Provincia Syria Palaestina - A Hadrian Question

[Viggen]

...from an email that i received, maybe you guys can help...

 

Dear UNRV team.

 

I have just found your website. I am writing a thesis paper in which I have an excursus looking at the names which the Roman Empire gave to the area of Judea, Samaria Galilee in the first century BC – first century AD. This excursus has identified the usage of Palestine. One “fact” that is constantly repeated is that Hadrian after crushing the Bar Kokba revolt in 135 AD angrily renamed the entire region Provincia Syria Palaestina. I cannot find the primary source that verifies this, very often repeated but never sourced, action of Hadrian. The closest I have found is the reference in Cassius Dio where Hadrian renames Jerusalem.

 

I wonder if your expertise in this area could help me identify a primary source for this claim.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. Kindest Regards

 

[caldrail]

Hadrian did not rename Jerusalem. What he did was promise to rebuild Jerusalem, then later, when the Judaeans asked what was going to to happen, decided to continue his theme of a collectivised Roman world and build a new Roman city on the same site called Aelia Capitol;ina. Naturally the Judaeans were offended and it sparked a rebellion, and aftrer the Roman victory, the Judaean province was renamed Syria-Palestine both to achieve the Roman identity Hadrian wanted and to demolish the concept of a Judaean homeland. In both, technically, he failed.

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

Well I'd presume a good concordance search for the words palaestina could help identify all occurences of the word and even potentially it's link with syria, providing one with the sources. other than that a book such as the OCD (Oxford Classical Dictionnary) or a sum such as the good old Pauly-Wissowa Real Encyclodie der Altertums Wissenshaften should also be able to help here

[Maty]

As you say you are writing a paper, I'll assume you have access to JSTOR. Take a look at this paper:

 

David M. Jacobson

Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
No. 313 (Feb., 1999), pp. 65-74
Published by: The American Schools of Oriental Research

 

Here's the abstract

 

"This article critically reexamines the origin of the name Palestine. The earliest occurrence of this name in a Greek text is in the mid-fifth century B. C., Histories of Herodotus, where it is applied to the area of the Levant between Phoenicia and Egypt. Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century A. D., explicitly links this name to the land of the Philistines and modern consensus agrees with him. Yet, some 300 years earlier, the translators of the Greek Septuagint version of the Pentateuch chose Philistieim rather than Palaistinoi to describe the Philistines. In the earliest Classical literature references to Palestine generally applied to the Land of Israel in the wider sense. A reappraisal of this question has given rise to the proposition that the name Palestine, in its Greek form Palaistinē, was both a transliteration of a word used to describe the land of the Philistines and, at the same time, a literal translation of the name Israel."

 

We know Syria Palestina was a province after the time of Hadrian, and have coins with that name from the time of Aurelius. We also know that Hadrian was very vindictive to the Jews (there's a bas-relief somewhere of him killing one personally) so I think most historians draw the obvious conclusion. However if nothing but the original sources will do, you might also try Eusebius bk 6 there might be something there.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Maty

[Maty]

The question of how we know that Hadrian changed the name to Palestine from the sources intruiged me, so I dug further. The answer is in epigraphy rather than texts. The clearest example is the prosopography of one C. Julius Severus, cos.127.

 

He started as legatus pro praetore in Judea (cf CIL 3.2830) at around the time of the Bar-Kokba revolt in 132. However, by 135 he was legate of Syria Palestina (IG 3.4029). After 145 or thereabouts (Hadrian died in 138)  all CIL inscriptions use 'Syria Palestina' and 'Judea' drops out of use. (Though it was still used in Rabbinic texts and by later writers e.g. Jerome.)

 

Therefore it's clear that the change was instituted by Hadrian. The Romans also named Britannia and Germania after local tribes that came nowhere close to occupying the entire area so described, so the usage wasnot unique. However, the intent to separate Jews from the land is clear in this particular re-naming.