PALESTINA
Name that the Greeks and Romans applied to the entire country inhabited by the Israelites, and that has since been applied generally. In reality it is an improper term: It is derived from Philistia, the name of the narrow strip dominated by the Philistines (cf. Herodotus 7:89 and Jl. 3:4; Ex. 15:14; Is. 14:29, 31).
The ancient Hebrews gave the name Canaan to the portion of this territory located west of the Jordan, distinguishing it from the country of Gilead, east of the river. After the conquest, the entire region was named Israel (1 Sam. 13:19; 1 Chron. 22:2; Mt. 2:20). After the national schism, the name Israel frequently designated the northern kingdom.
In He. 11:9 the country is called the “Promised Land.” Shortly after the beginning of the Christian era, Greek and Latin writers used the term “Palestine.” In the Middle Ages the name “Holy Land” was generally used.
The English administration, when taking charge of these territories, conquered from the Turks in the First World War, constantly used the name “Palestine.” In this dictionary it is used as a term of convenience, due to its widespread use in geographical contexts, but recognizing the inappropriateness of its application.
The term Philistia cannot actually be applied to the entire group. It is much more appropriate to denote it as the land of Canaan or, better, of Israel, or the Promised Land, as it was to Abraham and his descendants (cf. Gen. 15: 18-21). With this caveat noted, Palestine will henceforth be used as a convenient name.
(a) Its limits and extension.
The territory occupied by the Hebrews extended, from south to north, from Kadesh-barnea and from the wadi of el-‘Arish to Hermon.
From west to east, it ran from the Mediterranean to the eastern desert, with the exception of the Philistine plain and the country of Moab. The greatest kings of Israel dominated Hamath and Damascus, reaching the Euphrates, and also subdued Ammon, Moab and Edom.
The Hebrews expressed the limits of their country with the expression “from Dan to Beersheba” (more than 240 km). The wadi el-Fikrah and the Arnon then constituted its southern border. The density of the resident population within these limits was great.
Omitting most of Simeon’s territory and a fraction of Naphtali, it is found that its limits describe an approximate parallelogram whose height (measured in the latitudes of Dan and the southern end of the Dead Sea) is around 233 km, and its base of 113 km. Its surface is around 26,288 km2.
This parallelogram includes the region of the Philistines, which at its greatest extent extended from Carmel to Beersheba. Subtracting the surface corresponding to this strip, the Hebrews occupied around 21,716 km2. Eastern Palestine then had just over 9,842 km2, from the Hermon to the Arnon. Western Palestine, as far south as Beersheba, and together with Philistia, had approx. 15,642 km2.
(b) Its population.
At the time of the conquest there were 600,000 men, which gives a total population of around two million people for a territory of around 21,716 km2. King David had a census carried out over a much larger territory.
In 1978 the State of Israel had 3,737,600 inhabitants. The Bible and the historian Flavius Josephus state that the population density was considerable. This is also attested by the remains of numerous cities. The innumerable existing hills almost always appear crowned by a city or a town, either inhabited or in ruins.
(c) Structural geology of Palestine.
The eastern shore of the Dead Sea is bordered by a bank of “Nubian sandstone” (also called the Petra sandstone), and also a part of the cliff that borders the Jordan Valley on its eastern bank.
These same formations are found again on the western slopes of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon; They are usually deep red or blackened. They represent a formation in which swaying movements of the waters that discharged the sediments can be seen; In the current interpretation of geological history, these formations are classified for the most part as belonging to the Jurassic, although terrain attributed to different classifications is also recognized, from the Carboniferous to the lower Cretaceous, and projecting to the Cretaceous itself. Above is the most important geological formation in Palestine: the “Cretaceous limestone”, which makes up most of the plateau, east and west of the Jordan.
In Jerusalem there are two layers of limestone, the upper, harder layer, which the inhabitants call “misseh”, and the lower, softer layer, which they call “melekeh”. The excavations of the deposits, of the graves, beneath the city and its surroundings, have penetrated into the “melekeh.” The foundations of the buildings rest on the solid “misseh”.
The quarries near the Damascus Gate are located in the “melekeh”. The stone used for the Temple came from there. Limestone banks are found from Carmel, descending southward to Beersheba, whence they turn southwestward, running parallel to the Mediterranean. These limestones are attributed to more recent times than the previous ones.
Around Jerusalem and in the vicinity of Shechem there are also limestone formations assigned to more recent times, receiving the name “numulitic” because they present a great abundance of numulites (a genus of foraminifera, tiny animals covered in a calcareous shell on the edge of of the microscopic field).
These numulitic limestones are attributed in the current geological scheme to the middle Eocene. However, the numulitic limestone is so associated with the cretaceous limestone that it appears that the two constitute a single formation.
Flanking the numulitic limestone to the west is a long layer of calcareous clay that crosses the Philistine strip and appears to the north in isolated formations, reaching the outskirts of Carmel. It is a porous, soft clay, easily disintegrated, exposing the hardest limestone of the plateau, and descending abruptly towards the plains of Judea and Samaria.
Between this Philistine clay and the Mediterranean there are some elevated beaches attributed to the upper Pliocene. The Mediterranean coast of Philistia, especially where the terrain is low, features a series of dunes, some of which reach seventy meters in height.
Those in the southwest could have been formed, at least in part, by the sands of Egypt and Sinai carried by the winds. The northern dunes come from sands eroded by the winds of the calcareous clay of Philistia and tend to invade cultivated territories.
Apart from this consideration of the sedimentary formations, it should be noted that the formations attributed to the Carboniferous are dotted with “volcanic rocks” related to the great mass of granite, diorite and felsite found further south, in the Arabá and in Sinai.
Beyond the eastern bank of the Jordan, somewhat beyond the Hermon to the south of the Sea of Galilee, and to the east and southeast of Hauran, beyond Palestine, the country is covered by an immense accumulation of volcanic matter: basalt, dolerite, felsite.
Blocks of these volcanic rocks are found scattered throughout western Palestine, west and northwest of the Sea of Galilee, and elsewhere.