Jesus was a Second Temple Jew Up to the Cross, Does that Make Him Jewish or Palestinian?

John Aziz makes the former claim:

Jesus Wasn’t Palestinian: John Aziz
Quillette | 21 Dec. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOK3AbcI0HI

I make the latter one:

2:00 You have already biassed the debate by pretending one of two things:

• Either you pretend that a people comes in existence only when it gets its name. So, Irish people didn't exist when they called themselves Goidels and no one spoke English, which is today their most common language.
• Or you pretend that the people didn't exist at all, the population was just one momentary hasard in a continuous back and forth with no stability over the centuries.

The first is absurd. The second is factually wrong.

2:39 Sunni Muslims aren't quite comparable to Ulster Scot Calvinists.

With the Plantation, the religion arrived with a new population.

Sunni Muslims were up to the conquest of Omar mostly already there, either as Christians or as Jews.

Some Muslims did come from the Arabian peninsula, comparable to how some citizens of Frankish Kingdoms in former Roman Gaul actually did come from Frankish lands beyond the Limes. But they did not become a majority. The Peninsular Arabs didn't impose their language in one go, by immigration, but rather over centuries as the laborious work of an administration. Islam majority was also partly due to that administration.

2:45 ... "and converted many of the native people to Islam" ...

Which doesn't change their ancestry.

Nor did the pre-Islamic quarrels between the Christian and Jewish confessions change the ancestry since before AD 70.

Lev Nussimbaum didn't cease to have Ashkenaz ancestry when he became a Muslim.

The Jews and Christians didn't cease to have an ancestry which one can describe as Mitsrahi Jewish and Christian Palestinian when they became in part Muslims.

2:54 While the Christian confessions were present in the area as different confessions, they were mainly, especially the Catholics, the population I'd retroactively describe as Palestinian Christian.

Which is the same ancestry as Mitsrahi Jewish, except the long split. I e both descend from Second Temple Jews of ... Palestine.

Armenians may at first have been mainly immigrants from Armenia, but are by now heavily intertwined with the Christian Palestinian group, i e also descending from Second Temple Jews.

2:58 "the Jewish community, though smaller"

... by then were very FAR FROM being the majority of the descendants then and there of the Second Temple Jews of the area.

Nor can they be described to the exclusion of the Catholics of the area, core group of Christian Palestinians, as heirs of Jesus' nationality.

The Catholics were indeed not purely descendants from Second Temple Jews, see Acts 2. They were also descendants from Samarians, see Acts 8.

When you are claiming Jesus was "Jewish not Palestinian" you are pretending that He, by the fact of His nationality, was solidaric with His persecutors to the exclusion of His followers. A totally absurd claim.

3:33 Druze and Samarians are both closer to purely Israelite in ancestry and closer to both Christian Palestinian, Muslim Palestinian, and Mitsrahi Jew, than for instance Turkish Sephards or German Ashkenaz are. There are genetic studies showing it.

6:18 In AD 33, after Pentecost, Second Temple Jews were two communities.

One of them has its purest descendants in the Mitsrahi Jews, within religious continuity.

The other has its purest descendants in Catholic and Orthodox Palestinians.

Are these "appropriating" a chapter in the history of Caiaphas' and Bar Kokhba's community? Or are they appropriating a chapter in their OWN history?

6:46 "hub of Jewish religious activity, housing the Second Temple in Jerusalem"

So, does that unity them to those who say the Third Temple is the one that rose from the grave? Or to the ones who say the Moshiakh will come in the future and build the Third Temple?

By calling Jesus "Jewish" without qualifying "Second Temple" you are slightly insinuating the latter ... which is false.

6:59 "the name Palestine wasn't commonly used"

... and one cannot call Ancient Goidels Irish, because the name "Ireland" wasn't use anywhere in the time of Conor Mac Nessa.

Why are you repeating a talking point which falls apart as an argument?

Are you, in Britain, under some kind of pressure?

7:05 And I think you are even wrong about the history of the term Palestine. You take a cue from Zionists.

The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt was in 5th century BCE ancient Greece, when Herodotus wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistínē" (Ancient Greek: Συρίη ἡ Παλαιστίνη καλεομένη) in The Histories, which included the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley. Approximately a century later, Aristotle used a similar definition for the region in Meteorology, in which he included the Dead Sea. Later Greek writers such as Polemon and Pausanias also used the term to refer to the same region, which was followed by Roman writers such as Ovid, Tibullus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Dio Chrysostom, Statius, Plutarch as well as Romano-Jewish writers Philo of Alexandria and Josephus.

References:

Herodotus 3:91:1.
Jacobson 1999, p. 65.
Jacobson 1999, pp. 66–67.

Jacobson, David (1999). "Palestine and Israel". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 313 (313): 65–74.

Robinson, 1865, p.15: "Palestine, or Palestina, now the most common name for the Holy Land, occurs three times in the English version of the Old Testament; and is there put for the Hebrew name פלשת, elsewhere rendered Philistia. As thus used, it refers strictly and only to the country of the Philistines, in the southwest corner of the land. So, too, in the Greek form, Παλαςτίνη, it is used by Josephus. But both Josephus and Philo apply the name to the whole land of the Hebrews; and Greek and Roman writers employed it in the like extent."

Robinson, Edward (1865). Physical geography of the Holy Land. Boston: Crocker & Brewster.

Citations:

"The earliest occurrence of this name in a Greek text is in the mid-fifth century B.C., Histories of Herodotus, where it is applied to the area of the Levant between Phoenicia and Egypt." ... "The first known occurrence of the Greek word Palaistine is in the Histories of Herodotus, written near the mid-fifth century B.C. Palaistine Syria, or simply Palaistine, is applied to what may be identified as the southern part of Syria, comprising the region between Phoenicia and Egypt. Although some of Herodotus' references to Palestine are compatible with a narrow definition of the coastal strip of the Land of Israel, it is clear that Herodotus does call the whole land by the name of the coastal strip." ... "It is believed that Herodotus visited Palestine in the fifth decade of the fifth century B.C." ..."In the earliest Classical literature references to Palestine generally applied to the Land of Israel in the wider sense." (Jacobson 1999)

"As early as the Histories of Herodotus, written in the second half of the fifth century BCE, the term Palaistinê is used to describe not just the geographical area where the Philistines lived, but the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt—in other words, the Land of Israel. Herodotus, who had traveled through the area, would have had firsthand knowledge of the land and its people. Yet he used Palaistinê to refer not to the Land of the Philistines, but to the Land of Israel" (Jacobson 2001)

Jacobson, David (2001), "When Palestine Meant Israel", Biblical Archaeology Review, 27 (3)

[Link for members only]

In The Histories, Herodotus referred to the practice of male circumcision associated with the Hebrew people: "the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians, are the only nations who have practised circumcision from the earliest times. The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine themselves confess that they learnt the custom of the Egyptians ... Now these are the only nations who use circumcision." (Herodotus 1858, pp. Bk ii, Ch 104)

7:50 "the reality of the first century"

Does Tacitus, younger contemporary of His disciple St. John, have heirs in today's world? Are Italians heirs of Tacitus?

Well, if so, the Christian Palestinians are fairly direct heirs to Jesus. Just as Mitsrahi Jews are somewhat more modified heirs to His enemy Caiaphas. However, the Muslim Palestinians and the Druz got their religious identity at a way later age.

8:10 "internal debates within Judaism"

Within Second Temple Judaism.

Not within the Judaism that waits for a Third Temple in stone.

8:37 You are yourself making a modern claim Jesus was (without further qualification) "a Jew" which is a way to downplay the Palestinian historic connection to the land.

9:36 Christian Palestinians and Muslim Palestinians should have their own self government or self governmentS.

Christian Palestinians shouldn't be oppressed by Jews ... or by Muslim Palestinians.

Dialogues

I

Clifford Rosen

@cliffordrosen852

Calling Jesus a Palestinian would be like calling Julius Caesar an Italian or Montezuma a Mexican.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

Julius Caesar certainly was an Italian.

Rex Mundi

@rexmundi7811

Julius Caesar was born in Rome in the Roman region of Italia. He was an Italian.

Ido Spak

@idomaniacs

@cliffordrosen852 It would be more absurd to claim that Jusius Ceaser was an Ostrogoth or a Langobard.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@rexmundi7811 Indeed.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@idomaniacs Palestinians aren't Seldjuks, just because they were at a time ruled by them.

And Rome is not Ravenna of the Ostrogoths or Spoleto of the Lombards.

Ido Spak

Actually the Palestinians are a fusion of tribes and clans that mostly migrated during the 19th and 20th centuries 1000 years after the seljuk occupation.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@idomaniacs You are not explaining why the Palestinians have a genome much closer to Samarians than for instance Turkish Sepharads or Ashkenaz Jews.

II

Ed Bar

@edbar4097

Jesus is Palestinian the way Plato was a Turk, King Arthur was French, and Shaka Zulu was a Dutch.

Just because some empire comes in and changes the name of a place, doesn't retroactively change the nationality of people who were already dead when their country was conquered.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The Palestinians weren't a dead people when the Turks came.

Ed Bar

@hglundahl the palestinians didn't exist when the Turks came.

But I was referring to Jesus, Plato etc. being long gone

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@edbar4097 The Palestinians existed when the Turks came, just as they existed when the Peninsular Arabs came with Islam.

The Amerindians didn't begin to exist when Columbus called them Indios. The name is not the sole and only deciding factor about a population's identity.