History is Clear: Jesus Was Not Palestinian

There’s this common claim among some pro-Palestinian spaces that Jesus was a Palestinian. This is historically false. There was no Palestinian identity or country in Jesus’s lifetime.

Let’s look at the historical record.

Around 1000 BCE, King David established a Jewish monarchy commonly referred to as the United Kingdom of Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital. Not too long later, around 930 BCE, it split into two separate Jewish states: The Kingdom of Israel in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.

Both Jewish kingdoms existed independently, alongside each other, for centuries. In 722 BCE, the Assyrian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Israel, and, around 150 years later, the Babylonian Empire destroyed the Kingdom of Judah and exiled most of its Jewish population.

The Jewish people were committed to come back and re-establish a Jewish kingdom. After Persia conquered the Babylonians, the Jews were allowed to return to Judah and create a semi-autonomous Jewish state under Persian rule.

In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great led the Greek Empire to conquer Persia, which included Judah (now known as Judea). After Alexander’s death, Judea was constantly passed between competing Greek kingdoms.

Jews revolted against Greek rule in 167 BCE. By 140 BCE, the Jews had re-established an independent Jewish kingdom in Judea. (This success of this resistance is celebrated annually, even in current times, with the Jewish festival of Chanukah.)

In 63 BCE, Rome took control of Judea and made it into a vassal state and later, in 6 CE, formally annexed it and made it a Roman province.

This is the political reality which Jesus was born into.

Jesus was born sometime between 0 to 6 BCE, and lived for around 30 years. At this time, the land was called Judea, the population was predominantly Jewish, and there was no such thing as Palestine.

After Jesus’s death, the Jews revolted against Roman rule on several occasions. Following Rome’s brutal suppression of a major rebellion in 135 CE, in which tens of thousands of Jews were killed and enslaved, they also tried to erase Jewish identity from the area. Judea was renamed to Syria Palaestina (which evolved over time to Palestine), Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina and Jews were banned from living in that city.

To be clear, Jesus was not Palestinian. He was a Jew born in Judea who lived under Roman occupation. The name Syria Palaestina only came to existence around 100 years after his life.

This is not disputed history. Most historians, archaeologist and Bible-scholars agree on this timeline. Even the New Testament says, in Matthew 2:1, that “Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea”. It clearly says Judea, and not Palestine.