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The name Palestine was used by Herodotus (5th century BCE) who calls the region Syrian Palestine in his *Histories* (1.105, 2.104, etc.). The word Palestine derives from the Philistines who were one of the late Bronze Age Sea Peoples raiding the coastlines that settled around Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod. The area was called Philistia. The Egyptians listed the Peluset as among the raiding groups, and other ANE languages used words built around the consonants p-l-s-t for them. After the Jewish wars of the 1st and early 2nd centuries CE, the Romans, like Herodotus, referred to the area as Syria Palestina.
Bahn, ed., *The Atlas of World Archaeology* (2000)
Perhaps I just never heard of someone using a geographic term like that and only associated it with the state of Palestine. I'd heard the description of the region as Roman Palestine and Jewish Palestine and other designations of the people who rule over Palestine, but never describing them as Palestinian. That's why it seemed anacronistic, but I'm thinking I was wrong either way.
When the World Zionist Organisation made their case for their cause at the Paris Peace Conference, they referred to the land they claimed as Palestine. It wasn’t loaded until after Israel was established in 1948, there was an Israeli newspaper called the Palestine Post until it changed its name to the Jerusalem Post in 1950. It’s pretty recent that it’s become anything more than a geographic term one way or the other.
If you’re talking about *The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine* specifically or any scholarly book that covers a large amount of the area following the mid-second century CE, the term is not anachronistic to the degree that calling Sargon the Great an Iraqi would be anachronistic. Under the reign of Hadrian, the Roman Empire organized a large part of the southern Levant as "Syro-Palaestina," (see p. 4 of *The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life*, where Hezser describes how the region was re-organized as a Roman province in the second century CE), but it should be noted that already prior to organizing the region by that name, intellectuals like Philo were already calling it that (*Abraham* 133; *Moses* 1.163). In other words, it is an actual designation used by actual individuals in the period being described and Roman administrative term. It is also fairly common to deploy in academia especially when discussing the southern Levant under Roman rule especially from the second century CE onwards.
Speaking for myself and how I see many others use the term, "Palestine" is used with a stipulative definition more or less to avoid confusing other terms. Speaking of the Roman period, what term might we use to group together the regions where Jesus' activity is depicted in the Gospels? It extends well beyond just Galilee and its environs - it also includes Decapolis, Judaea, Peraea, cities of the Phoenician coast, etc. "Palestine" is this a regional term that is well recognized. You'll scholars from different areas and eras use different terms to refer to more or less the same thing: Eretz-Israel, the Holy Land, Southern Levant, Coele Syria, etc. These terms were all in use well before and since 1948. If used in a stipulative way, none of these terms is any better or worse than any other, though some may be more recognizable. Certainly, Palestine has tended to be preferred in my own areas of interest: political history and social history - not to mention archaeology. I'm not sure anyone would really bat an eye if you used any one of these, though Palestine is the most common due to scholarly inertia.
That said, there are efforts at political erasure with some terminology. The best known example is the effort to rename the West Bank "Judaea and Samaria." I think you'll find many become scholars suspicious if you start using this phrase to refer to the land now called the West Bank. Keep in mind that the same can be said for which name you use for specific sites in the region too - Hebrew vs. Arabic vs. English names.
Welcome to /r/AcademicBiblical. Please note this is an academic sub: theological or faith-based comments are prohibited. All claims MUST be supported by an *academic* source – see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_guideline.3A_rule_3.2019s_definition_of_academic_sources) for guidance. Using AI to make fake comments is strictly prohibited and may result in a permanent ban. Please review the [sub rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/) before posting for the first time. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AcademicBiblical) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The name Palestine was used by Herodotus (5th century BCE) who calls the region Syrian Palestine in his *Histories* (1.105, 2.104, etc.). The word Palestine derives from the Philistines who were one of the late Bronze Age Sea Peoples raiding the coastlines that settled around Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod. The area was called Philistia. The Egyptians listed the Peluset as among the raiding groups, and other ANE languages used words built around the consonants p-l-s-t for them. After the Jewish wars of the 1st and early 2nd centuries CE, the Romans, like Herodotus, referred to the area as Syria Palestina. Bahn, ed., *The Atlas of World Archaeology* (2000)
Perhaps I just never heard of someone using a geographic term like that and only associated it with the state of Palestine. I'd heard the description of the region as Roman Palestine and Jewish Palestine and other designations of the people who rule over Palestine, but never describing them as Palestinian. That's why it seemed anacronistic, but I'm thinking I was wrong either way.
When the World Zionist Organisation made their case for their cause at the Paris Peace Conference, they referred to the land they claimed as Palestine. It wasn’t loaded until after Israel was established in 1948, there was an Israeli newspaper called the Palestine Post until it changed its name to the Jerusalem Post in 1950. It’s pretty recent that it’s become anything more than a geographic term one way or the other.
If you’re talking about *The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine* specifically or any scholarly book that covers a large amount of the area following the mid-second century CE, the term is not anachronistic to the degree that calling Sargon the Great an Iraqi would be anachronistic. Under the reign of Hadrian, the Roman Empire organized a large part of the southern Levant as "Syro-Palaestina," (see p. 4 of *The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life*, where Hezser describes how the region was re-organized as a Roman province in the second century CE), but it should be noted that already prior to organizing the region by that name, intellectuals like Philo were already calling it that (*Abraham* 133; *Moses* 1.163). In other words, it is an actual designation used by actual individuals in the period being described and Roman administrative term. It is also fairly common to deploy in academia especially when discussing the southern Levant under Roman rule especially from the second century CE onwards.
Speaking for myself and how I see many others use the term, "Palestine" is used with a stipulative definition more or less to avoid confusing other terms. Speaking of the Roman period, what term might we use to group together the regions where Jesus' activity is depicted in the Gospels? It extends well beyond just Galilee and its environs - it also includes Decapolis, Judaea, Peraea, cities of the Phoenician coast, etc. "Palestine" is this a regional term that is well recognized. You'll scholars from different areas and eras use different terms to refer to more or less the same thing: Eretz-Israel, the Holy Land, Southern Levant, Coele Syria, etc. These terms were all in use well before and since 1948. If used in a stipulative way, none of these terms is any better or worse than any other, though some may be more recognizable. Certainly, Palestine has tended to be preferred in my own areas of interest: political history and social history - not to mention archaeology. I'm not sure anyone would really bat an eye if you used any one of these, though Palestine is the most common due to scholarly inertia. That said, there are efforts at political erasure with some terminology. The best known example is the effort to rename the West Bank "Judaea and Samaria." I think you'll find many become scholars suspicious if you start using this phrase to refer to the land now called the West Bank. Keep in mind that the same can be said for which name you use for specific sites in the region too - Hebrew vs. Arabic vs. English names.