And here is the etymology of Palestine. Or, as it should be written, Συρία ἡ Παλαιστίνη (Syría hē Palaistínē). Yes, the word "Palestine" is GREEK. It is not Arabic, it is GREEK.
My degree is in Ancient Greek Theatre, and as part of my degree, I studied Herodotus' "Histories" within the sociopolitical context in which he was writing.
The Ancient Greek historian Herodotus coined the term Συρία ἡ Παλαιστίνη (Syría hē Palaistínē), Romanized as Syria-Palaestina, which was a name that the Ancient Greeks used to refer to Eretz Yisrael.
Later on during the Hellenic period following the reign of Alexander the Great, the Greeks started to correctly refer to Judea as Ἰουδαία (Ioudaia), which was a Greek approximation of the Hebrew endonym that the indigenous Jewish population called the land: יהודה (Yehudah).
The Greek word Ἰουδαία (Ioudaia) was also adopted and Romanized by the Roman Empire as Judaea.
Again, both Ἰουδαία and Judaea are approximations of the native Hebrew word for the land: יהודה (Yehudah).
Here is my full post on this matter. I'm including lots of links for people who have asked for them.
Palestine is a GREEK COLONIZER TERM. And the correct way to write it is Παλαιστίνη (Palaistínē).
Συρία ἡ Παλαιστίνη (Syría hē Palaistínē), Romanized as Syria-Palaestina, was a name coined by the Greek historian Herodotus in his "Histories", which he wrote in Athens in the 430s BCE. He coined this name because the Athenians were in a cold war with the Achaemenid Empire (what the Greeks called the Persian Empire), and Herodotus wanted to diminish the influence that Persia had in the Levant in order to appeal to the Athenian audience who was paying for his work.
In fact, the Greeks came very close to losing the Greco-Persian Wars, as can be seen in this video about an archaeological dig on the Hill of the Acropolis in Athens. Before the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE, the Athenians evacuated Athens to regroup, and the Persians invaded and desecrated the Temple of the goddess Athena (the Old Parthenon) and destroyed the statues and holy objects that were on the Acropolis. Later on in the 440s - 430s BCE, the Athenians built the "new" Parthenon, the Temple of Athena, to celebrate their victory over the Persians. The Parthenon still stands on the Hill of the Acropolis, albeit in ruins.
If you have seen the movie or read the graphic novel 300, you are familiar with a (heavily) fictionalized version of one of the battles of the Greco-Persian Wars, the Battle of Thermopylae, which was fought in the summer of 480 BCE. The Spartan general Leonidas led a unit of 300 Spartan soldiers, along with around 2000 Thespians, Thebans, and Helots to hold off the advancing Persian army at the Pass of Thermopylae. Most of these Greek soldiers were killed in the battle, but they also caused heavy casualties to the Persian army, and they weakened the Persians' resolve to conquer Greece.
The Persian army was defeated a year later in 479 BCE at the Battle of Plataea. However, even though this defeat was definitive, and even though the Persian army largely disengaged from actively trying to conquer Greece at this time, there remained a cold war between Athens and Persia, especially during the First Peloponnesian War and Second Peloponnesian War -- an ongoing Greek Civil War between Athens and its former ally from the Greco-Persian Wars, Sparta.
The history of the Peloponnesian War was documented by Greek historian Thucydides, who is considered the first modern historian. Unlike Herodotus, whose "Histories" were a combination of Ancient Greek propaganda, religion, and supersessionism, Thucydides was more concerned with recording the events of the conflict between Athens and Sparta.
The Spartans eventually turned traitor in the final years of the Peloponnesian War. The Persian Empire wanted to limit Athenian dominance in the Aegean, and so they sought out an alliance with their old enemy, Sparta, which Sparta accepted. This unlikely Persian-Spartan alliance allowed Sparta to win the Peloponnesian War against Athens in 404 BCE.
This is the world in which Herodotus was writing. Herodotus was born circa 484 BCE, during the end of the Greco-Persian Wars. He was born in Halicarnassus (in modern-day Turkey), which was an Ionian Greek city under Persian rule. And so Herodotus witnessed the war machine of the Persian Empire firsthand, and he knew what it was like to be a Greek under Persian occupation.
Therefore, in Herodotus' writing, he sought to diminish the Achaemenid Empire in order to bolster the Greek and especially the Athenian cause.
Like many Greeks of his day, Herodotus referred to the entire Levantine region comprising modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel as Συρία (Syria), aka Assyria, because the Assyrians had been defeated by the Babylonians 180 years before he was writing, and the Assyrians were therefore considered a historical people. They were not an existential threat to the Athenians like the Persians were.
And then in his survey of Eretz Yisrael, Herodotus discounted most of Yehudah (Judea) to the East, and he focused on the strip of land along the Judean coast, which he referred to as Παλαιστίνη (Palaistínē), which is what we would call Philistia -- aka Philistine-land.
Herodotus likely landed on the coast and didn't go too far inland, because he didn't refer to Jerusalem or any of the Jewish cities, other than the general area of Philistia -- and even then, he didn't refer to any of the cities in Philistia by name.
So, why did Herodotus only focus on Palaistínē (Philistia), and essentially ignore the rest of Judea?
Because he recognized that the area of Philistia had once been inhabited by the Mycenaean Greek Philistines from Crete, and since they had been Mycenaeans, they were Homeric cousins to him.
The Philistines were essentially Bronze Age Vikings. They were descended from the Peleset Tribe of the Bronze Age Sea Peoples, who were a loose confederation of people groups from the Aegean and Mediterranean. (Modern day Greece and Southern Italy.)
The Philistines had been a Aegean people from Crete. They were Mycenaean, since the earlier Minoan society on Crete had collapsed in the mid-1400s BCE, and the Island of Crete had been colonized by Mycenaeans from mainland Greece.
The Philistines had lived along the coast of Judea from the Late Bronze Age until around 600 BCE, when they were slaughtered by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II during his campaign against Judea, which culminated in 586 BCE with the destruction of the Temple of Solomon (the First Jewish Temple in Jerusalem) and the beginning of the Babylonian Exile, where many of the Jews were taken captive to Babylon (in modern day Iraq).
When the Persian King Cyrus the Great led a campaign against the Babylonians and conquered Babylon in 539 BCE, he issued a proclamation stating that all peoples held captive by the Babylonians were free to return to their home nations. This included the Jews. The Jews who had been held captive in Babylon for 70 years returned to Judea in the last decades of the 500s BCE and began construction on the Second Temple in Jerusalem, which they completed by 515 BCE, under the auspices of the Achaemenid Empire. But when the Jews returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, they found that all of the Philistine settlements along the coast of Judea had been destroyed by the Babylonians, and the Philistines as a distinct Greek people group were no more.
However, 80 or so years later when Herodotus visited Judea to write his "Histories", he erased Judea (Yehudah) and called the entire land Παλαιστίνη (Palaistínē).
So, why did Herodotus do this? Because he was trying to assert a Greek presence in the land.
This is typical of the Athenians. They also referred to the Achaemenid Empire as Περσίς -- Persis, or "Persia" -- to give even their Persian sworn enemies a Greek origin. Herodotus writes in his "Histories" that the Persian people were descended from the Greek demigod Perseus through his son Perses.
Yes, "Persia" is a Greek exonym, JUST LIKE PALESTINE IS.
Let me say that again. Both Persia and Palestine are GREEK EXONYMS.
One of the endonyms for the region that the Greeks called "Persia" is Ērān -- aka Iran. Iran is the endonym. "Persia" is the Greek exonym.
Just like Yehudah is the Jewish endonym, and "Palaistínē" is the Greek exonym.
Also, I cannot stress enough how little the Greeks cared about different cultures, other than their own.
Let me say this more clearly: the Greeks referred to all peoples using Greek exonyms.
It's also important to note that Herodotus likely spoke to and interacted with many Jews when he traveled to Philistia (since the last of the Greek Philistines had been killed by the Babylonians around 600 BCE), but he seemed incapable of recognizing them as a distinct people group, and he continued calling the region "Syria" after the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Again, this is because he was viewing the ENTIRE KNOWN WORLD through a Greek lens.
He didn't discuss monotheism or the Second Temple at all, because the concept of monotheism was completely foreign to the Greeks. And even if he had made it as far as Jerusalem (which it seems that he didn't), he probably would have just referred to Hashem as "the Syrian Zeus" or something similar.
The Ancient Greeks had no real concept of or interest in the Achaemenid Empire's practice of Zoroastrianism, either. For instance, in Aeschylus' play The Persians, written in Athens in 472 BCE, Aeschylus writes about the Persians praying to the Greek gods.
So, "Palaistínē" was where the Mycenaean Greek Philistines had once lived, before being slaughtered by the Babylonians in 600 BCE. Herodotus recognized the area of Philistia as once being inhabited by his Homeric cousins, and he used this as Greek propaganda against the Persian Empire.
Herodotus intentionally mis-labeled the region as Syria (to erase the Persian Empire) and Palaistínē (to bolster the Greek claim to the land). And he intentionally erased the endonym Yehudah (Judea), which is what the native Jewish inhabitants called the land.
And all this was done because of late 5th Century BCE Athenian geopolitics, 50 years after the Greco-Persian Wars.
Anyone who uses the term "Palestine" (Παλαιστίνη) to refer to Judea is just repeating this Ancient Greek propaganda.
And then 565 years later, in 135 CE, Emperor Hadrian of Rome slaughtered his way to victory over the Jews in the Bar Kokhba Revolt. He needed a way to erase the Jewish claim to the land of Yehudah (Romanized as Judaea). And so Hadrian officially changed the name of Judaea to Syria-Palaestina within Rome, using the Greek exonym for the land that was recorded in Herodotus' "Histories".
Hadrian was trying to literally wipe Judaea and Israel off the map.
And the name that Hadrian chose was deliberate. He renamed Judaea after the Assyrians and the Philistines, two of the Jewish people's greatest enemies, and he used the name coined by a Greek, another enemy of the Jewish people.
Three enemies in one name.
The Romans were nothing if not petty and cruel.
