The name and borders of Palestine have varied throughout history. Palestine originally denoted only the sea-coast of the land of Canaan inhabited by the Philistines. It is in this sense exclusively that the Hebrew name Pelesheth (translated “Philistia” in the King James Version Bible) occurs in the Old Testament. In the year 68 B.C. what would later be called the land of Palestine was reduced by Pompey the Great to a Roman province. The name Palestine itself was given to these lands by the Romans around 135 A.D. when the emperor Hadrian brutally suppressed the Jewish Resistance movement and occupied Judea. They called it the Province of 'Syria Palaestina.' | 