Research Notes
Palestine was always an Arab country.
FACT
The Hebrews entered the land of Israel about 1300 B.C.E., living under a tribal confederation until being united under the first monarch, King Saul. The second, king, David, established Jerusalem as the capital around 1000 B.C.E. David’s son, Solomon, built the Temple soon thereafter and consolidated the kingdom’s military, administrative, and religious functions. The nation was divided under Solomon’s son, with the northern kingdom (Israel) lasting until 722 B.C.E., when the Assyrians destroyed it, and the southern kingdom (Judah) surviving until the Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C.E. The Jewish people enjoyed brief periods of sovereignty afterward until most Jews were finally driven from their homeland in 135 C.E.
Jewish independence in the Land of Israel lasted for more than 400 years. This is much longer than Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States.3 Israel would be more than 3,000 years old today if not for foreign conquerors.
Though the definite origins of the word Palestine have been debated for years and are still unknown, the name is believed to be derived from the Egyptian and Hebrew word peleshet, which appears in the Tanakh no fewer than 250 times. Roughly translated to mean “rolling” or “migratory,” the term was used to describe the inhabitants of the land to the northeast of Egypt – the Philistines. The Philistines were an Aegean people with no connection ethnically, linguistically, or historically with Arabia.
The words “Palestine” or “Filastin” do not appear in the Koran. “Palestine” is also not mentioned in the Old or New Testament. It does occur at least eight times in the Hebrew concordance of the King James Bible.
As early as 300 B.C.E., the term Judaea [Judea] appears, most likely to describe the area where the population was predominantly Jewish. In the 2nd century C.E., the Romans crushed the revolt of Shimon Bar Kokhba (132 CE), during which Jerusalem and Judea were conquered, and the area of Judea was renamed Palaestina to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word Filastin is derived from this Latin name.4
According to Lewis Feldman, Rabbi Akiva testified in the second century that Diaspora Jews referred to the land as Eretz Israel. The rabbis never refer to it as Palestine.5
Following the Muslim conquest, place names used by the Byzantine administration generally continued to be used in Arabic, and “Palestine” became common in Early Modern English. It was used, for example, by the Crusaders in the Middle Ages.
Under the Ottoman Empire (1517-1917), the term Palestine was used as a general term to describe the land south of Syria; many Ottomans and Arabs who lived in Palestine during this period referred to the area as Southern Syria and not as Palestine.
Palestine was never exclusively Arab, although Arabic gradually became the language of most of the population after the Muslim invasions of the 7th century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in the area.
When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, they adopted the following resolution:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic, and geographical bonds.6
Similarly, the King-Crane Commission found that year that Christian and Muslim Arabs opposed any plan to create a country called “Palestine,” because it was viewed as recognition of Zionist claims.7
Historian Bernard Lewis noted, “With the British conquest of the country in 1917-1918 World War I that Palestine for the first time since remote antiquity became a separate entity, this time in a mandate held by the British Empire and approved by the League of Nations. The name adopted to designate this entity was ‘Palestine,’ resuscitated from an almost forgotten antiquity.” 8
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: “There is no such country as Palestine! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.” 9
When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University professor Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said, “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.” 10
Likewise, the Arab Higher Committee representative to the United Nations echoed this view in a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947, which said Palestine was part of the Province of Syria and the Arabs of Palestine did not comprise a separate political entity. A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the P.L.O., told the Security Council: “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.” 11
The Palestinians are descendants of the Canaanites and were in Palestine long before the Jews.
FACT
Palestinian claims to be related to the Canaanites are a recent phenomenon and contrary to historical evidence. The Canaanites disappeared three millennia ago, and no one knows if any of their descendants survived or, if they did, who they would be.
Over the last two thousand years, massive invasions (e.g., the Crusades), migrations, the plague, and other manmade or natural disasters killed off most of the local people. The entire local population has been replaced many times over. During the British Mandate alone, more than 100,000 Arabs emigrated from neighboring countries and are today considered Palestinians.
Sherif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic Holy Places in Arabia, said the Palestinians’ ancestors had only been in the area for one thousand years.12 Even the Palestinians acknowledged their association with the region came long after the Jews. In testimony before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, for example, they claimed a connection to Palestine of more than 1,000 years, dating back no further than the conquest of Muhammad’s followers in the seventh century.13
By contrast, no serious historian questions the more than 3,000-year-old Jewish connection to the land of Israel or the modern Jewish people’s relation to the ancient Hebrews.
Out of which of Noah’s three sons did the Chinese race come from?
Below are comments from The Genesis Record by Henry Morris. He writes regarding Gen. 9:24:
Descendants of Ham included the Egyptians and Sumerians, who founded the first two great empires of antiquity, as well as other great nations such as the Phoenicians, Hittites, and Canaanites. The modern African tribes and the Mongol tribes (including today the Chinese and Japanese), as well as the American Indians and the South Sea Islanders, are probably dominantly Hamitic in origin.
Among the many ways in which the Hamites have been the great “servants” of mankind are the following:
(1) They were the original explorers and settlers of practically all parts of the world, following the dispersion at Babel.
(2) They were the first cultivators of most of the basic food staples of the world, such as potatoes, corn, beans, cereals, and others, as well as the first ones to domesticate most animals.
(3) They developed most of the basic types of structural forms and building tools and materials.
(4) They were the first to develop most of the usual fabrics for clothing and the various sewing and weaving devices.
(5) They discovered and invented a wide variety of medicines and surgical practices and instruments.
(6) They invented most of the concepts of basic practical mathematics, as well as surveying and navigation.
(7) The machinery of commerce and trade-money, banks, postal systems, and so forth—was developed by them.
(8) They developed paper, ink, block printing, movable type, and other accouterments of writing and communication.
If one traces back far enough, he will find that practically every other basic device or system needed for man’s physical sustenance or convenience originated with one of the Hamitic peoples. Truly they have been the “servants” of mankind in a most amazing way.
Regarding Gen. 10:16-18 Morris writes:
The Biblical mention of a people in the Far East named “Sinim” (Isaiah 49:12), together with references in ancient secular histories to people in the Far East called “Sinae,” at least suggests the possibility that some of Sin’s descendants migrated eastward, while others went south into the land of Canaan. It is significant that the Chinese people have always been identified by the prefix “Sino-” (e.g., Sino-Japanese War; Sinology, the study of Chinese history). The name “Sin” is frequently encountered in Chinese names in the form “Siang” or its equivalent.
The evidence is tenuous but, of all the names in the Table of Nations, it does seem that two sons of Canaan, Heth (Hittites = Khittae = Cathay) and Sin (Sinites = Sinim = China), are the most likely to have become ancestors of the Oriental peoples. Since it seems reasonable that divine inspiration would include in such a table information concerning the ancestry of all the major streams of human development, it is reasonable to conclude that the Mongoloid peoples (and therefore also the American Indians) have come mostly from the Hamitic line.
Related Topics: Cultural Issues
Out of which of Noah’s three sons did the Asian race come from?
"The sons of Ḥam are Kūš, and Miṣrayim,[57] and Fūṭ (Phut),[58] and Kenaʻan,[59] while the names of their diocese are Arabia, and Egypt, and Elīḥerūq[60] and Canaan. The sons of Kūš are Sebā[61] and Ḥawīlah[62] and Savtah[63] and Raʻamah and Savteḫā,[64] [while the sons of Raʻamah are Ševā and Dedan].[65] The names of their diocese are called Sīnīrae,[d] and Hīndīqī,[e] Samarae,[f] Lūbae,[66] Zinğae,[g] while the sons of Mauretinos[h] are [the inhabitants of] Zemarğad and [the inhabitants of] Mezağ."[67] ---Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 10:6–7
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