Here is a classic, somewhat absurd case of progressive presentist inversion and distortion of history in the captioning @britishmuseum: 'by the beginning of the first century millennium the Israelites occupied most of Palestine'.
Canaan is probably the right word here. Or… https://t.co/hnmdbjR98F
— S Sebag Montefiore (@simonmontefiore) November 28, 2024
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Here is a classic, somewhat absurd case of progressive presentist inversion and distortion of history in the captioning @britishmuseum: 'by the beginning of the first century millennium the Israelites occupied most of Palestine'.
Canaan is probably the right word here. Or even Judea. Or even Holy Land. But not Palestine since Hadrian redesignated Judea as part of Syria-Palaestina around 135AD which is over a thousand years later and in a different world.
Someone enjoyed writing this I'm sure and well done for getting into the public display … but we do expect high standards from @britishmuseum.
One could also add that though the Bible narrative suggests a much earlier conquest by Israelites, long before the first millennium, many secular scholars now lean towards the theory that the Israelites originated from indigenous Canaanites and other Levantine peoples. So no occupation there at all.
Under the Romans and then the Byzantines – Eastern Roman empire – these provinces remained Palaestina and then Palaestina 1,2 and 3 until the Arab conquest when Jund Filastin was a district of the Umayyad and Abbasid province of Bilad al-Sham
I shld add that i know both @George_Osborne and Nicholas Cullinan well and both r punctilious lovers of history and if this has slipped under the radar into the British Museum they ll be the first to oversee its correction
Mick Hartley 
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