Ancient Palestine or Israel?

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Ben Yeshua

Hello, Faith Sojourner:

Seems you stirred up a lot of political feelings in your question.

However, Capernium was part of the territory conquered by Joshua; in fact, his armies went 20 miles north of the Sea of Galilee to Hazor, see Judges 11:10
"And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor, and smote the king thereof with the sword: for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms.
11:11 And they smote all the souls that [were] therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying [them]: there was not any left to breathe: and he burnt Hazor with fire."

That made the territory part of the Northern Kingdom. If you recall, 400 years later God gave them to Assyrian captivity, thus, because of sin, they were carried away as slaves, never to return as the Assyrians occupied that land.

Perhaps you recall that wild animals were attacking the new inhabitants, so their priests said they must worship the God of Israel. Thus, the Samaritan and Gilileean worshipers adopted Judaism and were despised by the Jews as occuping their promised land.

The Samaritan woman asked Jesus: "Do we worship here, or in Jerusalem?" Jesus responded that "Now is the time that you worship in truth and spirit, not in this mountain, or Jerusalem."

Let me remind you that Ezekiel 38 talks of the "My people" returning at the end of the days, but that is for the final battle of Armageddon--and the Bible names the very Arab countries in this attack. See Islam in Bible Prophecy... at www.revelado.org/islam.htm

Shalom, peace in Jesus, Ben Yeshua

Michael J

Palestine was a name given to the region by the Romans. It has little to do with the Palestinians of today, who actually took their name from the land rather than the other way around. Interestingly enough, during Jesus' time the region was not known as Palestine, and the usage of Palestine in the dictionary definition is an anachronism.
Today the Galilee region is part of Israel.

Troy B

Sounds like a which came first the chicken or the egg question. History dictates that the Palestinians came first.

mr. roo .JPA.

Zeno is a little confused. Jesus preached in Capernaum, so there was a synagogue there. Jesus came from Nazareth, also in the Galilee. The encyclopedia entry notes that there was a Byzantine-era synagogue in Capernaum. All these accepted facts establish a continuing Jewish presence in the Galilee.

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I see that Bosco is a little confused as well - he can't even copy my name without misspelling it! :-)

The Romans did *not* expel the Jews from Judea in 71 CE. The Romans did destroy the Temple and expel Jews from Jerusalem, but the Jewish population remained in Judea - the best evidence is the Second Jewish Revolt of 132-135 CE. Would have been tough to mount a revolt in the area if they'd been expelled sixty years earlier....

It was after that revolt that the Romans expelled the Jewish population from Judaea , forbade them to enter Jerusalem (renamed Aelia Capitolina), and renamed "Provincia Judaea" "Provincia Syria Palaestina", the Latin version of the Greek name and the first use of the name as an administrative unit. That name was later shortened to Palaestina, from which the modern, anglicized "Palestine" is derived.

The Muslims who ruled the area until the end of World War I did not, of course, refer to the area as Palestine. In the 1870s the area was part of the province (vilayet) of Syria, which was ruled by a governor (wali) stationed in Damascus. The province was subdivided into districts (sanjaks), three of them in Palestine: Acre, Nablus, and Jerusalem. The sanjaks in turn were divided into subdistricts, administered by local governors called kaymakams. In 1887 the sanjak of Jerusalem became an independent mutasarriflik (subgovernorate) answerable directly to Constantinople rather than to Damascus. The following year, the rest of teh area â€” the sanjaks of Nablus and Acre â€” was separated from the vilayet of Sam (Syria) and became the responsibility of a newly created vilayet of Beirut.

The Western Christian world, of course, generally continued to use the Roman term "Palestine" for the area, and archeological scholarship also uses that name, even for periods when it is anachronistic. During the mandate, British administrators also referred to what is now called the West Bank as Judea and Samaria.

I know pretty well when the Byzantine Empire was, and nothing I wrote suggested otherwise. I pointed out that there was a synagogue in Capernaum during Jesus' time, and during the Byzantine Empire rather later - and that that established the continuity of Jewish presence there.
Since Capernaum is in Galilee, and the gospels report that Jesus taught in a synagogue in Capernaum, I'd say that there's pretty good evidence that there were in fact synagogues in Galilee during Jesus' time, which was before the destruction of Jerusalem.

(And, by the way, Zeno, Galilee does *not* mean "land of the Goyim." "Galil" means "district"; "Galilee" may be a compressed form of "Gelil ha-goyim" - "district of the nations (non-Jews)," but Galil itself just means "district.")

Although the mainstream scholarship consensus is that Galilee was majority non-Jewish during the time of Jesus (see K. W. Clark, Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible [New York: Abingdon, 19621 2.344-47) there are well-argued opposing viewpoints. See "The Myth of a Gentile Galilee" by Mark A. Chancey, Cambridge University Press, 2002. Even if the Galilee was majority non-Jewish, of course, that still mean that there was a Jewish population - as there must have been, since Jesus was Jewish himself.

So. Bosco, you might want to check your facts a little more carefully before impugning other people's knowledge of history. A little humility will go a long way. :-)

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Maya - if Jesus wan't Jewish, why do the gospels give him a Jewish family history going back to David?

americaatheart

there are so many that want to say it belongs to palistine..but it was and is for the jews...so what is palistine was there first..god clearly said it was his land and that it would go to the children if the promiced child isaac...so there is your answer..and becides if the world wanted to give the land to palistine because sometime in history israel took it away, then there would be a big problem everyone who's land was taken over by another nation would demand there's to be given back... how many americans willing to pack up and move back to their ancestrial land and give america back to the native americans.....im not jewish but i get so tired of so many wanting to hurt israel and her people, i will always stand with/for her no question about it because its gods land he has the title and no one can stop that....i pray for the peace of jerusalm i said peace not piece... israel is gods heart and i am not willing to stand betwean god and what he holds dear to his heart...israel is the apple of his eye i dare not mess with that, even if it means i will be hated around the world, god will bless those that bless her and he will curse those that curse her and threw her all the nations of the earth shall be blessed...thats his word not mine and im not willing to test him on it..

mark

For those who want peace on the Israeli side I say if Israel has any right to exist so dose Palestine. From the Roman time to our current time the country was called Palestine and that is about 2008 years go.
Palestinian city-states existed when Jews were nomads.
Some want the rest of us to believe they belong to the old Jewish people and at the same time they deny that other people think they belong to the old Palestinian people and if they have that right of believing so do the contemporary Palestinians.
Life to them is not based on sharing the existence of life itself.
so once again if Israel has any rights so do the proud people of Palestine. 60 years of denial of Palestinian existence did not make Israel exist without a piece of paper singed by the same people who Israel keep denying their right to exist.
May G-D show us all the right way to peace and coexistence.

Slartibartfast

Check this out - there has never, in the history of the world - been a country called Palestine.

It was and still is an area with no defined borders.
Before Israel was born in 1948, the land that is called Palestine was part Egypt, part Jordan and part Syria.

I like friends everywhere,esp.+D

Both are true.Palestine was and is the country.The people were called Israel in ancient times,the country was not until recent times.Your friend Verto.

samsoomathemadruba

Canaan or Israel, you have to realize Hebrew was spoken in the land, never Palestine back then.

10 of the original 12 Hebrew tribes, which, under the leadership of Joshua, took possession of Canaan, the Promised Land, after the death of Moses. They were named Asher, Dan, Ephraim, Gad, Issachar, Manasseh, Naphtali, Reuben, Simeon, and Zebulunâ€”all sons or grandsons of Jacob. In 930 BC the 10 tribes formed the independent Kingdom of Israel in the north and the 2 other tribes, Judah and Benjamin,

As for Kfar Nachum, no one lives there today it's an antiquity site in Israel, open to all who care to visit.
I have been there many times .

paperback writer

The region of Palestine used to be JUDEA, home of the Jews. When the Romans conquered it, they renamed it 'Palestina' after the ancient Philistines, who had already vanished. The Romans gave it this name to sever the link between the region and the Jewish people.

Palestinian Jews have always, always, always lived in Palestine. They have lived there, non stop, for 4000 years.

The Jews are the only people ever to have a sovereign nation in the region, as well.

The 'palestinians' as we know them today only appeared in 1967 - SOME TWO DECADES *after* Israel was recreated.

Prior to that, these 'palestinians' were content to be classified as JORDANIANS, if they lived in the West Bank, which Jordan occupied. Other 'palestinians' lived in Gaza - this was occupied by EGYPT.

Not once did the 'palestinians' ask for their own state, or for any land 'back', and not once did they use terrorism against Jordan or Egypt - even though both nations stuck them in refugee camps and then left them there to rot.

For more facts: http://jew-with-a-view.blogspot.com

Zeno

Palestine was a name bestowed by the Romans somewhat after the time of Jesus,but in His life Galilee - which means "Land of the Goyim" - was almost devoid of hebrews. The population was overwhelmingly ethnic Syrian with a small Greek minority. Galilee was never considered to be jewish territory except for a short period 500 years or so before Christ. The jews lived in Judea and an offshoot in Samaria.

Alan G

The Promise's Stand and the scripture is clear.
Everything from the Euphates River to the brook of Egypt belongs to Israel. And I believe the last time I looked at a map it included that area around galilee.

Gamla Joe

To quote Shakespeare

"that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet"

A name is simply a label we put on something. Are we really going to get hung up on something so superficial?

me!!

There was no Israel before 1948.simple and clear...

Mr. X

the word "palestinian" used in that context means any inhabitant of the land, most often jewish.

it's only been used for arabs since 1967.

The original philistines are gone, when Cyrus let the Jews return to Israel, the Jews found that there were only a few Philistines, mostly elderly left, no one knows what happened to them, though some think they settled in Egypt some point during the Assyrian occupation.

The Philistines were Hellenic in Ethnicity, not Arab or Semitic.

So basically the "Palestinians" hijacked the name for political reasons.

By the way it was the Romans who renamed the area Palestine to offend the rebellious Jews. Also Romans viewed themselves as the inheritors of Greek culture

ka3udr

Capharnaum is an ancient city of Israel.

Mike A

There is no proof of ever having a :"Palestinian" culture, people, language, currency, etc.

Did you know the Palestinian Symphony used to be made of up Jewish players?

Maya

The Byzantine era begins long after Jesus. In his lifetime,the Galilee was indeed the "Land of the Goyim"; that is a literal translation of the name. The jews who lived there were relocated to Judea in the 2nd century B.C. by John Hycanus. In the time of Jesus it was overwhelmingly Syrian and indeed all his personal habits - his ways of eating for example - are typical of ethnic Syrians. There were no synagogues. He was deeply hostile to the jewish clergy. He refers to their god as "the father of lies" - a classic Zoroastrian term for the Devil. His religious influences were very likely Zoroastrian and at the least he was certainly not an ethnic jew. The earliest ruins of synagogues discovered in Galilee date from after 71 A.D. which should not surprise us since after their expulsion from Judea the jews relocated to Sepphoris in Galilee. From Roman times until 1948 all references to the region use the term Palestine which the Romans derived from Philistia,home of the original inhabitants - the Philistines - from whom the contemporary Palestinian is descended albeit with an admixture of Arab blood. Philisitia was located where the Gaza Strip is today. The jewish empire known as Israel disintegrated after only one hundred years and the area eventually became part of the Persian Empire,as a result of which Zoroastrianism became the dominant religion and remained so until the emergence of Islam in the 6th century A.D. The Romans assumed control after a short interval following the decline of the Persian Empire. Thus,all maps and historical works from approximately 100 A.D. to 1948 identify the region as Palestine. All of this copiously documented but zionist propagandists resort to simple denial; they just keep parroting the line that the Palestinians came from Arabia and that no one anywhere ever called the country Palestine. It is best to ignore them. Their god is after all the father of lies.

Bosco

More jewish lies,I see. Well,all literature on the "area" from the second century until 1948 refers to it as Palestine,including books written by zionists; it was the term used by all and sundry including the jewish Agency itself until May 1948. The term refers to the area now claimed by zionism. It was never an independent government,but rather part of a series of empires the first being the Roman and the last being the Ottomans,unless you want to include the British Mandate. Following the collapse of the Ottomans during WWI the area came under French and English military occupation and this was converted to peacetime caretaker governments known as Mandates. At the conclusion of the mandates,Syria received it's independence as did Iraq,Lebanon and Jordan. Only Palestine did not. It was simply abandoned to it's fate at the hands of a few hundred thousand heavily financed and well-armed jewish "settlers" who proceeded to drive them out or kill them. That is history and all the jewish lies in the history of that strange people will not conceal the truth.

ps; Mr. Rioux is a little confused. The Byzantine empire came along almost 400 years after Christ and the synagogues in galilee date from the second and third centuries and were clearly contructed after the expulsion of jews from Judea in 71 A.D. Consult any history of Galilee you like. There were no synagogues until the Romans ousted the jews from jerusalem and they decamped to Tiberias and Sepphoris. This is well after Christ. You don't anything about history.

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