Jew: Aristotle Book Palestine? 🤔

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]I'm Ace, I'm a Palestinian Jew. My family were the Palestinian Jews of the colonized cities of Safed and Tiberias, and I'm an archivist. And I'm going to be going through all the mentions of Palestine in these books right here, from 5th century BCE all the way to the modern day.

[00:00:13]First up, we have The Histories by Herodotus, written in 5th century BCE.

[00:00:20]Herodotus was the father of history, and this book is considered the founding work of history in Western literature.

[00:00:27]The passages in this book are among the earliest non-biblical written references to the region by specifically the name Palestine used as an exonym.

[00:00:35]In book two, chapter 104, Herodotus mentions Syrians and Palestine in reference specifically to their cultural practices.

[00:00:43]In book three, chapter five, he describes the land between Phoenicia and Egypt specifically as belonging to the Syrians called Palestinians, or depending on the translation, Syrians of Palestine.

[00:00:55]Later on in chapter 91, he notes that Palestine, along with Phoenicia and Cyprus, paid a tribute of 350 talents as a part of the fifth satrapy.

[00:01:05]Again in book four, chapter 39, he references the region stretching from Phoenicia along the coast of Palestine to Egypt, specifically referencing the Erythraean Sea.

[00:01:16]Then in book seven, chapter 89, he mentions that the Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine, who furnished ships for Xerxes, originally lived on the Erythraean Sea before settling on the coast of Syria.

[00:01:28]And this passage is especially important because he uses the exact terminology, and this part of Syria, and all as far as Egypt, is called Palestine.

[00:01:39]Next up, we have Meteorologica by Aristotle, written in 4th century BCE.

[00:01:45]It's the oldest comprehensive ancient text on the subject of meteorology. And this specific translation was created in 1952, and it both the Greek and the English translation, which I think is really cool. As you can see this is the Greek and this is the English translation. In book two chapter three around 359A, he refers to a lake in Palestine widely understood by scholars to be the Dead Sea. Using this lake as an example to support his theories on the density of salt water, evaporation, and the formation of the sea saying if you bind a man or beast and throw them in, they float and do not sink. He further notes that the water is so salty that no fish live in it and that soaking clothes in it cleans them.