Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History

The best work on the entire history of the Palestinian people. Well written, concise, and reliable sources quoted.

THANX YOU!

Masalha illustrates the richness of Palestinian history, which is multicultural and not monocultural, as the West and Zionists often portray it. He shows the continuity of the people and traditions of Palestine over hundreds, even thousands of years. The history of Palestine includes various Canaanites, Hebrews, Arabs, and other Semites, as well as Greeks, Persians, Crusaders, and others. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Masalha has done a wonderful job summarizing around 4,000 years of Palestinian history.

A meticulously researched and timely book that surveys with a wide vision the history of Palestine. To describe it, I could do no better than to quote from Professor Masalha’s Introduction. The book “explores the evolution of the concept, histories, identity, languages and cultures of Palestine from the Late Bronze Age to the modern era."Despite the enormous weight of politically-motivated ‘narrative’ that it must confront, there is no sense of ‘agenda’ other than to provide the most accurate, complete, and multi-faceted history of the region and people that is possible. He does not lecture. The result is "political" in the sense that it reduces to myth much of the common "narrative" used to justify the current political situation in Palestine; but the fault lies with the cobwebs he clears, not the author’s level-headed exploration of the historical record. It seems that even the book’s utterly innocuous title is judged by some to be controversial.Prof Masahla properly separates the concept of Palestine as understood as regional and territorially based, versus as a "country". That Palestine in the sense of country has existed "across more than three millennia" is, as he demonstrates, simple historical fact. What one does with this as regards ongoing politics is another matter --- for example, I for one do not think the present situation changes according to whether or not "Palestine existed", or whether the Old Testament realms "existed" in the sense that those using them for political purposes claim. To be sure, the book by no means neglects Biblical history. The author considers these essential, but treats them for what they are.

Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha delves into the variations of the name of Palestine as well as the history of the peoples who have inhabited the land for the past four thousand years. Masalha explains the reasons the names have slight variations over time, mostly linguistic variations of the same name. He illustrates how the culture has changed over the years as well as traditions that have survived. Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History details the importance of the ports and the land for trade among myriad countries. Masalha also delves the importance of farming to Palestine over the past four thousand years. He really focuses on how the name of Palestine and the people have survived over the past four thousand years. He demonstrates how multi-cultural Palestine was for centuries as well as how myriad religions survived in land with the peoples of those religions interacting peacefully, building community, and living as friends and neighbors. While at times, the writing can be a bit academic, the research is well done and well presented. Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History traces the history of the people of Palestine proving it was never a land without a people.

If you would like to learn about the real history of Palestinian history you should read it.

The book is not well-researched. The author ignores much of the relevant data, manipulates a lot of information, and is often simply wrong and/or confused.Writing a full review will require more time than the book is worth, but a few examples should suffice.The author states (p. 2) that "The name Palestine is the most commonly used from the Late Bronze Age (from 1300 BC) onward". However, the name Palestine is not mentioned, in any form, before Herodotus. Moreover, even the Philistines (whose name the author apparently manipulates for this purpose, and this is what he is seemingly alluding to) are not mentioned in the southern Levant before the 12th century BCE, which is during the Iron Age (NOT the Late Bronze Age). One cannot but wonder whether the author pushes the Philistines (again - this is not Palestine) to the 13th century BCE, and into the Late Bronze Age, so they would appear on the scene before the time of Merenptah (late 13th century), as the latter provides the first reference to Israel.It appears that the author wishes to push Palestine (by appropriating the name "Philistines") back in time, and to eliminate Israel (or, at least, reduce its significance). Indeed, on p. 37 for example the author argues that "the name Israel exists first in the 9th century BC", ignoring the well-known fact that the name appears already in the late 13th century BCE, in Merenptah's Stele (knowledge of which, I suspect, led him to attempt to project the Philistine earlier in time).A different (and simpler) example is the author's reference (p. 2) to "Philistine coins from the Iron Age." Still, as is known to anyone with even the slightest knowledge of Levantine archaeology, the first coins in the southern Levant were minted in the Persian period.The reference to Palestine as "a geographic region in Western Asia between the Mediterranean Sea, the Jordan River and the Red Sea" (p. 32) is also very disturbing, and at best reveals a severe lack of knowledge on behalf of the author. Palestine (the region) covers the area from the Mediterranean in the west to the desert in the east (encompassing today's Jordan)! This is the situation throughout history, and Palestine was often divided into eastern Palestine and western Palestine (even in the 20th century scholars still discussed, for example, "exploration in eastern Palestine"...).It is only in recent generations, as a result of (very) recent political developments, that Palestine is used to refer only to the area west of the Jordan river. This, however, is not a scholarly usage, but a political one (largely resulting from fears in the Kingdom of Jordan to be associated with Palestine, and eventually serving as a Palestinian state). This type of manipulation is very dangerous.The bottom line is that the term Palestine, as a geographical designation of the southern Levant was most likely adopted in the Roman period, and clearly not before the 5th century BCE (not a single source can be translated as even remotely resembling Palestine before that).The book does not seem to be based on good research, and is read like a political manifest.

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