Palestine A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

The Christian era of Byzantine Palestine (which refers to this geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and various adjoining lands in Transjordan, Nabataea and former Provincia Arabia), with its coastal capital and metropolitan city of Caesarea-Palaestina, was an extraordinary time of cultural flourishing and of great expansion and prosperity in Late Antiquity. New areas were brought under cultivation, urban development increased and the cities of greater Palestine including Gaza, Neapolis (modern Nablus), Jerusalem, Scythopolis (modern Beisan)

and Caesarea Maritima grew considerably in population and the diverse population of greater Palestine may have reached as many as one and a half million.8 Also, monasteries proliferated throughout the country. In fact, the earliest monasteries in Christianity outside of Egypt were built in Palestine during the Byzantine era, notably that of the St Hilarion Monastery, one of Palestine’s oldest Christian monuments, today located in the Gaza Strip.9 At the heart of greater Palestine was the province of Palaestina Prima. Caesarea Maritima was the administrative capital of both Palaestina Prima and greater Palestine. The country consisted of a mixed Greek and Aramaic-speaking population, minorities of Samaritans, Christian Arabs, the Ghassanids, who were the dominant group among the Monophysites and who believed in the single-nature doctrine of Jesus, and Miaphysite10

Arabs (see also below), Jews and Nabataean Arabs were present as well.

Throughout the 6th century and until the Arab Muslim conquest of 638

AD, the Ghassanid Arabs practically ruled Palaestina Secunda (which included parts of the Galilee) and Palaestina Tertia (which included the Naqab/Negev) and, together with Byzantine soldiers, defended and protected the holy sites in Palestine (Shahid 2009, Vol. II, part II: 63‒64).

The Louvre Museum in Paris exhibits a masterpiece bronze bowl created in the 4th century AD to commemorate the founding of Caesarea-Palaestina.11 A flourishing Mediterranean seaport and later the metropolitan city of Palaestina Prima, the city’s harbour rivalled the Piraeus of Athens (Barnes 1981: 81). The urban social space of Caesarea is of particular interest. By the 3rd century Caesarea, officially still pagan, had become a cosmopolitan, culturally and socially diverse metropolis, and the largest and most developed city in Roman Palestine; the city contained as many as 100,000 inhabitants of many ethnic and religious backgrounds (Barnes 1981: 82). Caesarea Maritima12 also became the home of the Founding Fathers of the Church and of prominent Christian intellectuals, missionaries and martyrs. Under the Romans, and more visibly under the Byzantines, Caesarea became not only the most powerful city in greater Palestine but also home to the metropolitan, predominantly Greekspeaking, cultural elite of the country. As a major centre of learning and scholarship in the Eastern Mediterranean, it became home to outstanding scholars and theologians and some of the best historians and philosophers of Late Antiquity. This metropolitan cultural elite included Eusebius of Caesarea Maritima and Prokopios of Caesarea Maritima (c. 500–c. 554

AD), in Palaestina Prima. The city also became for many years the home of the Church Father Origen (185–254 AD) and several leading Palestinian Christian theologians who also sought to forge a distinct Palestinian Christian identity based on the unique position of Palestine. Prominent historian Prokopios of Caesarea, a native of Palaestina, had this to write in 560 AD about another compatriot Palestinian:

Jesus, the Son of God, was in the body and moving among the men of Palestine, showing manifestly by the fact that he never sinned at all, and also by his performing even things impossible, that he was the Son of God in very truth; for he called the dead and raised them up as if from sleep, and opened the eyes of men who had been born blind, and cleansed those whose whole bodies were covered with leprosy, and released those whose feet were maimed, and he cured all the other diseases which are called by the physicians incurable. (Prokopios 2005)

But the greatest theologian of Caesarea Maritima was Origen. Born in Alexandria, Origen was later summoned to Provincia Arabia, to give instruction to the governor of that region. Afterward, on account of a great tumult in Alexandria, he left Egypt and went to Caesarea Maritima.

St Jerome says that Origen went to Achaia in Greece on account of heresies which were worrying the churches there. His words are: ‘Et propter ecclesias Achaiæ, quæ pluribus hæresibus vexabantur, sub testimonio ecclesiasticæ epistolæ Athenas per Palæstinam pergeret’ (And for the churches of Achaia, with which many heresies grew throughout Palestine under the ecclesiastical head). He passed through Palestine on his way to Greece, and it was at this time that he was ordained a presbyter by Palestinian bishops.

An avid collector of books, Origen helped create the Library of Caesarea and provided Caesarea Maritima with some of the cosmopolitan charisma and intellectual vigour of large cities such as Alexandria and Antioch. Caesarea became his fixed abode in 232 AD. He also became a catalyst for the phenomenal rise of a Palestinised Greek-speaking cultural elite – an elite which made Caesarea-Palaestina one of the most important cities of classical Antiquity. Palestinised Origen became a prolific Christian author, a philosopher of history and the Father of the Homily. He founded a Christian academy in Caesarea, which included the Library of Caesarea-Palaestina, an ecclesiastical and historical library of 30,000

manuscripts (Carriker 2003; Murphy-O’Connor 2008: 241) and second only to the Library of Alexandria in its heyday. Origen also became known for composing seminal works on Christian Neo-Platonism, including his famous treatise On First Principles (1966), a work which had a huge influence on Christian thought and modern Renaissance humanism. Origen wrote Hexapla (‘sixfold’)13 and other exegetical and theological works while living in Caesarea.

Caesarea-Palaestina has been one of most extensively excavated areas of Byzantine Palestine (Avni 2014: 42). Palestine of the 3rd‒6th centuries AD centred on Caesarea, the largest metropolitan city in the whole country:

In the sixth century the city expanded further, beyond its walls, creating extramural quarters with spectacular residences. A large and wealthy agricultural hinterland expanded beyond the urban limits of Caesarea. This urban expansion reflects the constant growth of the urban population, which made Caesarea the largest city in Palestine.

(Avni 2014: 42)

Already in the 3rd century AD Provincia Palaestina was centred on its wealthy, largely well-educated and highly developed Mediterranean capital city, Caesarea Maritima. Palaestina was also treated as a distinct country in the writings of its educated urban elites. From the capital Caesarea Maritima, Origen corresponded with the Roman Emperor Philip (Marcus Julius Philippus, or Marcus Iulius Philippus Augustus, who reigned from 244 to 249 AD), also known by his Latin nickname ‘Philippus Arabs’.

He was born in the northern part of Provincia Arabia, the Roman Arabia Petraea. Inhabited by a mixed population and many Arabs, this region of the Hauran would later become part of Palaestina Secunda and would be in effect ruled by Ghassanid Christian client Arab kings under nominal Byzantine control. ‘Philip the Arab’ himself went on to become a major figure in the Roman Empire (Bowersock 1994: 122). Among early Christian historians ‘Philip the Arab’ had the reputation of being sympathetic to the Christian faith. Some later Christian traditions, first mentioned by Eusebius, who was from Caesarea-Palaestina, in his Ecclesiastical History, claimed that Philip was the first Christian Roman Emperor (Eusebius 2011: VI.xxxiv). Critics, however, argue that ‘Philip the Arab’ fared well with ecclesiastical historians because of his religious tolerance and overall sympathetic attitude towards Christians (Shahid 1984: 76‒77).

After Origen’s death, Palestinian Origenism continued to spread throughout the Near East – until the general condemnation and persecution of Origenism in the mid-6th century – and the theological Library of Caesarea was managed and expanded by St Pamphilus of Caesarea (latter half of the 3rd century–309), who was chief among biblical scholars of his generation and a friend and teacher of the church historian, and Bishop of Caesarea, Eusebius (263–339 AD). Eusebius (the ‘Father of Church History’) was himself born in Caesarea and lived most of his adult life in the city. Pamphilus devoted his life to searching out and obtaining ancient texts for the library, which became one of the most famous and richest in Antiquity. It attracted church historians and theologians from all over the Roman Empire: St Basil the Great (329–379), Gregory of Nazianzus, a 4th century Archbishop of Constantinople and St Jerome (c. 347–420

AD). The latter was a ‘Father of the Church’ who is best known for his translation of the Bible into Latin. All these famous scholars came to study in Caesarea-Palaestina. Moreover, today the Caesarea text-type is widely recognised by scholars as one of the earliest types for reading the four Gospels (Streeter 1926).

While Christianity continued to play crucial role – not always positive, as cited above only the one case of the persecution of Origen and intellectual followers – in the history of the country and its people, it is this period of its great spread which was the most important for the new religion in Palestine, creating many iconic cultural texts and objects and making Palestine probably the best known country in the world at the time, due to the many descriptions, artefacts, literary, religious and historical works which made it a household name within Christianity and beyond. Some of the iconic texts about the country were produced by the ‘Father of Church History’, Eusebius of Caesarea, who took pride in in his native country of Palaestina; he repeatedly used the name Palaestina in his works, which later influenced generations of Christian writers worldwide. De Martyribus Palaestina14 by Eusebius (1861) gives us a clear indication of the consolidation of the concept of Palaestina as a country during the early Byzantine period. The Martyrs of Palestine relates to the persecution of early Christians in the capital of the country, Caesarea-Palaestina, and the country at large in the early 4th century AD. This account may have originally been composed in Palestinian Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth. Hebrew at the time of Jesus was largely an extinct language, with the Jews of Palestine speaking Aramaic, and Hebrew being confined to liturgical uses. Closely related to Arabic, Palestinian Aramaic was a language with which Eusebius was well acquainted. At the time, Aramaic was the main vernacular speech of the country and was spoken in the capital, Caesarea-Palaestina.15 Aramaic would also influence the evolution of Palestinian vernacular Arabic.

Byzantine Palestine also gave birth to the 6th century world’s most important historian, Prokopios of Caesarea Maritima, an illustrious scholar from Palaestina Prima, the principal historian of the 6th century Byzantine Empire and of the reign of Emperor Justinian. Prokopios travelled extensively throughout the Mediterranean region and the Near East, accompanied the Byzantine general Belisarius as secretary in the wars of Justinian and commented extensively on the Ghassanid tribal Arab kings (top phylarchs)

of Palaestina Secunda, Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Salutaris. In his multi-volume work, The Wars of Justinian (c. 560), Prokopios wrote:

The boundaries of Palestine extend toward the east to the sea which is called the Red Sea. Now this sea, beginning at India, comes to an end at this point in the Roman domain. And there is a city called Aelas [present-day ‘Aqabah] on its shore, where the sea comes to an end, as I have said, and becomes a very narrow gulf. (Prokopios 2014)

Prokopios (Greek: Prokopios ho Kaisareus; Latin: Procopius Caesariensis) added that Chosroes (Khosrow I, 501–579), the Shahanshah (King of Kings) of the Sasanian Empire of Persia from 531 to 579, had a great desire to make himself ruler of Palaestina on account of its extraordinary fertility, its wealth and the great number of its inhabitants (cited in Gibbon 1838, Vol. 1: 40; also Prokopios 2014). Commenting on Prokopios’ observation about the fertility of the country, the English historian Edward Gibbon, in his most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in eight volumes between 1776 and 1788, wrote that the Roman historian Tacitus described Palestine as follows: ‘the inhabitants are healthy and robust; the rains moderate; the soil fertile’ (Gibbon 1838, Vol. 1: 40). Gibbon added: ‘Palestine, and the holy wealth of Jerusalem, were the ... objects that attracted the ambitions, or rather the avarice, of Chosroes [I]’ (Gibbon 1840, Vol. 5: 173). He further added that the Muslim Arabs ‘thought the same, and were afraid that Omar, when he went to Jerusalem, and charmed with the fertility of the soil and purity of the air, would never return to Medina’ (Gibbon 1838, Vol. 1: 40).

During the early Christian period, particularly from the 4th century onwards, the Holy Land – a nebulous, abstract and semi-mythical location – was transformed into a real country called Palaestina, with thriving cities, ports, beautiful churches and numerous monasteries, famous philosophical schools and libraries, an extensive road system, villages and a large, commercially and culturally active population, which added to the interest shown by (Latin-speaking) Europeans. It was in the course of this early Christian period that the Latin term Terrae Sanctae became synonymous in Christian texts with the extensive use of the term Palaestina by Christian pilgrims and local historians. On the Martyrs of Palestine (311 AD)

was written by the church historian and Bishop of Caesarea-Palaestina, Eusebius (AD 263–339), ‘Father of Church History’, who composed his monumental work Historia Ecclesiastica and his Onomasticon (On the Place Names in the Holy Scripture) (1971), a comprehensive geographical-historical study of Palestine, in the city: ‘Eusebius states that he compiled On the Place Names in the Holy Scripture by working through the Bible piecemeal’ (Barnes 1981: 109). This major biblical enterprise has been described by British classicist Timothy David Barnes (1981: 106) as a ‘biblical gazetteer which is still the main literary source for the historic geography of Palestine both in biblical times and under the Roman Empire’.

Although his Onomasticon was partly based on religiously constructed and officially sanctioned scriptural geography and religious memory, Eusebius uses the name Provincia Palaestina repeatedly and in application to the whole country from Lebanon in the north to Egypt in the south, and this Roman/Byzantine administrative and official use influenced later generations of Christian and European writers. A native of Caesarea-Palaestina, whose language was Greek, Eusebius, in his Oration in Praise of Constantine, writes proudly about the special attention given to ‘our Provencia Palaestina’:

he [Emperor Constantin] has selected two places [for his churchbuilding programme] in the eastern division of the empire, the one in [‘our province’] Palestine (since from thence the life-giving stream has flowed as from a fountain for the blessing of all nations), the other in that metropolis of the East which derives its name from that of Antiochus; in which, as the head of that portion of the empire, he has consecrated to the service of God a church of unparalleled size and beauty. The entire building is encompassed by an enclosure of great extent, within which the church itself rises to a vast elevation, of an octagonal form, surrounded by many chambers and courts on every side, and decorated with ornaments of the richest kind.16