Someone recently asked, “If ‘Palestine’ is such an ancient country why is it not mentioned in ancient history?”
Actually it is. The same word is found all through the Old Testament, so obviously it was mentioned in the histories of at least one ancient people. Palestine is an English corruption of a Latin corruption of Pilishti, which we more commonly know from the Bible as Philistine.
That kind of corruption happens with words all the time. Think of Jesus, which came from Iesus, which came from Yeshua. Or Jay, which came from Jayco, which came from Iago, which came from Yaakov.
The Philistines (not the Palestinians) would have a prior claim to part of the land of Israel, if it weren’t for that inconvenient thing about God taking the land away from the Philistines and Canaanites and giving it to the Israelites. The modern Palestinians are just Arabs who happen to live within a political boundary once bearing that name, and are not actually related to the ancient Philistines at all. There doesn’t appear to be an actual ethnic group of people that anyone can accurately call “Palestinians.” It’s a little like claiming to be of the Pennsylvanian race. There are Pennsylvanians, but they’re only called that because they live in Pennsylvania, not because they’re really a distinctive race of people
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