Roman occupying Israel and renaming it Palestine
Executive summary
The Roman emperor Hadrian or Roman authorities after the Bar Kokhba revolt reorganized the province of Judaea and used forms of the name Palaestina in the 2nd century CE, a change that has been read both as administrative rebranding and as punitive repudiation of Jewish ties to the land [1] [2]. The label "Palestine" itself long predates Rome in Greek sources and later evolved in Byzantine and early Islamic administration, so the story is more complex than a single deliberate Roman invention to erase Jewish history [3] [4] [5].
1. The historical act: Rome’s reorganization after the Bar Kokhba revolt
Following the crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE), Roman rule tightened and territorial administration in the southern Levant changed; many modern accounts date the renaming of the province from Judaea to a form of Palaestina to this period, linking the change to Hadrian’s urban projects in Aelia Capitolina and broader punitive measures against Jewish institutions [1] [4] [6].
2. What scholars and sources say Hadrian did — and why historians disagree
Some historians and traditional narratives argue Hadrian deliberately rebranded Judaea as Syria Palaestina to diminish Jewish national and religious claims — a symbolic erasure consistent with bans on certain Jewish practices and major urban rebuilding in Roman style in Jerusalem [2] [6]. Other historians caution that provincial renamings were common across the empire, that "Palestine" already existed in Greek and Roman geographic usage, and that administrative convenience or classical toponymy may explain the choice rather than a single vindictive decree [1] [3] [7].
3. The older roots of the name "Palestine" and competing narratives
The name Palaistinê appears in 5th-century BCE Greek writing (Herodotus) and earlier referred to regions associated with the Philistines or to broader coastal districts, which means the word was not a Roman neologism invented ex nihilo in the 2nd century CE [3] [8]. Critics of the "Roman invention" narrative point out that invoking an ancient ethnonym already in circulation makes the renaming less a novel insult and more the application of an existing geographical label [9] [5].
4. Demographic and administrative realities after the revolt
Whatever the intentionality behind the name change, Roman military campaigns and resettlement policies after the revolts dramatically altered the population and landscape: Jewish communities were devastated in parts of Judaea, veterans and non-Jewish settlers were introduced in some urban centres, and provincial boundaries and capitals shifted under later Roman and Byzantine administrations [8] [4] [1].
5. How the renaming has been used politically and mythologized
The episode has been seized in modern politics by competing narratives: some present Hadrian’s act as proof of a Roman attempt to obliterate Jewish connection to the land, while others emphasize the pre-Roman provenance of the name and argue that "Palestine" lacked national meaning until much later — a semantic history invoked to contest modern claims [2] [5] [9]. Popular and polemical accounts often simplify complex administrative history into moral narratives, and both ancient sources and modern commentators reflect those divergent agendas [10] [11].
6. Bottom line for the original question
Roman authorities did apply the name Palaestina to the region in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt and reconfigured provincial administration, a change sometimes attributed to Hadrian and interpreted as punitive toward Jewish identity [1] [6]. However, the term itself predates Roman use and acquired layered administrative meanings through Byzantine and early Islamic practice, so it is historically inaccurate to reduce the story to a single deliberate Roman invention that created "Palestine" out of nothing [3] [4] [5].