The Philistines that settled the plain, ca. 1180/1130 B.C
Newt Gingrich is taking the AIPAC and Israeli position on Palestine. Newt calls the Palestinians an "invented people." He also says he would make John Bolton, the former neo-conservative ambassador to the UN, the Secretary of State.
Newt is clearly playing to the the Christian-Zionist community of fundamentalists and evangelicals who are waiting for the rapture and the return of Jesus. Israel has an important role in this prophesy.
Are the Palestinians an "invented people." Palestine is an old name derived from the Philistines or sea people who attacked Egypt three millennia ago. Many historians think the Philistines were ancient Greeks.
When the Philistines met the ancient Israelites, they were in the iron age while the Israelis wee still in the late bronze age.
The term Peleset (transliterated from hieroglyphs as P-r-s-t) is found in numerous Egyptian documents referring to a neighboring people or land starting from c.1150 BCE during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt.
This is Wikipedia's take on Palestine:
The first mention is thought to be in texts of the temple at Medinet Habu which record a people called the Peleset among the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt in Ramesses III's reign. The Assyrians called the same region Palashtu or Pilistu, beginning with Adad-nirari III in the Nimrud Slab in c.800 BCE through to emperor Sargon II in his Annals approximately a century later. . .
The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the region synonymous with that defined in modern times was in 5th century BC Ancient Greece. Herodotus wrote of a 'district of Syria, called Palaistinê" in The Histories, the first historical work clearly defining the region, which included the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley.
Approximately a century later, Aristotle used a similar definition in Meteorology, writing "Again if, as is fabled, there is a lake in Palestine, such that if you bind a man or beast and throw it in it floats and does not sink, this would bear out what we have said. They say that this lake is so bitter and salt that no fish live in it and that if you soak clothes in it and shake them it cleans them," understood by scholars to be a reference to the Dead Sea.
Later writers such as Polemon and Pausanias also used the term to refer to the same region. This usage was followed by Roman writers such as Ovid, Tibullus,Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Dio Chrysostom, Statius, Plutarch as well as Roman Judean writers Philo of Alexandria and Josephus.
Other writers, such as Strabo, a prominent Roman-era geographer (although he wrote in Greek), referred to the region as Coele-Syria around 10-20 CE.The term was first used to denote an official province in c.135 CE, when the Roman authorities, following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, combined Iudaea Province with Galilee and other surrounding cities such as Ashkelon to form "Syria Palaestina" (Syria Palaestina), which some scholars state was in order to complete the dissociation with Judaea. (T)he term is used to denote the southern coastal region to the west of the ancient Kingdom of Judah
Note: Jewish people refer to this as The Diaspora.
The Hebrew name Peleshet (פלשת Pəlésheth)- usually translated as Philistia in English, is used in the Bible more than 250 times. In the Torah / Pentateuch the term is used 10 times and its boundaries are undefined. . .The later Historical books (Deuteronomy) include most of the biblical references, almost 200 of which are in the Book of Judges and the Books of Samuel, . .
Perhaps Newt thinks his political stance on Israel will endure him to the evangelicals and they will overlook his personal shortcomings.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine
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