‘The Palestine of Jesus' Times’, reads the heading on a map in a Sunday School room at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Aberdeen, Washington. The map, like many maps in many churches throughout America, has been there for generations – not as a political statement, simply as a defining label on a map of the world of Jesus as it was in the days of Jesus. I was in the classroom to tell the children a little bit about Christians in Israel/Palestine (This was to enable them to prepare a Peace Candle for our sanctuary – a candle lit at all services in remembrance of our baptismal brothers and sisters in Israel/Palestine.) As I talked, one child said, ‘Constance, why does it say, “Palestine”, on the map, and not Israel?’ I, frankly had not noticed the wording on the map. And so I began a brief explanation of the ‘Why' of Palestine in Jesus’ time and the ‘Why’ of Palestine in our time. Her question, brought into focus the greater question of today: ‘Why is Palestine no longer a politically recognized entity – a nation or a state?’ Certainly the name Philistine or Palestine has been on record for centuries.

The name Palestine comes from the Philistines, who arrived in about the fourteenth century, BCE (Before the Common Era/PreChrist). These early Palestinians lived in an area that extended along the eastern Mediterranean coast west to the Jordan Valley, south to the Negev desert and north to the Galilean region.