http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine
Further information:
Definitions of Palestine and
History of the name Palestine
The term
Peleset (
transliterated from
hieroglyphs as
P-r-s-t) is found in numerous Egyptian documents referring to a neighboring people or land starting from c.1150 BCE during the
Twentieth dynasty of Egypt. The first mention is thought to be in texts of the temple at
Medinet Habu which record a people called the Peleset among the
Sea Peoples who invaded
Egypt in
Ramesses III's reign.[SUP]
[7][/SUP] The
Assyrians called the same region
Palashtu or
Pilistu, beginning with
Adad-nirari III in the Nimrud Slab in c.800 BCE through to emperor
Sargon II in his Annals approximately a century later.[SUP]
[8][/SUP][SUP]
[9][/SUP][SUP]
[10][/SUP] Neither the Egyptian or Assyrian sources provided clear regional boundaries for the term.
The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the region synonymous with that defined in modern times was in 5th century BC
Ancient Greece.
Herodotus wrote of a 'district of Syria, called
Palaistinê" in
The Histories, the first historical work clearly defining the region, which included the
Judean mountains and the
Jordan Rift Valley.[SUP]
[11][/SUP][SUP]
[12][/SUP][SUP]
[13][/SUP][SUP]
[14][/SUP][SUP]
[15][/SUP][SUP]
[16][/SUP] Approximately a century later,
Aristotle used a similar definition in
Meteorology, writing "Again if, as is fabled, there is a lake in Palestine, such that if you bind a man or beast and throw it in it floats and does not sink, this would bear out what we have said. They say that this lake is so bitter and salt that no fish live in it and that if you soak clothes in it and shake them it cleans them," understood by scholars to be a reference to the
Dead Sea.[SUP]
[17][/SUP] Later writers such as
Polemon and
Pausanias also used the term to refer to the same region. This usage was followed by Roman writers such as
Ovid,
Tibullus,
Pomponius Mela,
Pliny the Elder,
Dio Chrysostom,
Statius,
Plutarch as well as Roman Judean writers
Philo of Alexandria and
Josephus[SUP]
[18][/SUP]. Other writers, such as
Strabo, a prominent Roman-era geographer (although he wrote in Greek), referred to the region as
Coele-Syria around 10-20 CE.[SUP]
[19][/SUP][SUP]
[20][/SUP] The term was first used to denote an official province in c.135 CE, when the
Roman authorities, following the suppression of the
Bar Kokhba Revolt, combined
Iudaea Province with
Galilee and other surrounding cities such as
Ashkelon to form "
Syria Palaestina" (Syria Palaestina), which some scholars state was in order to complete the dissociation with Judaea.[SUP]
[21][/SUP][SUP]
[22][/SUP]
The
Hebrew name
Peleshet (פלשת
Pəlésheth)- usually translated as
Philistia in English, is used in the
Bible more than 250 times. In the
Torah /
Pentateuch the term is used 10 times and its boundaries are undefined. The later
Historical books (see
Deuteronomistic history) include most of the biblical references, almost 200 of which are in the
Book of Judges and the
Books of Samuel, where the term is used to denote the southern coastal region to the west of the ancient
Kingdom of Judah.[SUP]
[23][/SUP][SUP]
[8][/SUP][SUP]
[9][/SUP][SUP]
[18][/SUP]
During the
Byzantine period, the entire region (Syria Palestine,
Samaria, and the
Galilee) was named
Palaestina, subdivided into provinces Palaestina I and II.[SUP]
[24][/SUP] The Byzantines also renamed an area of land including the
Negev,
Sinai, and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula as
Palaestina Salutaris, sometimes called
Palaestina III.[SUP]
[24][/SUP] The
Arabic word for Palestine is فلسطين (commonly transcribed in English as
Filistin,
Filastin, or
Falastin).[SUP]
[25][/SUP] Moshe Sharon writes that when the
Arabs took over
Greater Syria in the 7th century,
place names that were in use by the Byzantine administration before them, generally continued to be used. Hence, he traces the emergence of the Arabic form
Filastin to this adoption, with Arabic inflection, of Roman and
Hebrew (
Semitic) names.[SUP]
[8][/SUP] Jacob Lassner and Selwyn Ilan Troen offer a different view, writing that
Jund Filastin, the full name for the administrative province under the rule of the Arab
caliphates, was traced by Muslim geographers back to the Philistines of the Bible.[SUP]
[26][/SUP] The use of the name "Palestine" in English became more common after the European renaissance.[SUP]
[27][/SUP] It was officially revived by the British after the fall of the
Ottoman Empire and applied to the territory that was placed under
The Palestine Mandate.
Some other terms that have been used to refer to all or part of this land include
Canaan,
Greater Israel,
Greater Syria, the
Holy Land,
Iudaea Province,
Judea,[SUP]
[28][/SUP]
Israel, "Israel HaShlema",
Kingdom of Israel,
Kingdom of Jerusalem,
Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael or Ha'aretz),
Zion,
Retenu (Ancient Egyptian),
Southern Syria, and
Syria Palestina.
