Posted on 10/16/2023 6:45:59 AM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK
Isa 14:29
Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent’s root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent
Isa 14:31
Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved: for there shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone in his appointed times.
KJV
“ It was referred to as Palestina.”
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That’s not the question. The question is WHEN did that name come about for what was then called Judea and is now called Israel. It certainly wasn’t in the time of Isaiah, who lived about 2,700 years ago, and some 800 years before the Romans changed the name as a purposeful insult to Jews everywhere.
When Palestine Meant Israel, David Jacobson, BAR 27:03, May/Jun 2001.
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As early as the Histories of Herodotus, written in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E., the term Palaistinê is used to describe not just the geographical area where the Philistines lived, but the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt—in other words, the Land of Israel. Herodotus, who had traveled through the area, would have had firsthand knowledge of the land and its people. Yet he used Palaistinê to refer not to the Land of the Philistines, but to the Land of Israel. His understanding of the geographical extent of Palestine is reflected in his reference to the population of Palaistinê as being circumcised.2 However, the Philistines, as we know from the Bible, were uncircumcised. The Israelites, of course, were circumcised. Herodotus seems to have known about the Jewish people and their history because he mentions the destruction of Sennacherib’s army by an act of God.3 This can only be the same natural disaster that relieved Jerusalem of the Assyrian siege in the late eighth century B.C.E. (see 2 Kings 19:35–36).c
Like Herodotus, Aristotle gives the strong impression that when he uses the term Palestine, he is referring to the Land of Israel. In his description of the Dead Sea, Aristotle says that it is situated in Palestine.4 The Land of the Philistines, however, was separated from the Dead Sea by the hills and wilderness of Judea, so Aristotle could hardly have intended the two to be directly connected! He, too, seemed to identify the Land of Israel as Palestine.
In the second century B.C.E., a Greek writer, perhaps the historian Polemo of Ilium, made a similar link between the people of Israel and Palestine. Referring to the Exodus of the Children of Israel, the author claimed that a portion of the Egyptian army “was expelled from Egypt and established itself in the country called Palestinian Syria.”5
Roman writers continued to use the name Palaestina for the whole Land of Israel, just as Herodotus and Aristotle had done. The early-first-century C.E. poet Ovid writes of “the seventh day feast that the Syrian of Palestine observes,” by which he may have meant the Jewish Sabbath observances.6 Another Latin poet, Statius, and the writer Dio Chrysostom use “Palestine” and “Palestinian” in the same sense. Chrysostom, like Aristotle before him, speaks of the Dead Sea being in the interior of Palestine.7
Likewise, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who lived in the early first century C.E., occasionally uses the name Palestine when referring to the Land of Israel of his day.8 For example, he remarks that a considerable proportion of Palestinian Syria is occupied by the populous nation of the Jews.
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The case of the first-century C.E. Jewish historian Josephus is particularly interesting. In his Antiquities of the Jews, he consistently refers to the Philistines as Palaistinoi. This is the earliest clear identification of the name Palestine with the Philistines. Josephus doubtless believed that the name Palestine was a transliteration of the ancient Semitic name for the Philistines, but even he occasionally uses Palaistinoi in the wider sense. He mentions, for example, that Trachonitis and Damascus are “situated between Palestine and Coele Syria [Syria Proper].”9 At the very end of his Antiquities of the Jews, he remarks that his account details “the events that befell us Jews in Egypt, in Syria, and in Palestine.”10 These remarks indicate that Josephus was aware that Palestine had a geographical meaning that was much wider than the Land of the Philistines.
Hadrian officially renamed Judea Syria Palaestina after his Roman armies suppressed the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (the Second Jewish Revolt) in 135 C.E.; this is commonly viewed as a move intended to sever the connection of the Jews to their historical homeland.23 However, that Jewish writers such as Philo, in particular, and Josephus, who flourished while Judea was still formally in existence, used the name Palestine for the Land of Israel in their Greek works, suggests that this interpretation of history is mistaken. Hadrian’s choice of Syria Palaestina may be more correctly seen as a rationalization of the name of the new province, in accordance with its area being far larger than geographical Judea. Indeed, Syria Palaestina had an ancient pedigree that was intimately linked with the area of greater Israel.
https://www.academia.edu/43872189/When_Palestine_Meant_Israel
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