Syria Palaestina

Short description: Province of the Roman Empire (136–390 CE)

Province of Syria Palaestina

Provincia Syria Palaestina (Latin)
Ἐπαρχία Συρίας τῆς Παλαιστίνης (Koinē Greek)

Province of the Roman Empire
136–390

Syria Palaestina within the Roman Empire in 210.
Capital| Caesarea Maritima
Historical era| Classical antiquity

• Established

| 136

• Disestablished

| 390

Preceded by | Succeeded by

|

|  | Judaea

|

| Palaestina Prima |

|

Palaestina Secunda |

Syria Palaestina (Koinē Greek: Συρία ἡ Παλαιστίνη, romanized: Syría hē Palaistínē grc-x-koine) was the renamed Roman province formerly known as Judaea, following the Roman suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, in what then became known as Palaestina (Palestine) between the early 2nd and late 4th centuries AD. The provincial capital was Caesarea Maritima.[1][2] It forms part of timeline of the period in the region referred to as Roman Palestine.[3]

## Contents

* 1 Background
* 2 History
* 3 Name
* 4 Demographics
* 4.1 Jews
* 4.2 Pagans
* 5 Religion
* 5.1 Roman Imperial cult
* 5.2 Early Christianity
* 6 Reorganization
* 7 See also
* 8 Notes
* 9 References
* 10 Sources
* 11 Further reading
* 12 External links

## Background

Judaea was a Roman province that incorporated the regions of Judea, Samaria, Idumea, and Galilee and extended over parts of the former regions of Hasmonean and Herodian Judea. It was named after Herod's Tetrarchy of Judaea, but Roman Judaea encompassed a much larger territory than Judaea. The name "Judaea" ultimately traces to the Iron Age Kingdom of Judah.

Following the deposition of Herod Archelaus in 6 AD, Judea came under direct Roman rule,[4] during which time the Roman governor was given authority to punish by execution. The general population also began to be taxed by Rome.[5] However, Jewish leaders retained broad discretion over affairs within Judaism.[6]

The Herodian kingdom was split into a tetrarchy in 6 AD, which was gradually absorbed into Roman provinces, with Roman Syria annexing Iturea and Trachonitis. The capital of Judaea was shifted from Jerusalem to Caesarea Maritima, which, according to historian Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson, had been the "administrative capital" of the region beginning in 6 AD.[7]

## History

During the 1st and 2nd centuries, Judaea became the epicenter of a series of unsuccessful large-scale Jewish rebellions against Rome, known as the Jewish-Roman Wars. The Roman suppression of these revolts led to wide-scale destruction, a very high toll of life and enslavement. The First Jewish-Roman War (66–73) resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple.[8] Two generations later, the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136) erupted. Judea's countryside was devastated, and many were killed, displaced or sold into slavery.[9][10][11][12] Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt.[13]

Following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony under the name of Aelia Capitolina, and Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina,[14][15] a term occasionally used among Greco-Romans for centuries to describe the Southern Levant.[16]A Syria-Palaestina included Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Idumaea, and Philistia. The province retained its capital, Caesarea Maritima, and therefore remained distinct from Syria, which was located further north with its capital in Antioch. Jerusalem, which held special religious significance for the Jews but had been destroyed, was rebuilt as the colonia Aelia Capitolina. Jews were forbidden to settle there or in the immediate vicinity.

While Syria was divided into several smaller provinces by Septimius Severus, and later again by Diocletian, Syria Palaestina survived into late antiquity. Presumably, it was small enough not to become dangerous as a potential starting point for usurpation attempts. Instead, Diocletian even integrated parts of Arabia Petraea into the province, namely the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula. He moved the Legio X Fretensis from Aelia Capitolina to Aila (today's Eilat/Aqaba) to secure the country against Arab incursions. The part of the Roman imperial border that now ran through Palestine was subsequently placed under its own supreme commander, the dux Palaestinae, who is known from the Notitia Dignitatum.[17] The border wall, the Limes Arabicus, which had existed for some time, was pushed further south.[18]

Late Roman administration is also illuminated by the so-called Diocletian boundary stones, a series of several dozen inscriptions from the Golan Heights and Hula Valley marking village lands and tax jurisdictions.[19][20][21]

The Crisis of the Third Century (235–284) affected Syria Palaestina, but the fourth century brought an economic upswing due to the Christianization of the Roman Empire and the associated upswing in Christian pilgrimage to the "Holy Land". In the course of late antiquity, with imperial support, Christianity succeeded in asserting itself against both remnants of Semitic as well as trending Hellenistic Paganism in the land.

The province was split into smaller ones during the fourth and fifth centuries. In 358, areas that had formerly belonged to Arabia Petraea were transformed into a separate province of Palaestina Salutaris with Petra as its capital. The remaining territory was named Palaestina Prima.[22] Around the year 400, it had been further split into a smaller Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Secunda. Palaestina Prima included the heartland with the capital at Caesarea, while Palaestina Secunda extended to Galilee, the Golan, and parts of the Transjordan and its capital was Scythopolis (now Beit She'an).[23] Salutaris was named Palaestina Tertia or Salutaris.[22]

## Name

The name Syria Palaestina was introduced by the Roman authorities in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 AD), when the province of Judaea was renamed. Most scholars interpret this renaming as a deliberate attempt by the Roman to suppress Jewish identification with the land and to erase the province's association with the Jewish people.[24] While the Romans frequently renamed provinces for administrative or political reasons, the renaming of Judaea is widely regarded as unique, as the only known case where a province's name was changed explicitly as a punitive response to a rebellion.[25][26]

The precise date and motivations behind the name change remain uncertain, though circumstantial evidence points to Emperor Hadrian's involvement.[27] Coins issued by Hadrian before the revolt still refer to Judaea,[28] while a military diploma from 139 CE already uses the new name.[29] The former name carried a clear ethnic association with the Jewish people, whereas the new designation was devoid of explicit ethnic connotations.[25][29][30] The renaming coincided with broader Roman efforts to suppress Jewish national identity, including the imposition of restrictions on Jewish religious practices, the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem and its surrounding areas, and the refounding of the city as Aelia Capitolina.[24][27][31]

Classicist Louis Feldman writes that the aim was to "obliterate the Jewish character of the land, with the name of the nearest tribe being applied to the entire area", writing that the term Palestina had previously referred mainly to the coastal region inhabited by the Philistines in the Iron Age and that early Roman authors typically distinguished it from Judaea; By applying the name of a neighboring people—the Philistines—to the entire region, the Roman authorities sought to symbolically sever the connection between the Jews and their ancestral homeland.[28] Historian Ze'ev Safrai writes that the renaming was motivated by the "effort to wipe out all memory of the bond between the Jews and the land."[32] Historian Werner Eck writes that the renaming was a deliberate and exceptional act of punishment. He rejects demographic explanations—pointing to rebellious provinces such as Germania, Pannonia, and Britannia, which retained their names despite revolts and population loss—and emphasizes that Judaea alone lost its ethnically derived name as a symbolic measure to punish the Jews and sever their connection to the land.[33]

Alongside the dominating explanation of the renaming as a punishment, there are also other theories. David Jacobson suggests that the renaming may have been a practical choice, intended to reflect that the Roman province encompassed a much larger area than the traditional district of Judea, and to draw on a name with ancient regional associations.[34] He also notes that the name was historically linked to the broader region of greater Israel.[34] The name Syria-Palaestina was already in use in the Greco-Roman world at least five centuries earlier. Herodotus, for example, used the term in the 5th century BC when discussing the component parts of the fifth province of the Achaemenid Empire: Phoenicia, Cyprus, "and that part of Syria which is called Palestine".[35] Historian Seth Schwartz writes that the name was intended to "celebrate the de-Judaization of the province."[36] Historian Ronald Syme suggested the name change preceded the revolt, possibly reflecting "Hadrian's decided opinions about Jews."[37]

Some authors in late antiquity, such as Galen, Celsus, Dio Cassius, Origen, Eusebius and Jerome continued to refer to Judaea out of habit due to the prominent association with the Jews.[38][28] This includes an inscription from Ephesos from AD 170–180, honoring the wife of a figure known as "Eroelius Klaros", who had the epithet "ruler of Judaea" ("[Ερο]υκίου Κλάρου, υπάτου, [ηγ]εμόνος Ιουδ[αίας]"), decades after the recreation of Provincia Judaea as Syria-Palaestina.[39]

Despite this "Syria" in the name, Palestine was independent of Roman Syria, even to a greater extent than before, since instead of a legatus Augusti pro praetore, a higher-ranking governor of consular rank now presided over the region. This in turn was probably due to the fact that in addition to the already existing legion in Caesarea, a second legion was stationed in Legio, increasing the military importance of the province. Exactly when the legion was moved and the rank of the governor's post increased is a matter of debate – in any case, these events must have occurred before the governorship of Quintus Tineius Rufus, who took office no later than 130.[40]

## Demographics

The population of Syria-Palaestina was of mixed character.[41]

### Jews

The aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt resulted in severe devastation for Judaea's Jewish population, including significant loss of life, forced displacements, and widespread enslavement. The scale of suffering was immense, with ancient sources reporting extensive destruction and high casualty rates. It appears that at the end of the revolt, Jewish settlement in Judaea Proper had nearly been eradicated, but remained strong in other parts of Palestine.[42][43][44][45] Jewish survivors faced harsh Roman punitive measures, including expulsion from Jerusalem and other areas, leading to a migration to Galilee and Golan.[46][47][48] Some scholars suggest that a number of Jews may have forfeited their Jewish identity and assimilated into the Pagan and early Christian I.e. Gentile populations.[49][50] Many Jewish captives were sold into slavery across the Roman Empire, contributing to an increase in the Jewish diaspora.[51]

Historian Moshe David Herr writes that in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jewish share of the population in Palestine declined from about two-thirds to around three-fifths or less, a figure that continued to decrease during the subsequent Amoraic period.[52] Economic hardships and political instability led to increased emigration, particularly to Babylonia.[52] In the early 3rd century CE, Rabbi Yohanan, a prominent sage, observed that "most of the Land of Israel is in the hands of Jews";[53][52] however, not long afterward, his disciple Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat noted that "most of the Land of Israel is now in the hands of gentiles."[53][52] Herr estimates that by the end of the 4th century, Jews made up only about one-third of the population of Palestine.[52]

### Pagans

According to Eitan Klein, after the revolt, Roman authorities confiscated lands in Judaea, leading to the resettlement of the region by a diverse population. Archaeological evidence shows that gentile migrants from neighboring Levantine provinces such as Arabia, Syria, and Phoenicia, as well as from the coastal plain and beyond, settled in the area. The new Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina was populated by Roman veterans and migrants from western parts of the empire, who also occupied its surroundings, administrative centers, and main roads.[54] According to Lichtenberger, archaeological evidence from Bayt Nattif suggests a persistence of non-conformist unorthodox Jewish groups that did not adhere to strict Biblical monotheism, as well as remnants of semitic pagan groups related to those of Yahwahist Iron Age Judah in the late Roman period.[55]

In AD 300, Jews formed around a quarter of the population and lived in compact settlements in Galilee, while Samaritans were concentrated in Samaria.[41][56] By the fifth century, Christianity had gained further ground in the region, and Christians formed a majority in Palestine and Jerusalem through migration and conversion of pagans, Samaritans and Jews.[41][42][43]

## Religion

### Roman Imperial cult

After the Jewish–Roman wars (66–135), which Epiphanius believed the Cenacle survived,[57] the significance of Jerusalem to Christians entered a period of decline, it having been destroyed and later refounded as the pagan colonia of Aelia Capitolina. Christian interest resumed again with the pilgrimage of Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, c. 326–28. New pagan cities were founded in Judea at Eleutheropolis (now Bayt Jibrin), Diopolis (now Lod), and Nicopolis.[58][59]

The Hellenization of Palaestina continued under Septimius Severus (193–211 AD).[58]

### Early Christianity

The Romans destroyed the Jewish community of the Church in Jerusalem, which had existed since the time of Jesus.[60] Traditionally it is believed the Jerusalem Christians waited out the Jewish–Roman wars in Pella in the Decapolis. The line of Jewish bishops in Jerusalem, which is claimed to have started with James, brother of Jesus as its first bishop, ceased to exist within the Empire. Hans Küng in Islam: Past Present and Future, suggests that the Jewish Christians sought refuge in the Arabian Peninsula and he quotes with approval Clemen et al., "This produces the paradox of truly historic significance that while Jewish Christianity was swallowed up in the Christian church, it preserved itself in Islam."[61]

## Reorganization

In circa 390, Syria Palaestina was reorganised into several administrative units: Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Tertia (in the 6th century),[62] Syria Prima and Phoenice and Phoenice Lebanensis. All were included within the larger Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Diocese of the East, together with the provinces of Isauria, Cilicia, Cyprus (until 536), Euphratensis, Mesopotamia, Osroene, and Arabia Petraea. Palaestina Prima consisted of Judaea, Samaria, the Paralia and Peraea, with the governor residing in Caesarea. Palaestina Secunda consisted of the Galilee, the lower Jezreel Valley, the regions east of Galilee, and the western part of the former Decapolis, </ref>

## See also

* Roman Judaea
* Aelia Capitolina
* Shaam

## Notes

## References

1. ↑ Bryce, Trevor (2009). Routledge. p. 522. ISBN 1134159080. https://books.google.com/books?id=E1aF0hq1GR8C&pg=PA521. Retrieved 18 September 2025.
2. ↑ de Vaux, Roland (1978), The Early History of Israel, p. 2: "After the revolt of Bar Cochba in 135, the Roman province of Judaea was renamed Palestinian Syria."
3. ↑ "Palestine - Roman Rule, Jewish Revolts, Crusades | Britannica". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2007. https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine/Roman-Palestine. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
4. ↑ Haensch, Rudolf (2010). "The Roman Provincial Administration". in Catherine Hezser. The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine. OUP Oxford. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-19-921643-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=BXpM_RVV8ggC.
5. ↑ Josephus, De Bello Judaico (Wars of the Jews) 2.8.1 .
6. ↑ Hitchcock, James (2012). History of the Catholic Church : from the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium. Ignatius Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-1-58617-664-8. OCLC 796754060. http://worldcat.org/oclc/796754060. Retrieved 22 March 2022.
7. ↑ Barnavi, Élie; Eliav-Feldon, Miriam; Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson (1992) (in en). A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People: From the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present. Schocken Books. p. 246. ISBN 978-0-8052-4127-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=eFamQgAACAAJ. "When Judea was converted into a Roman province [in AD 6, page 246], Jerusalem ceased to be the administrative capital of the country. The Romans moved the governmental residence and military headquarters to Caesarea. The centre of government was thus removed from Jerusalem, and the administration became increasingly based on inhabitants of the hellenistic cities (Sebaste, Caesarea and others)."
8. ↑ Westwood, Ursula (2017-04-01). "A History of the Jewish War, AD 66–74". Journal of Jewish Studies 68 (1): 189–193. doi:10.18647/3311/jjs-2017. ISSN 0022-2097. http://dx.doi.org/10.18647/3311/jjs-2017. Retrieved 8 July 2022.
9. ↑ Taylor, Joan E. (15 November 2012). The Essenes, the Scrolls, and the Dead Sea. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955448-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=XWIMFY4VnI4C&pg=PA243. "These texts, combined with the relics of those who hid in caves along the western side of the Dead Sea, tells us a great deal. What is clear from the evidence of both skeletal remains and artefacts is that the Roman assault on the Jewish population of the Dead Sea was so severe and comprehensive that no one came to retrieve precious legal documents, or bury the dead. Up until this date the Bar Kokhba documents indicate that towns, villages and ports where Jews lived were busy with industry and activity. Afterwards there is an eerie silence, and the archaeological record testifies to little Jewish presence until the Byzantine era, in En Gedi. This picture coheres with what we have already determined in Part I of this study, that the crucial date for what can only be described as genocide, and the devastation of Jews and Judaism within central Judea, was 135 CE and not, as usually assumed, 70 AD, despite the siege of Jerusalem and the Temple's destruction"
10. ↑ Eck, Werner. "Sklaven und Freigelassene von Römern in Iudaea und den angrenzenden Provinzen" (in German), Novum Testamentum 55 (2.13), pp. 1–21.
11. ↑ Raviv, Dvir; Ben David, Chaim (2021). "Cassius Dio's figures for the demographic consequences of the Bar Kokhba War: Exaggeration or reliable account?" (in en). Journal of Roman Archaeology 34 (2): 585–607. doi:10.1017/S1047759421000271. ISSN 1047-7594. "Scholars have long doubted the historical accuracy of Cassius Dio's account of the consequences of the Bar Kokhba War (Roman History 69.14). According to this text, considered the most reliable literary source for the Second Jewish Revolt, the war encompassed all of Judea: the Romans destroyed 985 villages and 50 fortresses, and killed 580,000 rebels. This article reassesses Cassius Dio's figures by drawing on new evidence from excavations and surveys in Judea, Transjordan, and the Galilee. Three research methods are combined: an ethno-archaeological comparison with the settlement picture in the Ottoman Period, comparison with similar settlement studies in the Galilee, and an evaluation of settled sites from the Middle Roman Period (70–136). The study demonstrates the potential contribution of the archaeological record to this issue and supports the view of Cassius Dio's demographic data as a reliable account, which he based on contemporaneous documentation.".
12. ↑ Mor, Menahem (2016-04-18). The Second Jewish Revolt. BRILL. pp. 483–484. doi:10.1163/9789004314634. ISBN 978-90-04-31463-4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004314634. Retrieved 8 July 2022. "Land confiscation in Judaea was part of the suppression of the revolt policy of the Romans and punishment for the rebels. But the very claim that the sikarikon laws were annulled for settlement purposes seems to indicate that Jews continued to reside in Judaea even after the Second Revolt. There is no doubt that this area suffered the severest damage from the suppression of the revolt. Settlements in Judaea, such as Herodion and Bethar, had already been destroyed during the course of the revolt, and Jews were expelled from the districts of Gophna, Herodion, and Aqraba. However, it should not be claimed that the region of Judaea was completely destroyed. Jews continued to live in areas such as Lod (Lydda), south of the Hebron Mountain, and the coastal regions. In other areas of the Land of Israel that did not have any direct connection with the Second Revolt, no settlement changes can be identified as resulting from it."
13. ↑ Oppenheimer, A'haron and Oppenheimer, Nili. Between Rome and Babylon: Studies in Jewish Leadership and Society. Mohr Siebeck, 2005, p. 2.
14. ↑ Ben-Sasson, H.H. (1976). A History of the Jewish People, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-39731-6, page 334: "In an effort to wipe out all memory of the bond between the Jews and the land, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Judaea to Syria-Palestina, a name that became common in non-Jewish literature."
15. ↑ Lewin, Ariel (2005). The archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine. Getty Publications, p. 33. ISBN 978-0-89236-800-6. "It seems clear that by choosing a seemingly neutral name - one juxtaposing that of a neighboring province with the revived name of an ancient geographical entity (Palestine), already known from the writings of Herodotus - Hadrian was intending to suppress any connection between the Jewish people and that land."
16. ↑ Jacobson 2001, pp. 44–45:"Hadrian officially renamed Judea Syria Palaestina after his Roman armies suppressed the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (the Second Jewish Revolt) in 135 C.E.; this is commonly viewed as a move intended to sever the connection of the Jews to their historical homeland. However, that Jewish writers such as Philo, in particular, and Josephus, who flourished while Judea was still formally in existence, used the name Palestine for the Land of Israel in their Greek works, suggests that this interpretation of history is mistaken. Hadrian's choice of Syria Palaestina may be more correctly seen as a rationalization of the name of the new province, in accordance with its area being far larger than geographical Judea. Indeed, Syria Palaestina had an ancient pedigree that was intimately linked with the area of greater Israel."
17. ↑ Notitia Dignitatum, Chapter 34.
18. ↑ Keel, Othmar; Küchler, Max; Uehlinger, Christoph (1984). Orte und Landschaften der Bibel. Ein Handbuch und Studien-Reiseführer zum Heiligen Land. Vol. 1: Geographisch-geschichtliche Landeskunde (in German). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttinge, ISBN 978-3-525-50166-5, p. 281 f.
19. ↑ Maʿoz, Zvi Uri (2006). "The Civil Reform of Diocletian in the Southern Levant". Scripta Classica Israelica 25: 1–25.
20. ↑ Ecker, Avner; Leibner, Uzi (2025). "‘Diocletian oppressed the inhabitants of Paneas’ (ySheb. 9:2): A New Tetrarchic boundary stone from Abel Beth Maacah". Palestine Exploration Quarterly 157 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1080/00310328.2024.2435218.
21. ↑ Roy Marom, Roy (2025). "A Toponymic Reassessment of the Abil al-Qamḥ Diocletianic Boundary Stone: Identifying Golgol at al-Zūq al-Fauqānī". Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology 8: 51–59. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80b199p2.
22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Dan, Yaron (1982). "Palaestina Salutaris (Tertia) and Its Capital". Israel Exploration Journal 32 (2/3): 134–135. "The division of Palestine into two provinces, Palestina Prima and Southern Palestine, later to be known as Palaestina Salutaris, took place in 357-358 [...] In 409 we hear for the first time of the three provinces of Palestine: Palaestina Prima, Secunda and Tertia (the former Salutaris)".
23. ↑ Pahlitzsch, Johannes (2000). Palaestina III: Römische und byzantinische Zeit (in German). In: Der Neue Pauly (DNP). Vol. 9, Metzler, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-476-01479-5, Sp. 160–162, here Sp. 162.
24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Magness 2012, p. 260: "To further punish the Jews, Hadrian instituted bans restricting or prohibiting some Jewish practices, such as circumcision and sabbath observance. For the first time, Jews living under Roman rule were subject to persecution under the law for practicing their religion. Finally, to obliterate the memory of this troublesome people, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Judea to Syria-Palaestina, reviving the name of the ancient kingdom of Philistia.";
25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Eck 1999, pp. 88–89: "At the end of the war, a drastic decision was made, probably by Hadrian himself, to change the name of the province from Judaea to Syria Palaestina. Our familiarity with the new name may have jaded us to the significance of the change. True, the Romans changed names of provinces quite often ... But never before (or after) was the old name of a province changed as a corollary of a revolt. Not that revolts were not frequent in other provinces as well: the Germani in Germania, the Pannonii in Pannonia, and the Brittones in Britannia all revolted against Rome at one time or another. Yet none of these provinces lost its original name derived from the name of its people. But Judaea, derived from Iudaei, ceased to exist for the Roman government after the Bar Kokhba revolt. It was not because the Jewish population was much reduced as a result of losses suffered during the war that the name of the province was changed; the same was true, for example, of Pannonia, and yet the old name was kept. The change of name was part of the punishment inflicted on the Jews; they were punished with the loss of a name. This is the clear message of this exceptional measure, the one and only example of such a measure in the history of the Empire."
26. ↑ Eshel 2006, p. 127:"An additional, more lasting punitive measure taken by the Romans involved expunging Judaea from the provincial name, changing it from Provincia Judaea to Provincia Syria Palestina. Although such name changes occurred elsewhere, never before or after was a nation's name expunged as the result of rebellion."
27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Feldman 1990, p. 19: "While it is true that there is no evidence as to precisely who changed the name of Judaea to Palestine and precisely when this was done, circumstantial evidence would seem to point to Hadrian himself, since he is, it would seem, responsible for a number of decrees that sought to crush the national and religious spirit of the Jews, whether these decrees were responsible for the uprising or were the result of it. In the first place, he refounded Jerusalem as a Graeco-Roman city under the name of Aelia Capitolina. He also erected on the site of the Temple another temple to Zeus."
28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 Feldman 1996, p. 553: "Herodotus in the fifth century B.C.E. mentions Palestine; he refers only to the coastal area, so called because it had been inhabited by the Philistines; or he is speaking loosely, since the only part of the area that he had visited was apparently along the coast. ... That the official term for this region is Judaea may be seen from military diplomas and other inscriptions, as well as from coins, prior to the time of Hadrian. It is so designated in the official letter of the Emperor. ... Coins of Hadrian issued before the Bar Kochba rebellion in 132 C.E. refer to Judaea; within a few years after the rebellion the name of Judaea was officially changed to Palestine, the aim being to obliterate the Jewish character of the land, with the name of the nearest tribe being applied to the entire area. Yet, even after the name was officially changed, some inscriptions, as well as such literary figures as Galen and Celsus in the second century, Dio Cassius and Origen in the third century, and Eusebius and Jerome in the fourth century, still refer to Judaea."
29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Millar 2001, pp. 107–108: "The revolt thus left Judaea as a major, and on the surface a highly Romanised, element in the structure of the Empire... A diploma of 139 shows that there were then at least three cavalry alae and twelve cohortes in the province. No other province with no external frontier had so large a garrison. But what the diploma of 139 also shows is that the name 'Iudaea', with its ethnic reference, had already disappeared, to be replaced by a new name, 'Syria Palaestina'."
30. ↑ Isaac 2015, p. 1: "After the Bar Kokhba war, in the reign of Hadrian, the Roman province of Judaea was re-named Syria-Palaestina. Thus an appellation referring to an ethnic element associated with Jews was replaced by the purely geographic one: Syria-Palaestina."
31. ↑ Lehmann, Clayton Miles (Summer 1998). "Palestine: History". The On-line Encyclopedia of the Roman Provinces. University of South Dakota. http://www.usd.edu/~clehmann/erp/Palestine/history.htm. Retrieved 2014-08-24. "In the aftermath of the Bar Cochba Revolt, the Romans excluded Jews from a large area around Aelia Capitolina, which Gentiles only inhabited. The province now hosted two legions and many auxiliary units, two colonies, and--to complete the disassociation with Judaea--a new name, Syria Palaestina.".
32. ↑ Safrai 1976, p. 334: "In an effort to wipe out all memory of the bond between the Jews and the land, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Judaea to Syria-Palestina, a name that became common in non-Jewish literature."
33. ↑ Eck 1999, pp. 88–89 At the end of the war, a drastic decision was made, probably by Hadrian himself, to change the name of the province from Judaea to Syria Palaestina. ... The change of name was part of the punishment inflicted on the Jews; they were punished with the loss of a name. This is the clear message of this exceptional measure, the one and only example of such a measure in the history of the Empire.
34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 Jacobson 2001, pp. 44–45: "Hadrian officially renamed Judea Syria Palaestina after his Roman armies suppressed the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (the Second Jewish Revolt) in 135 C.E.; this is commonly viewed as a move intended to sever the connection of the Jews to their historical homeland. However, that Jewish writers such as Philo, in particular, and Josephus, who flourished while Judea was still formally in existence, used the name Palestine for the Land of Israel in their Greek works, suggests that this interpretation of history is mistaken. Hadrian's choice of Syria Palaestina may be more correctly seen as a rationalization of the name of the new province, in accordance with its area being far larger than geographical Judea. Indeed, Syria Palaestina had an ancient pedigree that was intimately linked with the area of greater Israel."
35. ↑ The term Syria-Palaestina was already in use in the Greco-Roman world at least five centuries earlier. Herodotus, for example, used the term in the 5th century BC when discussing the component parts of the fifth province of the Achaemenid Empire: Phoenicia, Cyprus, "and that part of Syria which is called Palestine" (Ionic Greek: Συρίη ἡ Παλαιστίνη, romanized: Suríē hē Palaistínē). "The full Herodotus quote is "from the town of Posideion, which was founded by Amphilocus son of Amphiaraus, on the border between Cilicia and Syria, beginning from this as far as Egypt —omitting Arabian territory (which was free of tax), came 350 talents. In this province there is the whole of Phoenicia and that part of Syria which is called Palestine, and Cyprus. This is the fifth province" Anson F. Rainey (February 2001). "Herodotus' Description of the East Mediterranean Coast". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The American Schools of Oriental Research) 321 (321): 57–63. doi:10.2307/1357657. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1357657. Retrieved 20 May 2021.
36. ↑ Schwartz 2016, p. 248:"The Romans thus quelled the Bar Kokhba revolt with unparalleled severity. ... To celebrate the de-judaization of the province, so it seems, its name was changed from Judaea to Syria Palaestina."
37. ↑ Syme 1962, p. 90: "Hadrian was in those parts in 129 and 130. He abolished the name of Jerusalem, refounding the place as a colony, Aelia Capitolina. That helped to provoke the rebellion. The supersession of the ethnical term by the geographical may also reflect Hadrian's decided opinions about Jews."
38. ↑ Belayche 2001, p. 51: "Once the troubles, which inflamed Galilee under Trajan and the rest of the province fifteen years later had been controlled, Judaea became the province of Syria-Palaestina (or Palaestina) as it was known in official and literary documents. However, after this date, some authors continued to use the former name. No doubt out of habit, as the memory of the revolt which was responsible for the banishment of the name faded and because in the ancient imagination, this territory was first and foremost that of the Jews."
39. ↑ Smallwood, E. Mary. The Jews Under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian: A Study in Political Relations. Apendix A. 1. The Governors of Judaea and Syria Palaestina after A.D. 70., p. 552.
40. ↑ Eck, Werner (1999). Rom und die Provinz Iudaea/Syria Palaestina. Der Beitrag der Epigraphik (in German). In: Aharon Oppenheimer (ed.): Jüdische Geschichte in hellenistisch-römischer Zeit. Wege der Forschung: Vom alten zum neuen Schürer (= Schriften des Historischen Kollegs. Kolloquien. Vol. 44). Oldenbourg, München, ISBN 978-3-486-56414-3, pp. 237–264, here pp. 246–250 (where, however, the latest possible start year of governorship is seen as being 132).
41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 41.2 Krämer, Gudrun (2011). A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel. Princeton University Press. pp. 14–15. ISBN 978-0-691-15007-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=tWrW_CKODdQC.
42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 Goodblatt, David (2006). "The Political and Social History of the Jewish Community in the Land of Israel, c. 235–638". in Steven Katz. The Cambridge History of Judaism. IV. Cambridge University Press. pp. 404–430. ISBN 978-0-521-77248-8. "Few would disagree that, in the century and a half before our period begins, the Jewish population of Judah () suffered a serious blow from which it never recovered. The destruction of the Jewish metropolis of Jerusalem and its environs and the eventual refounding of the city... had lasting repercussions. [...] However, in other parts of Palestine the Jewish population remained strong [...] What does seem clear is a different kind of change. Immigration of Christians and the conversion of pagans, Samaritans and Jews eventually produced a Christian majority."
43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 Bar, Doron (2003). "The Christianisation of Rural Palestine during Late Antiquity". The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 54 (3): 401–421. doi:10.1017/s0022046903007309. ISSN 0022-0469. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046903007309. Retrieved 8 July 2022. "The dominant view of the history of Palestine during the Byzantine period links the early phases of the consecration of the land during the fourth century and the substantial external financial investment that accompanied the building of churches on holy sites on the one hand with the Christianisation of the population on the other. Churches were erected primarily at the holy sites, 12 while at the same time Palestine's position and unique status as the Christian "Holy Land" became more firmly rooted. All this, coupled with immigration and conversion, allegedly meant that the Christianisation of Palestine took place much more rapidly than that of other areas of the Roman empire, brought in its wake the annihilation of the pagan cults and meant that by the middle of the fifth century there was a clear Christian majority.".
44. ↑ Taylor, Joan (1990). A critical investigation of archaeological material assigned to Palestinian Jewish-Christians of the Roman and Byzantine periods.
45. ↑ Bar, Doron (2008). Continuity and change in the cultic topography of late antique Palestine
46. ↑ Miller, 1984, p. 132
47. ↑ Mor 2016, pp. 483–484: "Land confiscation in Judaea was part of the suppression of the revolt policy of the Romans and punishment for the rebels. But the very claim that the sikarikon laws were annulled for settlement purposes seems to indicate that Jews continued to reside in Judaea even after the Second Revolt. There is no doubt that this area suffered the severest damage from the suppression of the revolt. Settlements in Judaea, such as Herodion and Bethar, had already been destroyed during the course of the revolt, and Jews were expelled from the districts of Gophna, Herodion, and Aqraba. However, it should not be claimed that the region of Judaea was completely destroyed. Jews continued to live in areas such as Lod (Lydda), south of the Hebron Mountain, and the coastal regions. In other areas of the Land of Israel that did not have any direct connection with the Second Revolt, no settlement changes can be identified as resulting from it."
48. ↑ Dauphin, Claudine M. (1982). "Jewish and Christian Communities in the Roman and Byzantine Gaulanitis : A Study of Evidence from Archaeological Surveys" (in en). Palestine Exploration Quarterly 114 (2): 129–130, 132. doi:10.1179/peq.1982.114.2.129. ISSN 0031-0328. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/peq.1982.114.2.129.
49. ↑ Goldenberg, Robert (1989). The Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple : Its Meaning and Its Consequences, in "The Cambridge History of Judaism: The late Roman-Rabbinic period". Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780511467936. "Indeed, many must have reacted to the catastrophe with despair and total abandonment of Judaism. Apostates from Judaism (aside from converts to Christianity) received little notice in antiquity from either Jewish or non-Jewish writers, but ambitious individuals are known to have turned pagan before the war, and it stands to reason that many more did so after its disastrous conclusion. It is impossible to determine the number who joined the budding Christian movement and the number who disappeared into the polytheist majority."
50. ↑ Goodman, Martin (2008). Rome and Jerusalem The Clash of Ancient Civilizations. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 9780307544360. ""Since the Roman State had always accepted without quibble the validity of apostasy from Judaism, as Tiberius Julius Alexander had demonstrated by the success of his public career in the first century, it might seen sensible for Jews to respond to roman hostility to their religion by choosing to abandon it, particularly since their God seemed to have abandoned them. This may indeed be the best way to understand the assertion in Christian writers, such as Justin Martyr in the mid-second century, that jews were forbidden after Bar Kokhba to live in their homeland. It would not have benefited the settlers in Aelia Capitolina to find the lands they were allotted in the new colony deprived of local workforce. Doubtless they could employ slave labour to some extent, particularly when slave prices were low in the aftermath of the war, but much farm work must have been done by descendants of the original Jewish inhabitants who had given up Jewish customs and elected to merge into the wider gentile population of the region.""
51. ↑ Powell, The Bar Kokhba War AD 132-136, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, ç2017, p.81
52. ↑ 52.0 52.1 52.2 52.3 52.4 Herr 2022, pp. 65–66.
53. ↑ 53.0 53.1 Jerusalem Talmud, Demai, 2:1 (translation by Heinrich W. Guggenheimer)
54. ↑ Klein, Eitan (2010). "The Origins of the Rural Settlers in Judean Mountains and Foothills during the Late Roman Period", in: E. Baruch, A. Levy-Reifer and A. Faust (eds.), New Studies on Jerusalem, Vol. 16, Ramat-Gan, pp. 321-350 (in Hebrew).
55. ↑ Lichtenberger, Achim. "Jews and Pagans in Late Antique Judaea. The Case of the Beit Nattif Workshop." R. Raja (ed.), Contextualizing the Sacred in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, Religious Identities in Local, Regional, and Imperial Settings (Contextualizing the Sacred 8; Turnhout) (2017): 191–211. Print.
56. ↑ Kessler, Edward (2010). An Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations. Cambridge University Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-521-70562-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=87Woe7kkPM4C&pg=PA72.
57. ↑ Catholic Encyclopedia: Jerusalem (A.D. 71-1099) : "Epiphanius (died 403) says..."
58. ↑ 58.0 58.1 Shahin, Mariam (2005) Palestine: a Guide. Interlink Books ISBN 978-1-56656-557-8, p. 7
59. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2007. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-45053. Retrieved 12 August 2007.
60. ↑ Whealey, J. (2008) "Eusebius and the Jewish Authors: His Citation Technique in an Apologetic Context" (Journal of Theological Studies; Vol 59: 359-362)
61. ↑ Götz, Ignacio L. (2021). The Unknowable God. Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-0980-6016-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=pJEuEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT37.
62. ↑ Thomas A. Idniopulos (1998). "Weathered by Miracles: A History of Palestine From Bonaparte and Muhammad Ali to Ben-Gurion and the Mufti". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/i/idinopulos-miracles.html.

## Sources

* Belayche, Nicole (2001). "Ways of Romanization from 135 onwards". Iudaea-Palaestina: The Pagan Cults in Roman Palestine (Second to Fourth Century). Religion der Römischen Provinzen 1. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. p. 51. ISBN 978-3-16-147153-7.
* Eck, Werner (1999). "The Bar Kokhba Revolt: The Roman Point of View". The Journal of Roman Studies (Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies) 89: 76–89. doi:10.2307/300735. https://www.jstor.org/stable/300735.
* Eshel, Hanan (2006). "The Bar Kochba Revolt, 132–135". in Katz, Steven T.. The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period. The Cambridge History of Judaism. 4. Cambridge University Press. pp. 105–127. ISBN 978-0-521-77248-8.
* Feldman, Louis H. (1990). "Some Observations on the Name of Palestine". Hebrew Union College Annual (Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion) 61: 1–23.
* Feldman, Louis H. (1996). "Some Observations on the Name of Palestine". Studies in Hellenistic Judaism. Leiden: Brill. pp. 553–576. ISBN 978-90-04-10418-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=pACJYw0bg3QC&pg=PA553.
* Herr, Moshe David (2022). "The Land of Israel in Late Antiquity (324–640): A General Introduction". in Patrich, Joseph (in he). Eretz Israel in Late Antiquity: Introductions and Studies. 1. Ben Zvi Institute. pp. 19–78. ISBN 978-965-217-444-4.
* Isaac, Benjamin (22 December 2015). "Judaea-Palaestina". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.3500. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5.
* Jacobson, David (2001), "When Palestine Meant Israel", Biblical Archaeology Review 27 (3), http://cojs.org/cojswiki/When_Palestine_Meant_Israel,_David_Jacobson,_BAR_27:03,_May/Jun_2001.
* Magness, Jodi (2012). The Archaeology of the Holy Land: From the Destruction of Solomon's Temple to the Muslim Conquest. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-01383-3. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/archaeology-of-the-holy-land/22D828E7C9A290BCB132BF5234F02332.
* Millar, Fergus (2001). The Roman Near East, 31 BC–AD 337. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 107–108. ISBN 978-0-674-77886-3. "The revolt thus left Judaea as a major, and on the surface a highly Romanised, element in the structure of the Empire... A diploma of 139 shows that there were then at least three cavalry alae and twelve cohortes in the province. No other province with no external frontier had so large a garrison. But what the diploma of 139 also shows is that the name 'Iudaea', with its ethnic reference, had already disappeared, to be replaced by a new name, 'Syria Palaestina'."
* Ben-Sasson, H.H., ed (1976). "The Era of the Mishnah and Talmud (70–640)". A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press. pp. 307–382. ISBN 0-674-39730-4.
* Syme, Ronald (1962). "The Wrong Marcius Turbo". The Journal of Roman Studies 52 (1–2): 87–96. doi:10.2307/297879. ISSN 0075-4358.
* Schwartz, Seth (2016). "The Impact of the Jewish Rebellions, 66–135 CE: Destruction or Provincialization?". in Collins, John J.; Manning, J.G.. Revolt and Resistance in the Ancient Classical World and the Near East. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East. 85. Brill. pp. 234–252. doi:10.1163/9789004330184_016. ISBN 978-90-04-33018-4.

## Further reading

* Nicole Belayche, "Foundation myths in Roman Palestine. Traditions and reworking", in Ton Derks, Nico Roymans (ed.), Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity: The Role of Power and Tradition (Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2009) (Amsterdam Archaeological Studies, 13), 167–188.
* Cotton, Hannah M. (2009). Eck, Werner. ed. "Some Aspects of the Roman Administration of Judaea/Syria-Palaestina". Jahrhundert (Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag) 1, Lokale Autonomie und Ordnungsmacht in den kaiserzeitlichen Provinzen (3): 75–92. doi:10.1524/9783486596014-007. ISBN 978-3-486-59601-4.

## External links

* Two legates and a procurator of Syria Palaestina Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 1977

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