THE MEANING OF PALESTINE by Norman Cohen

THE MEANING OF PALESTINE
by Norman Cohen (Aug. 2007)
Adapted from an article by David Jacobson (June 2001)
"When Palestine Meant Israel"
Biblical Archaeology Society, Online Archive Search

The Greek word for a "wrestler" is paleistes.
You can look it up.

Philistines are believed to have come from a region of early Greece (Ionia, Yavan in Hebrew), probably the Isle of Crete, and were named for their favorite sport which was wrestling:
the paleistes people, p'lishtim in Hebrew.

When English spells an "f"- sound or a related "p"-sound with "ph", you can tell that it is of Greek origin.
We see how "f" and "p" are linguistically related in Hebrew, because the letter looks the same for both .... "p" is represented as a hard "f".
When you lose your teeth, your attempt to say an "f" will come out as a "p".

The Philistines lived in the Mediterranean coastal region of Israel and eventually died out.

Centuries later, The Greeks came and occupied the land.
Wrestling was still a favorite sport of the Greeks.
Noting that the Jewish people called themselves "Yisrael", and learning what it meant in Hebrew ... "one who wrestles with G-d" ... they resorted to their Greek and referred to the Jews as paleistes people.

But, unlike the Philistines, the Jews occupied all of the land of Israel --including deep into the interior -- and this was centuries after the time of the Philistines.

So the reference to the Jews as paleistes people, people who wrestled with G-d, could not have been a reference to Philistines.
But the root word was the same.

Greek was for the Jews, in those days, like the Yiddish of the times.
Also Aramaic, but that's another story.
So Jews also made reference to themselves as paleistes in speaking their Greek.

We still have many Jewish residuals from the Greek experience.
For example, the name Kalman and its derivatives as both a family name and a given name evolved from the Greek Kalonymos .... "a good name" .... shem tov in Hebrew.

Next came the Romans.
The Romans formally named the land "Palaestina" in a Latinized version of the Greek for "land of the wrestlers".

Some scholars believe that this was done as a put-down, an insult, after the Bar-Kochba revolt. Rome wanted to show the pesky Jews that they were under Roman control. Keeping the Jewish name "Judaea" might be interpreted as acknowledging Jewish aspirations for independence.

Jews were wrestling with Rome as well as with G-d.
Scholars believe that the way the Jews kept the Roman legions busy to put down insurrections on the "eastern front" of the Roman Empire contributed to the eventual fall of Rome.

"Palestine" is the Anglicized version of Palaestina.

Thus "Palestine" and "Philistine" came from the same Greek root, but one did not follow from the other.

Palestine was not named for the Philistine people; it was named for the Jews who were also "wrestlers".

And so, of course, the original "Palestinians" were and are the Jews.
Yisrael ----- The people who wrestle with G-d.


Norman Cohen
Los Angeles