How Judea and Samaria Lost Their Names AND Get Them Back Again

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

    The territory of Jewish Palestine has been reduced by 77% of the original Mandate !!!!! This was given to Jordan's Prince so he could have a land to rule.  He was from Arabia-Saudi Arabia.  

Jewish Palestine was then torn apart to accommodate Palestinians who never thought of having their own country.  They can thank Arafat for that.   They thought of themselves as Syrian Palestinians being many were from Syria seeking work building new Jewish cities and theirs were always in a state of depression.    

The territories of Judea and Samaria lost their ancient biblical names through two distinct geopolitical shifts: the Roman renaming in the 2nd century CE and the adoption of the term "West Bank" following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

1. Roman Renaming (2nd Century CE)

Bar Kokhba fighting against Roman army :   Bar Kokhba, was a Jewish military leader in Judea. He lent his name to the Bar Kokhba revolt, which he initiated against the Roman Empire in 132 CE. Though they were ultimately unsuccessful, Bar Kokhba and his rebels did manage to establish and maintain a Jewish state for about three years after beginning the rebellion. Bar Kokhba served as the state's leader, crowning himself as nasi (lit. 'prince'). Some of the rabbinic scholars in his time believed him to be the long-expected Messiah.

In 135, Bar Kokhba was killed by Roman troops in the fortified town of Betar. The Judean rebels who remained after his death were all killed or enslaved within the next year, and their defeat was followed by a harsh crackdown on the Judean populace by the Roman emperor Hadrian. 

Following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132–136 CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian sought to break the Jewish connection to the land. The Romans were humiliated by the fact that this Bar Kokhba and his Jewish army held out for 3 years against the most powerful army in the land;  the Romans.  The Romans merged Judea with other regions to form the province of Syria Palaestina. The name was derived from the Philistines, an ancient enemy of the Israelites, to serve as a punitive measure and erase the historic Jewish association with the region. 

In 1947, the terminology was noted by the United Nations in the Partition Plan for Palestine with the statement: "the boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River..." The modern term used by the Israeli government does not map precisely with the geography of the biblical areas, which in tradition extended beyond the West Bank to include Beersheba and Caesarea.

As a US official recently remarked, “Eighty percent of the Bible takes place in Judea and Samaria.” The significance of this region for Israel is historical, religious, political, strategic, and existential.

Judea and Samaria were the heart of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and, more broadly, of the ancient Land of Israel. In Judea, with Jerusalem as its capital, King David ruled; in Samaria, the northern kingdom flourished. There stood Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, and Hebron, home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the burial site of Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants. These lands are the setting of the Bible and the cradle of Jewish history.

I'm learning in my almost 92 years now that Catholicism does not read much of the "Old Testament;  only the new" like a few of the Protestant groups do.  They seem to not be moved by our history as touching their beliefs.  The Evangelical Christians are the ones involved with knowing much of our history, though in a better memorized way.  With us, we remember much through our holidays that include plenty of food to help our memories.  This is important to see who has your back and who doesn't.  

For centuries, the hilly interior of the region retained variations of its biblical names. After the 1947 UN Partition Plan, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War resulted in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan occupying and later annexing the territory in 1950. 

Transjordan (Modern-day Jordan): Under the British Mandate, about 78% of the original land east of the Jordan River was designated for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

                                 WEST BANK BORN

To integrate the territory into its kingdom and de-emphasize its distinct historical Israelite and religious Jewish identity, Jordan officially renamed the region ad-Daffa al-Gharbiya, which translates into English as the West Bank, which refers to the West side of the Jordan River;  the bank being the side of the soil along the river..                      

                        Northern part=Samaria

                        Southern part=Judaea

                        What's left =  Israel

      Notice:  the southern part is desert:  hot Negev desert.

The Negev Desert covers approximately 55% to 60% of Israel's total land area. Despite making up the majority of the country's geography—stretching across about 13,000 square kilometers (4,700 sq mi)—it is home to just 8% to 10% of Israel's population.

                                    JUDEA SAMARIA REBORN

Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel took control of the territory and revived the historical terms of Judea-Samaria. However, the international community largely continued to use the term "West Bank". This appears to many as a plan to continue wiping out the Jewish history of the land till people forget-not a long wait, unfortunately.  

 Judea and Samaria are deeply tied to Jewish history, mapping exactly to the ancient southern Kingdom of Judah and the northern Kingdom of Israel. After the death of King Solomon in 931 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel broke into two parts: the southern kingdom of Judah (later Hellenized to Judaea), with its capital in Jerusalem, and the northern kingdom of Israel, with its capital in Samaria. The northern kingdom would fall to the Assyrians around 721 BCE, and the southern kingdom would succumb to the Babylonians around 586 BCE.

                                        PROPHECY

The destructions of these two kingdoms were recorded in the Bible, as were prophecies that Jews would return and reunite them, solidifying their importance.  The return of the Jewish people to the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria is primarily prophesied in the Old Testament by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel     “In the books of the prophets, many of the prophets themselves specifically say that all of the people who went into exile will return to the destroyed kingdoms, and they will reestablish a country that includes both Israel and Judah. ” This vision forms the bedrock of the Jewish connection to the land, underscoring the enduring historical and religious association of Jews with Judea specifically, and particularly in the Western imagination.