Herodotus in his travel diaries wrote about the region in the 5th century BC and he used the word Palaistine for the region and Palaistinian for the inhabitants. Aristotle in 340 BC wrote about the Dead Sea - "a fabled lake" - which he situated in Palaistine. This suggests that the Greeks thought Palaistine was a greater region than merely Philistia.
Why Hadrian choose to rename and reorganize the provinces of the southern Levant right after the end of the Bar Kokba revolt in 135 is a mystery. The record is silent. Although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, if the renaming was intended to punish the Jews, why weren't the Romans explicit about it? If the renaming was to serve as a deterrent for future rebels? Afaik, the claim that Adrian renamed Iudaea comes from the Christian 4th century scholar Eusebius and is not found in other sources (such as the Talmud). To Christians at the time, God punishing the Jews for crucifying Jesus by having the Romans destroying their temple and erasing their province would have made prefect sense. I.e. Eusebius may have been putting two and two together here.
Another problem with the "renaming as a punishment" theory is that in 135 the Philistines hadn't existed for several centuries. So if punishment was Hadrian's impetus for the renaming, he must have been well-versed in Hebrew religion, otherwise how could he have known that the Philistines was one of their worst enemies? That seems unlikely.
It is undisputed the Philistines existed and were of Greek origin, that an area around today's Gaza was settled by them and later named after them, and that the name was known to Greeks - though even Gaza itself was assigned to the Judean province so it probably was much less used by Hadrian's time.
Of course Greeks used the name given to them by fellow Greeks (when they existed at the province) and weren't clear on borders. However, every empire and kingdom which actually ruled there knew very well how the locales called it and that's why the province was named as it was.
Now, Hadrian was acquainted enough with Judaism to specifically ban many of its practices like circumcision, reading the holy books, etc. Learning a tiny bit on a province after fighting a massive war there is rather expected. However, I believe it's much more likely that he chose the name from Greek language and history. This is a Roman Emperor we're talking about, Greek was a extremely popular language for the Roman elite, he must have been very familiar with Greek.
Renaming the province is consistent with Hadrian's other moves which do have a well known rational of suppressing the Jews. There's no reason to think renaming the province just after the massive rebellion is somehow different, accidental or separate from all the other moves, like renaming Jerusalem itself or banning many of Judaism's practices.
> the claim that Adrian renamed Iudaea comes from the Christian 4th century scholar Eusebius and is not found in other sources (such as the Talmud)
The Talmud has no reason to care about how the Romans name things in their own language for their own empire. It's a religious text, not a history book. It's actually noteworthy that there is an ancient text mentioning this - most ancient historians cared little for such details.
EDIT: I also note that Eusebius lived and wrote when the Roman Empire still existed, and probably did not have much need for guessing. A Roman historian living at that time could access Roman primary sources and common knowledge easily.
The Talmud, not by coincidence, light on a lot of political (and religious) detail from this period. The political turmoil leading (in Talmudic text) to the temple's destruction are somewhat taboo.
Anyway... place names are resilient. The region is littered with Hebrew/Assyrian/etc place names that outsurvived the political/cultural entities for centuries.
That Philistia survived as a regional name is not that big a stretch, especially as a greek-related culture during a greek-dominated era. We don't even know with certainty why our current politicians do what they do.
Place names can be resilient. They can be also very political, e.g. the different spelling of places in Ukraine, which depends if one is looking at them from a Russian POV or not. Even Ukraine itself is spelt differently (Russia would rather people write "The Ukraine").
There was a rather documented political context back then, of erasing the local name to crush the local population. Wherever Hadrian took the name from a Greek regional slang or from a Greek history book, we need not to ignore that context for today's political reasons either - this doesn't really have any effect on anything.
I do find it odd the Romans used two names when switching 'Judea' to 'Syria-Palestine'. There are many Greek references that the describe the entire Levant as 'Syria', more than 'Judea' or 'Palestine' ever being used. Perhaps the Roman needed two names because the second name had become unfamiliar?
Come to think of it, there are many uses of 'Syria' for describing the entire Levant even up to the 20th century. The name derives from the Assyrians. We could take the same references and tell a story about how it's a local name etc., and have a better argument than the post starting the thread. However, just about everyone think the SSNP stink, so nobody does that anymore.
I don't see the contradiction. Yes, Romans referred to the region as Syria and that also reflected the cultural/political scape for much of the time. Assyria did span the entire region, and even during the Roman era their dialect was spoken by most people (including Judeans).
Choice of names is political in the same region now too, and the games leverage the fact that there are many ancient place names making contradictory "claims."
That the Philistines existed is undisputed, whether they were of Greek origin or not. However they disappeared from history around the time of the Babylonian expansion in 600 BC, so it seems far-fetched to believe that educated people in 135 AD would have intimate knowledge of the Jews' relationship to them.
Hadrian was most likely not privy to details of Jewish culture. Both the Romans and the Greeks detested circumcision, but, for the most part, they tolerated it. At times, the Romans tried to outlaw the practice of castrating or circumcising slaves, but they never banned the practice altogether. However, in Palestine the governor may have implemented such decrees as retribution for uprisings. Note that Jews were far from the only people at the time who practiced circumcision.
> Renaming the province is consistent with Hadrian's other moves which do have a well known rational of suppressing the Jews. There's no reason to think renaming the province just after the massive rebellion is somehow different, accidental or separate from all the other moves, like renaming Jerusalem itself or banning many of Judaism's practices.
You are talking about Hadrian's decision to refound Jerusalem as the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina. This occurred at least a decade before the revolt and can hardly be thought of a move to suppress the Jews. A Roman city brought wealth and honor to the region and would have been cherished in other provinces. Hadrian perhaps wanted to mimic the great success of the Roman city Caesarea which had been built in Palestine 150 years earlier.
View it with Roman eyes. There are hundreds of peoples and religions in the empire. Most of them worship the Emperor and loves having statues of him around. So why on earth would it anger a poor Levatine people enough to revolt? Furthermore, emperors are surrounded by yes-men; no one wants to tell him that the people hates his statues.
> The Talmud has no reason to care about how the Romans name things in their own language for their own empire. It's a religious text, not a history book. It's actually noteworthy that there is an ancient text mentioning this - most ancient historians cared little for such details.
The Talmud actually describes the Bar Kokba revolt in great detail. So it is odd that the renaming of the Roman provinces (Iudaea wasn't the only province that was restructured at the same time) isn't mentioned at all.
> EDIT: I also note that Eusebius lived and wrote when the Roman Empire still existed, and probably did not have much need for guessing. A Roman historian living at that time could access Roman primary sources and common knowledge easily.
Yes, he was active in Caesarea and is one of the first Christian Scholars. He and many other Christian scholars weren't very fond of the Jews and much of their writings had a distinct anti-Jewish bent. Eusebius had a habit of characterizing all misfortunes that befell on the Jewish people as divine punishment for first having crucified Jesus and then rejecting Christianity. He also claimed that Aelia Capitolina was founded to punish the Jews for revolting, which we know now is incorrect.
>so it seems far-fetched to believe that educated people in 135 AD would have intimate knowledge of the Jews' relationship to them.
Hadrian did not have to know anything whatsoever about the Philistines to make the choices he did. A Greek speaking Emperor decided to rename a province using Greek names. He chose Greek names as close as he could get, which he could have gotten from multiple sources. Why didn't he name it the Latin equivalent of 'Hadrian-ville'? We'll never know.
There may have been a message in the new names, but Hadrian would not have to know anything about Judaism to make it: perhaps the choice of Greek was motivated by being aware of the Maccabean fight against the Greek Seleucid Empire, a method of telling the world the Jews lost in the long run and that the 'superiour' culture won. But I'm just wildly guessing, we'll probably never know.
>You are talking about Hadrian's decision to refound Jerusalem as the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina. This occurred at least a decade before the revolt...
I note the chronology of this time is rather unclear. We aren't sure whether the Roman laws against Jewish practices started before the Bar Kochva revolt or after it. It has been argued that these laws preceded the Revolt and led to it, and were intensified after it.
>View it with Roman eyes. There are hundreds of peoples and religions in the empire. Most of them worship the Emperor and loves having statues of him around.
It's absurd to paint the Romans as ignorant. Rome conquered the entire Levant by 30BC. There was also the previous revolt, after which Josephus wrote to Roman elite. There were also Jewish communities outside the Levant, like the Iraqi one which dates to the end of the First Temple period. Rome had over a century of experience knowing exactly who they were dealing with.
Classicists have an image of Rome as tolerant, which is sometimes true, and sometimes brushes over all the times Rome was not tolerant. Romans were perfectly capable of crushing people and the local religion when they wanted to - just ask the Druids. Oh, we can't do that, because the Romans decided they should not exist anymore. It should not be a surprise that the Romans decided to fix their Jewish 'problem' also with violence and suppression.
>The Talmud actually describes the Bar Kokba revolt in great detail...
Actually, quite a bit we'd like to know is missing, for perfectly understandable reasons. Their viewpoint is religious and local, and not very interested in non-Jews.
It's like using the Bible alone as an historical source for the ancient East: leaving aside questions of reliability, it's very patchy regarding non-Jews. List of Egyptian kings? (Nope). What did the Egyptians really do with the pyramids? (Tombs not mentioned). How did the Egyptians called the land during all this period? (You won't find it there).
All these sources have their focus and care little about other things.
>Eusebius had a habit of characterizing all misfortunes that befell on the Jewish people as divine punishment... He also claimed that Aelia Capitolina was founded to punish the Jews for revolting..
So when Eusebius notes the renaming he sees it as a misfortune and punishment, but Hadrian doesn't see it as a punishment? Why should they assign a different meaning when they were members of the same culture?
Eusebius could have easily spun it had the Roman Empire meant well ('The great Emperor gave the Jews a gift and the ungrateful wretches reacted violently!'), and he had access to sources we do not have. It's much more likely Hadrian saw it the same way Eusebius did.
#/media/File:Roman_Empire_with_provinces_in_210_AD.png){kind=link}
Herodotus in his travel diaries wrote about the region in the 5th century BC and he used the word Palaistine for the region and Palaistinian for the inhabitants. Aristotle in 340 BC wrote about the Dead Sea - "a fabled lake" - which he situated in Palaistine. This suggests that the Greeks thought Palaistine was a greater region than merely Philistia.
Why Hadrian choose to rename and reorganize the provinces of the southern Levant right after the end of the Bar Kokba revolt in 135 is a mystery. The record is silent. Although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, if the renaming was intended to punish the Jews, why weren't the Romans explicit about it? If the renaming was to serve as a deterrent for future rebels? Afaik, the claim that Adrian renamed Iudaea comes from the Christian 4th century scholar Eusebius and is not found in other sources (such as the Talmud). To Christians at the time, God punishing the Jews for crucifying Jesus by having the Romans destroying their temple and erasing their province would have made prefect sense. I.e. Eusebius may have been putting two and two together here.
Another problem with the "renaming as a punishment" theory is that in 135 the Philistines hadn't existed for several centuries. So if punishment was Hadrian's impetus for the renaming, he must have been well-versed in Hebrew religion, otherwise how could he have known that the Philistines was one of their worst enemies? That seems unlikely.