Vatican removes nativity display featuring baby Jesus lying on keffiyeh

[u/Educational_Board888]

https://www.thejc.com/news/world/vatican-removes-nativity-display-featuring-baby-jesus-lying-on-keffiyeh-fvrdcbbf

The wooden statue was criticised by Jewish groups for reinforcing the trope that Jesus was a Palestinian.

The backlash came almost immediately from religious entities and individuals worldwide.

On Monday, B’nai B’rith International described feeling “disturbed by the Vatican display of a Palestinian-made nativity scene featuring Jesus on a keffiyeh and the pope’s appearance with it.” The group said the display “isn’t just politicisation, but revisionism. It presents (only) Palestinians as innocent victims—and Jesus as a Palestinian, not a Jew.”

In response to the display’s removal, David Parsons, senior vice president and spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, noted that “we are relieved at reports that the Vatican has decided to remove the provocative nativity display with an infant Jesus resting on a black-and-white keffiyeh, which is an unmistakable symbol of Palestinian nationalism.”

He said “This crèche not only denigrated Jewish heritage, it also undermined core tenets of the Christian faith. Indeed, millions of Christians worldwide were instantly incensed by this exhibit ahead of the Christmas season. The Vatican did the right thing in taking it down.”

Parsons described the display as “theological malpractice for the Holy See to allow this display to remain. For if Jesus was a Palestinian Arab, then he would not have qualified to be Christ, the promised messiah and savior of the world.”

[u/blishbog]

Wasn’t Jesus a Palestinian Jew objectively?

They exist. Like that rare one who took years to officially convert by all the proper channels and then Israel killed him

[u/loselyconscious → u/blishbog]

I mean, that's a little bit like saying, wasn't Julias Ceaser objectively Italian? It's not entirely wrong, but it's a bit of playing with the fact to tell a story (not a story I have any problem with)

[u/DeadlyPython79 → u/loselyconscious]

It was called Palestine back then too though, Italy wasn’t called Italy yet

[u/loselyconscious → u/DeadlyPython79]

It wasn't called Palestine by the people that lived there or the people that ruled it, and Italy was used as a geographic term referring to the peninsula 

[u/SirPansalot → u/loselyconscious]

I’m sorry, but it objectively was: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2023/10/23/no-the-roman-emperor-hadrian-didnt-invent-palestine/

Tibullus, Elegies 1.7.17–18:

“Quid referam, ut volitet crebras intacta per urbes alba Palaestino sancta columba Syro” This means:

“Why should I tell how, through the packed cities, the white dove sacred to the Palestinian Syrian flutters unharmed?”

“Although Tibullus’s use of the name Palaestina is geographically ambiguous, other Roman authors before the time of Hadrian use the name in a way that clearly encompasses the entire land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Some even, like Herodotos, refer to Jews as “Palestinian Syrians.”

Ovid, Ars Amatoria 1.416, 2 CE: references the “culta Palaestino septima festa Syro” (“seventh-day feast observed by the Palestinian Syrian”), (Jewish Shabbat)

Ovid, Fasti 2.461–464, 8 CE:

“terribilem quondam fugiens Typhona Dione, tunc cum pro caelo Iuppiter arma tulit, venit ad Euphraten comitata Cupidine parvo inque Palaestinae margine sedit aquae.”

“Once Dione, fleeing the terrible Typhon, at the time when Iuppiter bore arms on behalf of heaven, went to the Euphrates accompanied by little Cupid and sat on the brink of the waters of Palestine.”

This also includes Jews who lived in the land from the river to the sea (minimum definition of Palestine since 5th century b.c.e)

”Jewish authors writing in the Greek language before the time of Hadrian also frequently use the name Palaistínē to refer to the geographic area between Phoinikia and Egypt.”

Philon of Alexandria, Every Good Man is Free 75: (describes a big chunk of Jews as living in Palestine Syria)

“ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἡ Παλαιστίνη Συρία καλοκἀγαθίας οὐκ ἄγονος, ἣν πολυανθρωποτάτου ἔθνους τῶν Ἰουδαίων οὐκ ὀλίγη μοῖρα νέμεται.”

“And even Palestine Syria is not barren of kalokagathia [i.e., the Greek ideal of aristocratic beauty and cultural refinement], where a not small portion of the much-peopled nation of the Jews reside.”

Notice how he does not say that a majority of Jews resided in Palestine as the Jewish diaspora was huge by this time, even if a huge number of them resided there.

Titus Flavius Iosephus, conclusion, Antiquities of the Jews: (AJ 20.259)

“τῶν ἡμῖν συμβεβηκότων τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις κατά τε τὴν Αἴγυπτον καὶ Συρίαν καὶ Παλαιστίνην”

“the things which befell us Jews in Egypt and Syria and Palestine”

[u/loselyconscious → u/SirPansalot]

Ok not sure why you think this contradicts what I said. This was not politically know by that name and it was not a name used by jews.

Like I said the word Italian also was used at the tike, but was still not the would have used to describe themself

[u/SirPansalot → u/loselyconscious]

You said that the people who ruled it or the people who lived there “didn’t call it Palestine.”

“It wasn’t called Palestine by the people that lived there or the people that ruled it, and Italy was used as a geographic term referring to the peninsula”

Unfortunately, there’s no mention of added political dimension to the comment I’m replying to.

You’re right about Italy though. Fun fact: The Romans did call themselves Ausones, (an italic people) especially the later Romans/Byzantines in the Middle Ages. They did not identify with the Greeks much at all - they called their language not Greek but Romaïc (Roman tongue) and identified themselves and their ancestors as Ausones rather than Greeks/Hellenes. (See Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausones

You were indeed correct that nobody identified as Palestinian in the modern national sense. Then again, nobody identified as anything in the modern national sense back then.

But Jews who lived there absolutely did called the region Palestine as my examples show. (Josephus or Iosephus)

Okay, fine. Maybe those guys were Romanized elites and aren’t the most representative of Jews. These guys lived during a time when the Roman Empire was still Roman citizens native to Italy dominating over non-Roman subjects. But they also lived in a time when the category of Roman as expanding rapidly, as more and more people of culturally, religiously, and ethnically diverse communities became Roman citizens - Arabs, Berbers, Germanic people, Galatians, (Celtic people who used Greek as their main script who lived in Turkey) Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, etc. This culminated in all free non-Romans becoming Romans citizens in the 3rd century by Caracalla, and as the state expanded to fit the needs of these new Romans, Greek became solidified as the lingua Franca of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Most Jews in the Eastern Mediterranean spoke a fishery of languages from Aramaic to Greek to Hebrew. From 200 to 400 C.E, Hebrew fully died out as a spoken language amongst Jews, becoming a scared liturgical language. Thus, Aramaic and Greek became the dominant international languages of the Jews of the East. Greek fully solidified its dominance as the lingua Franca right around when Hebrew was gasping its last breathes as a spoke language. The expansion of the state meant that literally everyone who lived in the empire had to speak some level of Greek in order to make dealings with the expanded Roman administration.

Therefore, the vast majority of Jews living in the huge Eastern Mediterranean region eventually grew to speak Greek in addition to Aramaic, and thus spoke of Palestine, since Palestine was the name for the land between the river and the sea. (although they obviously knew and cherished the name of Eretz Yisrael too)

This integration of non-Romans into Romanitas was extremely successful. It eventually led to the disappearance of distinct peoples and languages like that of the Thracians and the Galatians as anything not associated with Rome. A medieval Arab source stated that the Greeks became wholly absorbed by the Romans (finally) after hundreds of years of autonomy and independent identity. The name Hellene and Hellenism was associated with paganism in the christianized Roman Empire (Roman sources call the Persians Hellenes in this way) while the term “Greek” and Greece” became wholly geographical terms. While later Romans acknowledged Greekness as a core part of Romanness - they spoke of “the Ancient Greeks” like they didn’t exist anymore. They regarded “the ancient Romans and Ausones” as OUR ancestors, implying direct linear continuity.

The Jews were WAY too religiously distinct as Roman identity shifted to include Christianity as one of its core features. After the disasters of the 7th century and the loss of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, Roman identity shedded non-Orthodox denominations of Christianity, linguistically diversity in Syriac, Aramaic, etc, and the culturally distinctiveness of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt.

Basically: by the 9th century, if you were a Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian, you were firmly, without a doubt Roman. (and treated fully equally by both state AND society)

But the changes of Hellenization in late antiquity over the peoples of Rome included the Jewish people within and outside the borders of Romanía. (Romanland, the homeland of the Romans that merged as a term in the 4th century to designate the Roman Empire) But the Jews living in the conquered territories by the caliphate eventually adopted Arabic in addition to Greek (as a trading international language), fashioning a dish t Judeo-Arabic. The dominance of Greek meant that the Arabic term for Palestine was well… Palestine. (Filastīn)

Thus, for more than a thousand years and a half years, the Jews of the Byzantine/Ottoman Empire (Romanīa or Vasileia Rhomaion or Politeia Rhomaion/Sublime Ototman State or Dynasty of Osman or the Well-Protected Domains or Ottoman Realms) and of the eastern Islamic world spoke of Palestine and thought of Eretz Yisrael in prayer.

See Hellenism in Byzantium, Anthony Kaldellis, 2014

Romanland, Anthony Kaldellis, 2019

Anthony Kaldellis, the New Roman Empire, 2023

A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Warren Treadgold, 1998