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The Egyptians used the word "Peleset" and the Assyrians "Pilistu". The term is most certainly related to the Greek word "Palaistine" which can be traced to 5th

The Egyptians used the word "Peleset" and the Assyrians "Pilistu". The term is most certainly related to the Greek word "Palaistine" which can be traced to 5th century BC. But it is not clear what region ("land of the Peleset") or what people the term referred to. It encompassed the Philistines' five city states - Philistia - in southern Palestine (this comes from the Bible, I think it is unknown how many Philistine city states existed), but may also have encompassed a region larger than that. Since Palaistine referred to most of Palestine one can speculate that Peleset/Pilistu also did. Another theory is that Palestine came to be known as Palaistine after the Philistines via "pars pro toto", which means that a part becomes the name of the whole. One example is Russia, named after the Rus people who inhabited merely a small fraction of modern-day Russia. In other words, the Philistines may have been the dominant people in Palestine and the Greeks may have referred to the whole region as Palaistine, just as many people (sloppily) refer to the United Kingdom as "England". Numismatic evidence shows that the Philistine cities were large trading centers and minted coins earlier and in larger quantities than in other Palestinian cities.

selimthegrim 5y ago
Was Rus Kievan Rus originally?
- varjag 5y ago
  Yes, and the link of it to Russia is rather thin.
  - trhway 5y ago
    The "thinness" is subject to interpretation (and today especially because of Ukraine situation it has become a political issue with Ukraine actively developing its own independent history and claiming Kievan Rus for itself, and also in Russia there are people who don't like the idea of the state's Viking ie. non-Slavic origination) which one can decide for theselves by looking at historic facts. Yes, the south and western dukedoms (on the territory of modern Ukraine an Belarus) of Kievan Rus were for around 2 centuries under Mongols and Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and thus the link was pretty much broken there. Where is the north/east dukedoms have existed without interruption, growing and expanding and ultimately getting unified into Moscow dukedom (later tzardom) which continuing expanding became the Russian empire. The Russian aristocrats direct descendants of the one of the early Kievan Rus Viking ruler - Rurik (whose descendants ruled the Rus and later the Moscow dukedom for centuries) - are still around.
    - paganel 5y ago
      Not an expert in Russian history by any means but I think that the instinct to associate Kievan Rus with Russian (and not necessarily Ukrainian only) history is also due to the fact that the Orthodox faith came to Muscovy Russia via Kiev, where it had been brought by the byzantines, of course.
      - trhway 5y ago
        Definitely. Until the rise of Ukranian nationalism during 19th century, it was only of Russian interest as Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later Poland, both Catholic, who owned those territories for several centuries actively suppressed the Orthodox church there.
    - caskstrength 5y ago
      > Ukraine actively developing its own independent history and claiming Kievan Rus for itself I mean, it is not like all "real" Rus people packed their bags and left for Moscow at some moment in time and then some "unrelated" people set shop in Kyiv bringing funny not-a-true-language with them. Obviously, Ukrainians are direct descendants of people who inhabited that part of Rus. > Where is the north/east dukedoms have existed without interruption, growing and expanding and ultimately getting unified into Moscow dukedom The norther part of Rus escaped the Mongol devastation because if was unimportant backwater. There was nothing there to "interrupt". > The Russian aristocrats direct descendants of the one of the early Kievan Rus Viking ruler - Rurik (whose descendants ruled the Rus and later the Moscow dukedom for centuries) - are still around. Rurik is a legendary figure. Who are these people who are "still around" claiming to be Rurik bloodline? Sound funny as hell.
      - trhway 5y ago
        >I mean, it is not like all "real" Rus people packed their bags and left for Moscow at some moment in time and then some "unrelated" people set shop in Kyiv bringing funny not-a-true-language with them. Obviously, Ukrainians are direct descendants of people who inhabited that part of Rus. No. The area got depopulated by Mongols and largely stayed that way due to Crimean Tatars until Grand Duchy of Lithuania started the "Reconquista" in the modern West and Central Ukraine and later Grand Duchy of Moscow pushed south too with it culminating in the Russian Empire completely pushing Crimean Tatars out and taking over most of that territory, and it was gradually repopulated during that process with the Central and East Ukraine mostly with people migrating from Russia. As a result the "funny not-a-true-language" which is very close to the language of Russian peasants, and 100+ years ago Ukranian cities were speaking mostly Russian while villages - Ukranian. I'm half Ukranian myself and watch some modern Ukranian TV including in Ukranian, and i fail to see it as a separate language. >The norther part of Rus escaped the Mongol devastation because if was unimportant backwater. There was nothing there to "interrupt". No. The Mongols were generally stopped by forests, mountains and seas. In this case it was forest. Calling Novgorod in particular "unimportant backwater" is strange to say the least. >Rurik is a legendary figure. Who are these people who are "still around" claiming to be Rurik bloodline? Sound funny as hell. Rurik was in the 2nd half of 9th century. There are a lot of unknown about him. His descendants are pretty known though. Do you doubt the history of Vladimir the Great, a great grandson of Rurik? I mean do you doubt the whole dynasty or only starting from specific place? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik_dynasty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik_dynasty (more in Russian https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D1%8E%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B8 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D1%8E%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BA...) And there is nothing surprising in the dukes/tzars bloodline of 11 centuries recorded length - even for my minor aristocracy family (from Grand Duchy of Lithuania) the oldest documents i've seen so far are from the late 13xx and that is without digging deep into the family archive :)
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    Not really. The Rus empire was a thing, capital was Kyiv. It was a decently large empire that encompassed most of eastern Europe. It certainly encompased Moscow, Novgorod, etc... It eventually fell to the Mongols. 2 centuries later Moscow overthrew the Mongols and reunited (and grew) the empire. There's no continuous history per se, but east slavic peoples (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian) have always been essentially the same people. The Rus and Russian empires were the same people even if there was an interruption and the capital changed because of historic circumstances. When my family came to North-America from the Austro-Hungarian empire, they were even known as Rusyn/Ruthenian (they're Ukrainian)... No one has ever disputed that the modern Russian empire represented the same people as the (Kyivan) Rus empire until very recently. Like, I know a bunch of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks and they can all more or less understand each other. Slavs are far more similar than different (language, culture, food, temperament, etc...). Edit - it's ok to admit a shared history while also wanting some countries that weren't historically independent to stay independent and forge a new national identity. Trying to rewrite history is petty.
    - varjag 5y ago
      > There's no continuous history per se, but east slavic peoples (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian) have always been essentially the same people. They appear to you the same due to few centuries of cultural subjugation by one dominant power. Otherwise they are as diverse as anywhere else in Europe. > No one has ever disputed that the modern Russian empire represented the same people as the (Kyivan) Rus empire until very recently. Outside of Russia, few cared for particular details of the founding lore of a backwater empire. Inside the empire, see above.
- trhway 5y ago
  The Rus are the Vikings who started the original Russian states in Novgorod, Smolensk, Kiev, etc. together known as the Kievan Rus and ruled it for 8 centuries afterwards. The last Viking bloodline Russian tzar was Ivan the Terrible.
yyyk 5y ago
>Another theory is that Palestine came to be known as Palaistine after the Philistines via a process called "pars pro toto", which means that a part becomes the name of the whole. The history is well known, and there's no need for theorizing. You meant 'renamed by Emperor Hadrian to the names of nearby provinces, after crushing the local revolt as a method of erasing the province's residents'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_ref-9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_ref-9
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  In your link it says ”Hadrian's connection to the name change and the reason behind it is disputed”. So I’m sure some theorizing is still warranted.
  - yyyk 5y ago
    Both cites following that sentence agree he's the likely suspect, and agree with the motivation. The difference is that the first is certain, while the second merely thinks the evidence points to Hadrian (though I wonder who else could have authority to change a province name quickly). Both agree with the motivation. It's a disagreement alright, but we should not overread it. 'Theorizing' that ignores well known data is suspect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_note-F90-13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_note-F90... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_note-FOOTNOTEJacobson200144-45-14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_note-FOO...
- bjourne 5y ago
  Well, if you look at the history of that page, you see that a helpful Wikipedian has deleted a pertinent paragraph that followed the text you cited: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Syria_Palaestina&diff=1038637789&oldid=1037568091 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Syria_Palaestina&... Herodotus in his travel diaries wrote about the region in the 5th century BC and he used the word Palaistine for the region and Palaistinian for the inhabitants. Aristotle in 340 BC wrote about the Dead Sea - "a fabled lake" - which he situated in Palaistine. This suggests that the Greeks thought Palaistine was a greater region than merely Philistia. Why Hadrian choose to rename and reorganize the provinces of the southern Levant right after the end of the Bar Kokba revolt in 135 is a mystery. The record is silent. Although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, if the renaming was intended to punish the Jews, why weren't the Romans explicit about it? If the renaming was to serve as a deterrent for future rebels? Afaik, the claim that Adrian renamed Iudaea comes from the Christian 4th century scholar Eusebius and is not found in other sources (such as the Talmud). To Christians at the time, God punishing the Jews for crucifying Jesus by having the Romans destroying their temple and erasing their province would have made prefect sense. I.e. Eusebius may have been putting two and two together here. Another problem with the "renaming as a punishment" theory is that in 135 the Philistines hadn't existed for several centuries. So if punishment was Hadrian's impetus for the renaming, he must have been well-versed in Hebrew religion, otherwise how could he have known that the Philistines was one of their worst enemies? That seems unlikely.
el_nahual 5y ago
The linked article is about the bronze age: which to people living in biblical times was as far back in time as biblical times are to us.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  "Biblical times" spans a lot of time. The Bronze Age ended about 1200 BC (per Wikipedia). That's within the book of Judges in the Bible, that is, some distance through the Old Testament History. One interesting tidbit (and I'm going to be lazy and not look up the references): There is a time when the Israelites don't have iron working, but the Philistines do. The Israelites have to go to the Philistines to get their iron implements sharpened, taking them to a town that translates as "smith of the goyim".

selimthegrim 5y ago

Was Rus Kievan Rus originally?

varjag 5y ago
Yes, and the link of it to Russia is rather thin.
- trhway 5y ago
  The "thinness" is subject to interpretation (and today especially because of Ukraine situation it has become a political issue with Ukraine actively developing its own independent history and claiming Kievan Rus for itself, and also in Russia there are people who don't like the idea of the state's Viking ie. non-Slavic origination) which one can decide for theselves by looking at historic facts. Yes, the south and western dukedoms (on the territory of modern Ukraine an Belarus) of Kievan Rus were for around 2 centuries under Mongols and Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and thus the link was pretty much broken there. Where is the north/east dukedoms have existed without interruption, growing and expanding and ultimately getting unified into Moscow dukedom (later tzardom) which continuing expanding became the Russian empire. The Russian aristocrats direct descendants of the one of the early Kievan Rus Viking ruler - Rurik (whose descendants ruled the Rus and later the Moscow dukedom for centuries) - are still around.
  - paganel 5y ago
    Not an expert in Russian history by any means but I think that the instinct to associate Kievan Rus with Russian (and not necessarily Ukrainian only) history is also due to the fact that the Orthodox faith came to Muscovy Russia via Kiev, where it had been brought by the byzantines, of course.
    - trhway 5y ago
      Definitely. Until the rise of Ukranian nationalism during 19th century, it was only of Russian interest as Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later Poland, both Catholic, who owned those territories for several centuries actively suppressed the Orthodox church there.
  - caskstrength 5y ago
    > Ukraine actively developing its own independent history and claiming Kievan Rus for itself I mean, it is not like all "real" Rus people packed their bags and left for Moscow at some moment in time and then some "unrelated" people set shop in Kyiv bringing funny not-a-true-language with them. Obviously, Ukrainians are direct descendants of people who inhabited that part of Rus. > Where is the north/east dukedoms have existed without interruption, growing and expanding and ultimately getting unified into Moscow dukedom The norther part of Rus escaped the Mongol devastation because if was unimportant backwater. There was nothing there to "interrupt". > The Russian aristocrats direct descendants of the one of the early Kievan Rus Viking ruler - Rurik (whose descendants ruled the Rus and later the Moscow dukedom for centuries) - are still around. Rurik is a legendary figure. Who are these people who are "still around" claiming to be Rurik bloodline? Sound funny as hell.
    - trhway 5y ago
      >I mean, it is not like all "real" Rus people packed their bags and left for Moscow at some moment in time and then some "unrelated" people set shop in Kyiv bringing funny not-a-true-language with them. Obviously, Ukrainians are direct descendants of people who inhabited that part of Rus. No. The area got depopulated by Mongols and largely stayed that way due to Crimean Tatars until Grand Duchy of Lithuania started the "Reconquista" in the modern West and Central Ukraine and later Grand Duchy of Moscow pushed south too with it culminating in the Russian Empire completely pushing Crimean Tatars out and taking over most of that territory, and it was gradually repopulated during that process with the Central and East Ukraine mostly with people migrating from Russia. As a result the "funny not-a-true-language" which is very close to the language of Russian peasants, and 100+ years ago Ukranian cities were speaking mostly Russian while villages - Ukranian. I'm half Ukranian myself and watch some modern Ukranian TV including in Ukranian, and i fail to see it as a separate language. >The norther part of Rus escaped the Mongol devastation because if was unimportant backwater. There was nothing there to "interrupt". No. The Mongols were generally stopped by forests, mountains and seas. In this case it was forest. Calling Novgorod in particular "unimportant backwater" is strange to say the least. >Rurik is a legendary figure. Who are these people who are "still around" claiming to be Rurik bloodline? Sound funny as hell. Rurik was in the 2nd half of 9th century. There are a lot of unknown about him. His descendants are pretty known though. Do you doubt the history of Vladimir the Great, a great grandson of Rurik? I mean do you doubt the whole dynasty or only starting from specific place? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik_dynasty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik_dynasty (more in Russian https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D1%8E%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B8 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D1%8E%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BA...) And there is nothing surprising in the dukes/tzars bloodline of 11 centuries recorded length - even for my minor aristocracy family (from Grand Duchy of Lithuania) the oldest documents i've seen so far are from the late 13xx and that is without digging deep into the family archive :)
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  Not really. The Rus empire was a thing, capital was Kyiv. It was a decently large empire that encompassed most of eastern Europe. It certainly encompased Moscow, Novgorod, etc... It eventually fell to the Mongols. 2 centuries later Moscow overthrew the Mongols and reunited (and grew) the empire. There's no continuous history per se, but east slavic peoples (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian) have always been essentially the same people. The Rus and Russian empires were the same people even if there was an interruption and the capital changed because of historic circumstances. When my family came to North-America from the Austro-Hungarian empire, they were even known as Rusyn/Ruthenian (they're Ukrainian)... No one has ever disputed that the modern Russian empire represented the same people as the (Kyivan) Rus empire until very recently. Like, I know a bunch of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks and they can all more or less understand each other. Slavs are far more similar than different (language, culture, food, temperament, etc...). Edit - it's ok to admit a shared history while also wanting some countries that weren't historically independent to stay independent and forge a new national identity. Trying to rewrite history is petty.
  - varjag 5y ago
    > There's no continuous history per se, but east slavic peoples (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian) have always been essentially the same people. They appear to you the same due to few centuries of cultural subjugation by one dominant power. Otherwise they are as diverse as anywhere else in Europe. > No one has ever disputed that the modern Russian empire represented the same people as the (Kyivan) Rus empire until very recently. Outside of Russia, few cared for particular details of the founding lore of a backwater empire. Inside the empire, see above.
trhway 5y ago
The Rus are the Vikings who started the original Russian states in Novgorod, Smolensk, Kiev, etc. together known as the Kievan Rus and ruled it for 8 centuries afterwards. The last Viking bloodline Russian tzar was Ivan the Terrible.

yyyk 5y ago

>Another theory is that Palestine came to be known as Palaistine after the Philistines via a process called "pars pro toto", which means that a part becomes the name of the whole. The history is well known, and there's no need for theorizing. You meant 'renamed by Emperor Hadrian to the names of nearby provinces, after crushing the local revolt as a method of erasing the province's residents'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_ref-9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_ref-9

Cederfjard 5y ago
In your link it says ”Hadrian's connection to the name change and the reason behind it is disputed”. So I’m sure some theorizing is still warranted.
- yyyk 5y ago
  Both cites following that sentence agree he's the likely suspect, and agree with the motivation. The difference is that the first is certain, while the second merely thinks the evidence points to Hadrian (though I wonder who else could have authority to change a province name quickly). Both agree with the motivation. It's a disagreement alright, but we should not overread it. 'Theorizing' that ignores well known data is suspect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_note-F90-13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_note-F90... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_note-FOOTNOTEJacobson200144-45-14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_note-FOO...
bjourne 5y ago
Well, if you look at the history of that page, you see that a helpful Wikipedian has deleted a pertinent paragraph that followed the text you cited: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Syria_Palaestina&diff=1038637789&oldid=1037568091 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Syria_Palaestina&... Herodotus in his travel diaries wrote about the region in the 5th century BC and he used the word Palaistine for the region and Palaistinian for the inhabitants. Aristotle in 340 BC wrote about the Dead Sea - "a fabled lake" - which he situated in Palaistine. This suggests that the Greeks thought Palaistine was a greater region than merely Philistia. Why Hadrian choose to rename and reorganize the provinces of the southern Levant right after the end of the Bar Kokba revolt in 135 is a mystery. The record is silent. Although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, if the renaming was intended to punish the Jews, why weren't the Romans explicit about it? If the renaming was to serve as a deterrent for future rebels? Afaik, the claim that Adrian renamed Iudaea comes from the Christian 4th century scholar Eusebius and is not found in other sources (such as the Talmud). To Christians at the time, God punishing the Jews for crucifying Jesus by having the Romans destroying their temple and erasing their province would have made prefect sense. I.e. Eusebius may have been putting two and two together here. Another problem with the "renaming as a punishment" theory is that in 135 the Philistines hadn't existed for several centuries. So if punishment was Hadrian's impetus for the renaming, he must have been well-versed in Hebrew religion, otherwise how could he have known that the Philistines was one of their worst enemies? That seems unlikely.

el_nahual 5y ago

The linked article is about the bronze age: which to people living in biblical times was as far back in time as biblical times are to us.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
"Biblical times" spans a lot of time. The Bronze Age ended about 1200 BC (per Wikipedia). That's within the book of Judges in the Bible, that is, some distance through the Old Testament History. One interesting tidbit (and I'm going to be lazy and not look up the references): There is a time when the Israelites don't have iron working, but the Philistines do. The Israelites have to go to the Philistines to get their iron implements sharpened, taking them to a town that translates as "smith of the goyim".