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May 01, 2008

NY Times Claims Jesus Spoke in "Palestine"

Update: New York Times corrects — see below.
An additional update clarifies on why a correction was needed — see below.


In an April 22nd New York Times article, "In Syrian Villages, the Language of Jesus Lives", reporter Robert Worth asserted that Jesus spoke Aramaic "in Palestine two millennia ago." There was no such place as "Palestine" in the time of Jesus*, since the Romans didn't rename Judea as "Palestina" until a hundred years after the death of Jesus. During the time of Jesus, Bethlehem and Jerusalem were in what was commonly called Judea and Nazareth was in what was commonly called the Galilee. The New York Times should correct their factual error of calling Judea and Galilee by a name that didn't exist* until a hundred years later.

One only has to flip open the Christian bible to see references to Judea and Galilee. For example, in Luke 1:5, Herod (the Great) is "King of Judea." In Luke 2:4, "And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem." In Luke 3:1, Pontius Pilate, "governor of Judea."

In 132 (Common Era or AD), approximately 100 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, the Jews fought against Roman rule for a second time in what is known as the Bar Kochba Revolt. After the Romans defeated the rebellious Jews in 135, they renamed the land of the Jews Palestina to punish the Jews and to make an example of them to other peoples considering rebellion. The Romans took away the Jewish name, Judea, and replaced it with the name of an ancient enemy the Jews despised. The Philistines were an extinct Aegean people whom the Jews had historically loathed as uncultured and barbaric.

[The Arabs that are only since the 1960s known as "Palestinians" had nothing whatsoever to do with the non-Arab Philistines or the land at that time, and only in modern times did they take the name of the land their ancestors had immigrated to only relatively recently.]

It's bad enough that the Romans attempted to erase the evidence of Jews' connection to the land of Judea; no need for the Times to aid their effort. Please write to the New York Times to ask for a correction and to educate the editors and the public with a letter to the editor.

Asserting that Jesus lived in "Palestine" is unfortunately a common error due to Palestinian propaganda claiming that Jesus was not a Jew but a "Palestinian." Please ask for a correction whenever you see this inaccuracy.

UPDATE:

On June 20th, the New York Time published the following correction:

The Malula Journal article on April 22, about efforts in the village of Malula, Syria, and two neighboring villages to preserve Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, referred incorrectly to the name of the region where Jesus spent most of his time. It was Galilee - not Palestine, which derives from the word Palestina, the name that Roman conquerors gave to the region more than 100 years after Jesus's death. The error was pointed out by a reader in an e-mail message on Monday.

CAMERA Note: The Times claims they were not notified of the error until it "was pointed out by a reader in an e-mail message on Monday [June 16]." They were actually notified by dozens of letters from CAMERA members and staff the first week of May. It's also interesting how they managed to not include anything about Judea or Jews in a correction about how the Romans renamed the Jewish land of Judea with the name Palestina.

*Clarification: . The region in which Jesus spoke was known, including by its inhabitants, as Judea and not Palestine. Bernard Lewis has noted that the word "Palestine" was sometimes used by Greek and Latin authors prior to 135 CE, though that appears to have normally been used as an adjective in apposition to "Syria" (Palaistine Syria or Syria Palestina) and in reference to the coastal area formerly inhabited by the Philistines but not "Judaea," a region that "in Roman times was still officially and commonly known by that name," as Lewis explained, or the region around Nazareth ("Palestine: On the History and Geography of a Name," The International History Review, January 1, 1980).

Posted by LG at May 1, 2008 12:22 AM

Comments

The NYT article that you point to is another, all too common example of the contemporary rewriting of history, ancient, medieval and modern. The New Testament in fact uses the name Judaea in two senses. The broader Greco-Roman meaning of Judaea was the Province of Judaea, including the Galilee, Samaria, the Golan, most of Transjordan along the Jordan river, the northern Negev, etc. The narrower, traditionally Jewish meaning was only the southern part of Israel, the former area of the Kingdom of Judah in First Temple Times. The NT uses the name Judaea in both senses, in different places of course, which the quotes in the Camera comment above embody. This may be confusing for readers. I try to explain these various usages in my article in Midstream of October 1995 [also available on the Internet].
By the way, the NT also uses the name Land of Israel for the country. This name appears twice in Matthew chapter 2:20-21. In the Quran, the country is called Holy Land [5:20-22], the Jews' land, the blessed land, blessed abode, etc.[in various verses and various translations].

Camera is quite right to point out the NYTimes usage of "Palestine" is anachronistic as well as tendentious.

Posted by: Elliott A Green at May 1, 2008 08:28 AM

and he spoke English, too...right?

Posted by: Myackie at May 1, 2008 06:19 PM

Editor, In April 22 NYT suggested that Jesus spoke in Palestine. Jesus was Jewish and lived in Judea. Arameic is a language that appears in the Hebrew Bible. Politics lead to ignorance. I. Barr MD

Posted by: I. Barr at May 1, 2008 10:19 PM

Although the history you cite is correct, I think CAMERA has lost its perspective on this one. The usage of "Palestine" for the land embracing Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and other places named in the Jewish Bible and the New Testament goes back long before the so-called "Palestinians." It was the standard term in biblical archeology and biblical scholarship in the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century. E.g., what Jews call "the Yerushalmi" was, and mostly still is, known academically as the "Palestinian Talmud," and its language as "Palestinian Aramaic." Under the British Mandate, before Israeli independence, the land was generally called "Palestine," including by most American Jews. I am keeping for my children a Zionist children's book from 1939 entitled "Rebuilding Palestine."

My point is that the author need not have intended any subtle prejudice or propaganda against the State of Israel or the Jewish people in speaking of the Holy Land in New Testament times as "Palestine." While it would have been better if he had referred to "Judea and Galilee," hair-trigger sensitivity to minor points may create a pretext for ignoring the more substantial complaints CAMERA raises.

It's just something for your consideration, and I'm grateful for the work CAMERA does.

Posted by: Kevin Snapp at May 1, 2008 11:25 PM

I always use Acts 8:1 - "On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria" for it uses 'Judea and Samaria' together and there's no east Jerusalem.

Posted by: Yisrael Medad at May 2, 2008 01:42 AM

Probably a smidgen of Yiddish too.

Posted by: Dani at May 2, 2008 10:03 AM

Please stop to call people living in the Middle East - the ARABS.
The Arabs were the tribe from Arabian peninsula. People living in the Middle East ethnically and racially diverce and not related to this tribe. People living in the Middle East speak different dialects of Arabic language. In USA we speak English. It doesn't make us British.
Please do not laugh at my comment. It's very important for the characteristics of the people and the history of this area.
I call people from the Middle East - "Arabic speaking people of the Middle East." 100 years ago there were no Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqies, Jordanians, "Palestinians", etc. And they stil do not exist. All those "nations" just a bunch of tribes, clans, ethnicities, etc.
And who reads Marxists The New Times is mentally confused. NT will never change their colors. "All the facts that worth to twist!"

Shalom

Posted by: naphtali at May 2, 2008 10:51 AM

The coins Titus had minted after the destruction of Jerusalem and exile of the Jews read "Judaea Capta."
What better proof do we need?

Posted by: Alberto Socolovsky at May 2, 2008 12:29 PM

The Jerusalem Post was originally called "The Palestine Post." That was the name that the Jewish People knew to be "their name" for "their land."
When Arafat went to the USSR for propaganda training, he learned how to co-opt a name for his own purposes. Therefore, he renamed the Arabs "the Palestinians" although they had not been "Palestinians" previously.

Posted by: Roberta E. Dzubow at May 2, 2008 01:59 PM

Palestine is used as the name for the region. It's an academic term. You also have the "palestinian talmud" for example. Sometimes the term Palestine is used in a political sense which is not appropriate, but here it may simply be the general geographic term, like Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, I can see people who are unaware of this distinction being affected by the use of this term instead of Israel or Judea etc.

Posted by: Yoni at May 2, 2008 02:20 PM

Perhaps someone at the NY Times should open the New Testament and turn to Matthew 2:1-6: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of JUDEA in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to JERUSALEM saying "Where is he who has been born KING of the JEWS? For we have seen his star in the East and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this he was troubled and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he asked them were the Christ was to be born. They answered,"In BETHLEHEM of JUDEA, for so it is written by the prophet: "And you, O Bethlehem, in the Land of JUDAH, are by no means least among the rulers of JUDAH for from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people ISRAEL."
I looked really hard but I didn't see any mention of 'palestine' (which is derived from the Biblical Hebrew Plishtim which simply means "Invaders" which is what the 'philistines' were). Bethlehem, now under Arab/Moslem control in the so-called 'palestinian' territories, is a JUDEAN (Jewish) town. It is significant only to the Jewish people (as the birthplace of King David) and the Christians (as the birthplace of Jesus) and not to the Moslems who have turned it into a town of mosques since taking it over after the Olso 'peace' treaty when they commenced in earnest their policy of discrimination, persecution, land-grab and expulsion of the local Christians. If the NY Times doesn't know any of this, then it should close down and go back to college to study history and the scriptures & stop disseminating mendacious 'palestinian' propaganda

Posted by: Trudy at May 2, 2008 03:51 PM

In an article dated, May 1, 2008,"In Syrian Villages, the Language of Jesus Lives", there is a serious historical error that bares correcting.
Reporter Robert Worth asserted that Jesus spoke Aramaic "in Palestine two millennia ago." There was no such place as "Palestine" in the time of Jesus, since the Romans didn't rename Judea as "Palestina" until a hundred years after the death of Jesus. During the time of Jesus, Bethlehem and Jerusalem were in what was commonly called Judea and Nazareth was in what was commonly called the Galilee. The New York Times should correct their factual error of calling Judea and Galilee by a name that didn't exist until a hundred years later.

One only has to flip open the Christian bible to see references to Judea and Galilee. For example, in Luke 1:5, Herod (the Great) is "King of Judea." In Luke 2:4, "And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem." In Luke 3:1, Pontius Pilate, "governor of Judea."

In 132 (Common Era or AD), approximately 100 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, the Jews fought against Roman rule for a second time in what is known as the Bar Kochba Revolt. After the Romans defeated the rebellious Jews in 135, they renamed the land of the Jews Palestina to punish the Jews and to make an example of them to other peoples considering rebellion. The Romans took away the Jewish name, Judea, and replaced it with the name of an ancient enemy the Jews despised. The Philistines were an extinct Aegean people whom the Jews had historically loathed as uncultured and barbaric.

[The Arabs that are only since the 1960s known as "Palestinians" had nothing whatsoever to do with the non-Arab Philistines or the land at that time, and only in modern times did they take the name of the land their ancestors had immigrated to only relatively recently.]

It's bad enough that the Romans attempted to erase the evidence of Jews' connection to the land of Judea; no need for the Times to aid their effort.

Posted by: Peggy Murrell at June 15, 2008 10:16 PM

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