsti or Palatsu.
The first Philistines were a Greco-Aegean people who settled Philistia along a coastal strip centered on modern Gaza City (and possibly related to the late-Bronze Age Sea Peoples). The city states stretched roughly 60 km along the Mediterranean and were about 15 km in width totaling roughly 900 km2 in area.
The Philistines never ruled the region, only that enclave and for reference, modern Israel is about 21,000 km2 in size or over 20 times larger than ancient Philistia.
That was a long time ago but not quite as old as the Egyptian root word for Israel (Khabiri) dating to 1209 BCE (although some claim the Egyptians referred to Israel a few decades earlier during the reign of Rameses II). The Assyrians called them Hibaru (Hebrews) and later, in the 9th century BCE, the Bit Omri (after the name of the sixth Jewish ruler of Israel, King Omri).
Either way, the Jewish people resided in much of what is present-day Israel and for much of this era the region often was divided into two kingdoms: Israel (and sometimes Samaria) in the north and Judah in the south.
These two peoples, the Philistines and Israelites, cohabited the region and were fierce rivals (think David versus Goliath about a decade or two before 1,000 BCE). By the way, David ruled the united kingdom of Israel and Judea (accomplished by his predecessor, King Saul).
Several centuries later, in the 7th century BCE, the Babylonians crushed both the Jews and Philistines. They renamed the region Yehud, a Hebrew word for Jews.
The Philistines never recovered and their lands came under the control of Egypt (which would be conquered by Persia in the next century). But they were not entirely forgotten, in the 5th century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus recalled them as what he called the Palaistine and Europeans thereafter associated the region with that name.
The Jews faced a happier fate. They were able to return after six decades of captivity in Assyria.
This is where Zionism comes from: The effort to reestablish their homeland by Jews who were forcibly expelled. It was the Persians who made the return to Zion possible and the Jewish lands willingly became the Persian province of Yehud Medinata (Mount Zion was the landmark hill of ancient Jerusalem).
Internally, the north became Samaria (peopled by Jews but also a small Jewish sect, the Samaritans, who limited the sacred texts to the Torah or Pentateuch) and the south again became Judea. Divisions again ran deep as the Samaritans were deemed sinful outcasts by Judea (hence the shock of finding a “good” Samaritan in the Bible).
Judea came to dominate the region and this ushered in the Second Temple era which lasted for a bit over 200 years until a youthful Greek King of Macedonia named Alexander came calling with his massive army in tow. The Persians fought back but it was a losing proposition. Alexander took control in 332 BCE (to include Egypt, where a new city was built: Alexandria).
The Greeks, under the dynastic rule of the Ptolemy family (founded by one of Alexander’s ablest generals) ruled the entire region – to include the Jewish states – from their capital of Alexandria for the next 130 years or so.
Ptolemy gave the Jewish homeland the old Greek name of Palaistine and it became the front line in the wars against the resurgent Persian Seleucid Empire (ruled by another Greek dynasty founded by another of Alexander’s generals, Seleucus).
In 201 BCE, the Seleucids captured Palaistine and it again became Judea. The Seleucids at first ruled with a light hand but the brutal rein of Antiochus IV beginning in 170 BCE led to armed rebellion in Judea (led by the Maccabees). The Jewish people prevailed with independence regained in 167 BCE.
The Jewish world at this time was not limited to Israel-Judea. To the south, Jewish Edom (Greek Idoumaia, Roman Idumea) was ruled by the Herod family whose members intermarried with the ruling families of Judea. There also were sizeable Jewish communities in major ports of the eastern Mediterranean and tens of thousands of Jews lived in Alexandria.
But it did not stop there. There were Jewish communities all along Arabian coast of the Red Sea as far south as present-day Yemen and even along the African Red Sea coast. But all the regional states, to include the Jews, were about to face their strongest foe, the Romans.
The Romans dramatically arrived in the last century before Christ under the leadership of Julius Caesar. Perhaps his most famous exploit dealt with Egypt where he brought the Ptolemaic ruler, the famed Cleopatra, into the Roman fold.
(As another aside, Cleopatra is not an Egyptian word. It is Greek, a name often used by women from the Macedonian aristocracy).
The Romans then advanced further east and in 63 BCE King Herod the Great in Jerusalem (and kin of the Herods of Edom) agreed to vassalage under Rome. That sustained the continued if conditional independence of Judea.
After Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE, Rome was plunged into a civil war and Cleopatra backed Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony). It was the wrong side and both were dead by 30 BCE.
Which leads us to Christmas.
At the time of Christ's birth, Judea was ruled by Herod Archelaus, a Jew and son of King Herod the Great.
Thus Christ was born a Jew in the Jewish Kingdom of Judea which remained a Roman vassal, only now under Emperor Caesar Augustus.
Herod Archelaus, however, proved a poor leader and in 6 BCE, when Christ was a child, Augustus dethroned him and made Judea a province of Rome.
Things went along somewhat smoothly until the reign of Emperor Nero, a particularly nasty despot (even accounting for modern revisionist arguments that make him slightly less profligate).
Predictably, Nero’s governor in Judea managed to so alienate the Jewish population with his excesses that in 65 CE they rose up in rebellion – a rebellion that did not end until 74 CE.
It was a costly war for Rome. Judea had been calm and there was no sizeable Roman garrison. To right things, the XII Legion in Syria was ordered to Judea. Unfortunately for Rome, it was crush and its few survivors disgraced after its imperial eagle (or aquila) was captured.
Nero then ordered the X and XV Legions under General Vespasian (who had distinguished himself during the conquest of Britain) to suppress the uprising. Vespasian arrived in 66 CE and met with great success in Galilee, so much that in 69 CE, Vespasian became emperor following Nero’s suicide. He then sent General Titus (also a future emperor) to Judea and doubled his army by adding the V and VII Legions.
In 70 CE, Titus razed much of Jerusalem, destroyed the Second Temple Mount, and ended the war in 73-74 CE with the siege of the mountain fortress at Masada by the X Legion. The Jewish garrison ultimately committed suicide rather than face certain defeat and capture. (In commemoration, Masada is where today’s Israeli military officers take their commissioning oaths).
As under the Greeks, there were large Jewish communities living in most of the Roman Empire’s southeastern Mediterranean provinces as well as Rome itself and the number of Jews displaced by the war in Judea only increased these regional populations.
That growing diaspora led to the next great Jewish uprising against Roman colonial oppression in 115 CE. The underlying causes were several. One was remaining unrest over Roman rule in general but the most import was timing, the Roman empire had committed its army in 113 CE in yet another of its wars with the Parthians (Persians), this one over control of Armenia.
As Trajan and his army began a long march on the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon (just south of modern Baghdad, Iraq), minor uprisings against the Romans in Cyrenaica (eastern Libya and home of Simon of Cyrene of the New Testament).
That spread to Egypt, Cyprus, and to Roman Mesopotamia. Almost everywhere diaspora Jews joined and often led the resistance and soon Judea became the heart of the uprising. Trajan called upon General Lusius Queitus to restore order and that gave the war its common name, the Kitos War.
Quetius was a Berber Roman officer who had fought well in Dacia (modern Romania), against the Parthians (Persians), and then crushed a pro-Parthian uprising in Babylon. So when the Jewish revolt arose, Trajan made him legate of Judea and ordered him to crush that rebellion.
After it was suppressed, Rome finally felt obliged to garrison Judea, stationing the VI Legion there on a permanent basis.
But peace did not last. By the 130s CE, Hadrian, who was born Publius Aelius Hadrianus, became emperor. Hadrian was strong, competent, and cautious emperor who defended the empire forcefully. Hadrian also was a noted builder of public works, and after visiting Judea in 130, he promised to rebuild Jerusalem to include the Second Temple.
But his actions more enraged than endeared. Hadrian did have Jerusalem, the capital of the Judea, rebuilt but renamed it after himself, Aelia Capitolina, and then began work to erect a statue of Jupiter on the ruins of the Temple Mount. To show Roman power, a second legion, the X, was sent to garrison Aelia Capitolina.
These insults and desecrations led to the 3rd Jewish-Roman War that began in 132. At the very onset of the uprising both legions took to the field and marched against the Jewish rebels but were stymied by strong resistance and suffered heavy casualties. Soon large parts of the Judean and Idumean regions were in rebel hands where they established a government and even issued currency stamped with the Temple Mount on one side of the coins and the slogan “Free Jerusalem” on the reverse.
Hadrian did not hesitate to respond and soon 4 more legions under Sextus Julius Severus made ready to battle in Judea with more alerted. Despite the early successes, the power of Rome inexorably ground down the Jewish resistance. By 136, after four years of war, Rome emerged victorious.
Hadrian, understandably, sought to ensure this third war with the Jews would be the last and took extreme measures. The name Judea (which dated backed many centuries) was erased, the province given a Romanized version of the old Greek name, Palaestina. In Jerusalem, Jews were expelled and banned from even reentering the city. The survivors who fought against Rome were enslaved and the rebellious communities ethnically cleansed and exiled to Galilee.
Their homes, farms, and pasture lands were forfeited and new settler-colonists were brought into the Jewish lands. They primarily were loyal ethnic Greeks (who populated much of the eastern Mediterranean coastal world of that age) and they came to be called Palestinians.
Whatever else it produced, it brought Pax Romana to the region. Then the Roman Empire divided late in the 3rd century and became Christian very early in the 4th century. Palaestina, which had a Christian population since the time of Christ in the 1st century, also became predominantly Christian and remained part of the Roman Empire. After Rome fell in 476 CE, only the Eastern Roman Empire remained to include the Christian-dominated Palaestina and so things stood for the next century and a half.
And again as noted above, they too would lose their almost all their lands following the Moslem Conquest in the 630s. That was when another onslaught of settler-colonists took control of everything: the Arabs. (Although many Jews and descendants of the original Christian Palestinians remain in the Holy Land to this day).
The land was again divided in two and formed into military districts (junds): Jund al Urdunn in the north and Jund Filastin in the south, a clear reference to the Philistines. That is how things stood until the Abbasid Caliphate redistricted and incorporated the entire region into Bilad al Sham around 750 AD.
And that is where today’s ISIS and HTS gets part of their names: The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
In 970, the Fatimid Shite Muslims ruling from Cairo conquered Jerusalem and wrested control of the area away from the Abbasid. The tumult continued.
By the 11th century the Seljuk (Seljuq) Turks from south central Asia were displacing both the Abbasid and Fatimids (whom they deemed apostates) and the region was roiled anew with their capture of Jerusalem in 1071. They called the region Safad and al Karak but had just begun to establish their rule when the Europeans reentered the arena.
Just 25 years later, in 1096, the First Crusade began. The causes were many but the region's chaotic state was key as Christian Holy Land pilgrims had become targets of both organized raiders and thieves as well as violent Islamic fanatics. That led to Pope Urban II’s call for knights to defend the pilgrims and secure Christianity’s most sacred sites.
It was smashing success for the Christians. Jerusalem fell in 1099 and soon the entire region was under their control through various Crusader or Outremer (Far Sea) States ranging from modern-day southeastern Turkey down to coastal Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Gaza. From north to south they were County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Opposing them were the Fatimids from the south, the Emirate of Damascus from the east and the Seljuk Empire from the north and northeast. It ushered in two centuries of conflict.
Then came the Mongols in 1258. When they were through, the great political, economic, academic, and cultural center of Baghdad virtually was erased. Never again would that corner of the world host the capital of one of the world’s great powers.
But the Mongols were not invincible. Islam always embraced slavery on a massive scale and that extended to the military in the form of slave-soldiers. These solders, who came primarily from Transoxiana in central Asia, were called Mamluk (meaning “one who is owned”).
Realizing their latent power, the Mamluk knights rose up, seized power in Egypt, and in 1250 established a Sultanate that expanded into the Holy Land to face the Crusaders.
In 1260, they took on and beat the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Galilee thus preserving their sultanate. In 1291, the Mamluks expelled the last of the Crusaders at Acre. But a lesson had been learned. Going forward, the Muslim Mamluks safeguarded Christians, their holy sites, and Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land. There were no new crusades.
The Mamluk Sultanate retained the provincial organization of the Seljuks, maintaining Safad in the north and al-Karak in the south. They would remain in command of the area until the arrival of the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century.
So impressive was the legacy of the Mamluk warriors that to this day, United States Marine Corps officers carry Mamluk swords during formal dress ceremonies.
In 1517, the Ottomans took power and the region became the Eyalet of Damascus (the Ottomans named provinces for the capital city). The eyalet was divided into a number of sanjaks (districts) also name for governing cities and the Holy Land was divided between the Sanjaks of Beirut and Jerusalem.
In 19th century Europe and the associated empires, classical Greece and Rome were deeply revered by the educated ruling class and that led to a revival of the words Palaistine and Palaestina respectively for the Holy Land which were anglicized by English-speaking people into Palestine.
This also led to great increase in Christian pilgrims which in turn raised the interest of European Christian religious leaders along with their monarchs. In reaction to the heightened political concerns, in 1841, the Sanjak of Jerusalem was separated from Damascus, reestablished as the Marasarrifate of Jerusalem, and ruled directly from the Porte. In 1871, it became a separate Eyalet.
Then came the First World War which the Ottoman Empire entered after naval battling with the Russians in October. In January 1915, two Ottoman armies invaded the Sinai threatening the Suez Canal. The British reacted strongly.
Soon, an Allied army dominated by British Commonwealth forces counterattacked. That first led to failed fighting in Gallipoli and more successful British support for the Arab Uprising against the Ottomans (made famous by the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia). The fighting shifted to Egypt and in January 1917, the Allies recaptured the Sinai and the fighting spread to the Holy Land. On 11 December, the Allies marched victoriously into Jerusalem.
Reflecting the significance of the event, British Prime Minister Lloyd George described it as a Christmas present to the British people.
Throughout this period the British referred to the region as Palestine. After victory in the world war, the peace negotiations at Versailles awarded those Ottoman lands to the British Empire which called it Palestine.
After three millennia of history, in the early 20th century and for the first time, the name Palestine became the universal word for the region.
