Someone recently asked, “If ‘Palestine’ is such an ancient country why is it not mentioned in ancient history?”
Actually it is. The same word is found all through the Old Testament,
so obviously it was mentioned in the histories of at least one ancient
people. Palestine is an English corruption of a Latin corruption of
Pilishti, which we more commonly know from the Bible as Philistine.
That kind of corruption happens with words all the time. Think of
Jesus, which came from Iesus, which came from Yeshua. Or Jay, which came
from Jayco, which came from Iago, which came from Yaakov.
The Philistines (not the Palestinians) would have a prior claim to
part of the land of Israel, if it weren’t for that inconvenient thing
about God taking the land away from the Philistines and Canaanites and
giving it to the Israelites. The modern Palestinians are just Arabs who
happen to live within a political boundary once bearing that name, and
are not actually related to the ancient Philistines at all.
Once upon a time, Jews, who lived in the territory known as Palestine before it became the State of Israel, were known as Palestinians, but few of the people we now call Palestinians would claim them as ancestors.
There
doesn’t appear to be an actual ethnic group of people that anyone can
accurately call “Palestinians.” It’s a little like claiming to be of the
Pennsylvanian race. There are Pennsylvanians, but they’re only called
that because they live in Pennsylvania, not because they’re really a
distinctive race of people
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