While a number of biblical place names like Jerusalem, Athens, Damascus, Alexandria, Babylon and Rome have been used for centuries, some have changed over the years. Many place names in the Land of Israel, Holy Land and Palestine are Arabised forms of ancient Hebrew and Canaanite place-names used during biblical times [1] [2] [3] or later Aramaic or Greek formations. [4] [5] Most of these names have been handed down for thousands of years though their meaning was understood by only a few.
Ono was a biblical town of Benjamin in the "plain of Ono". The modern Kiryat Ono is not to be confused with the biblical Ono.
Timnath-heres or Timnath-serah, later Thamna, was the town given by the Israelites to Joshua according to the Hebrew Bible. He requested it and the people gave it to him "at the order of the Lord". He built up the town and lived in it.
Kedesh was an ancient Canaanite and later Israelite settlement in Upper Galilee, mentioned few times in the Hebrew Bible. Its remains are located in Tel Kedesh, 3 km northeast of the modern Kibbutz Malkiya in Israel on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Zanoah is a moshav in central Israel. Located adjacent to Beit Shemesh, it falls under the jurisdiction of Mateh Yehuda Regional Council. In 2021 it had a population of 539.
Gath or Gat was one of the five cities of the Philistine pentapolis during the Iron Age. It was located in northeastern Philistia, close to the border with Judah. Gath is often mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and its existence is confirmed by Egyptian inscriptions. Already of significance during the Bronze Age, the city is believed to be mentioned in the El-Amarna letters as Gimti/Gintu, ruled by the two Shuwardata and 'Abdi-Ashtarti. Another Gath, known as Ginti-kirmil also appears in the Amarna letters.
Ishtori Haparchi (1280–1355), also Estori Haparchi and Ashtori ha-Parhi is the pen name of the 14th-century Jewish physician, geographer, and traveller, Isaac HaKohen Ben Moses.
Abraham Moses Luncz was a Russian scholar and editor born at Kovno, Russia. At age 14 he came to Jerusalem. Luncz, who grew blind early in life, founded, in conjunction with Dr. Koisewski, an institution for the blind at Jerusalem.
Arbel is a moshav in northern Israel. Located beside Mount Arbel next to the Sea of Galilee near Tiberias, it falls under the jurisdiction of Lower Galilee Regional Council. In 2021 its population was 766.
Taibe, meaning "The goodly", or colloquially al-Tayiba al-Zu'biyya after its main clan, is a Muslim Arab village in northeastern Israel on the Issachar Plateau. It falls under the jurisdiction of Gilboa Regional Council. In 2021 it had a population of 1,965.
Ahihud is a moshav in the Western Galilee in northern Israel, about 9 km east of Acre. It was founded in 1950, settled by Jewish refugees from Yemen. It belongs to the Moshavim Movement and falls within the jurisdiction of the Mateh Asher Regional Council. The name of Ahihud is taken from a Biblical verse: "The leader of the tribe of Asher was Ahihud, son of Shlomi".
Biriyya was a Palestinian Arab village in the Safad Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on May 2, 1948, by The Palmach's First Battalion of Operation Yiftach. It was located 1.5 kilometres (0.9 mi) northeast of Safad. Today the Israeli moshav of Birya includes the village site.
Yaquq was a Palestinian Arab village, which was depopulated during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on May 1, 1948. It was located 12.5 km north of Tiberias and was built at the site of the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq.
Tell ej-Judeideh is a tell in modern Israel, lying at an elevation of 398 metres (1,306 ft) above sea-level. The Arabic name is thought to mean, "Mound of the dykes." In Modern Hebrew, the ruin is known by the name Tell Goded.
Ma'ayan Harod or Ain Jalut is an all-year spring in the Jezreel Valley on the northwest corner of Mount Gilboa that was the location of the 13th-century Battle of Ain Jalut. This was a major turning point in world history that saw the Mamluks inflict the first of two defeats on the Mongols that ultimately halted their invasion of the Levant and Egypt.
The Mosaic of Reḥob (Hebrew: כתובת רחוב, romanized: k'tovet rechov, also known as the Tel Rehov inscription and the Baraita of the Boundaries, is a late 3rd–6th century CE mosaic discovered in 1973. The mosaic, written in late Mishnaic Hebrew, describes the geography and agricultural rules of the local Jews of the era. It was inlaid in the floor of the foyer or narthex of an ancient synagogue near Tel Rehov, 4.5 kilometres south of Beit She'an and about 6.5 kilometres west of the Jordan River. The mosaic contains the longest written text yet discovered in any Hebrew mosaic in Israel, and also the oldest known Talmudic text.
Biblical mile is a unit of distance on land, or linear measure, principally used by Jews during the Herodian dynasty to ascertain distances between cities and to mark the Sabbath limit, equivalent to about ⅔ of an English statute mile, or what was about four furlongs. The basic Jewish traditional unit of distance was the cubit, each cubit being roughly between 46–60 centimetres (18–24 in) The standard measurement of the biblical mile, or what is sometimes called tǝḥūm šabbat, was 2,000 cubits.
Bethmaus, or Beth Maʿon, also called Maon, was a Jewish village during the late Second Temple and Mishnaic periods, and which was already a ruin when Kitchener visited the site in 1877. It was situated upon the hill, directly north-west of the old city of Tiberias, at a distance of one biblical mile, rising to an elevation of 250 metres (820 ft) above sea-level. It is now incorporated within the modern city bounds of Upper Tiberias. Others place the ancient Bethmaus (Ma'on) where is now the Arab ruin, Khirbet Nadhr ad-Din, saying that with the passing of time, the old namesake was transferred to Tell Maʿūn, a short distance away.
Khirbet et-Tibbâneh (Arabic: خربة التبانة), sometimes referred to by historical geographers as the Timnah of Judah, is a small ruin situated on a high ridge in the Judaean mountains, in the Sansan Nature Reserve, 622 metres (2,041 ft) above sea level, about 3 kilometers east of Aviezer and ca. 7 kilometers southeast of Bayt Nattif.
Samuel Klein was a Hungarian-born rabbi, historian and historical geographer in Mandatory Palestine.
Horvat Maon/Horvat Ma'on, Arabic: Khirbet Ma'in or Tell Máîn, is an archaeological site in the Hebron Hills, West Bank, rising 863 metres (2,831 ft) above sea level, where the remains of the ancient town of Ma'on have been excavated. The town, now a ruin, is mentioned in the Book of Joshua and the Books of Samuel. It still had a Jewish population during the Roman and Byzantine periods, and a synagogue was discovered there. The site is located about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) southeast of Yatta.
To determine the exact meaning of Arabic topographical names is by no means easy. Some are descriptive of physical features, but even these are often either obsolete or distorted words. Others are derived from long since forgotten incidents, or owners whose memory has passed away. Others again are survivals of older Nabathean, Hebrew, Canaanite, and other names, either quite meaningless in Arabic, or having an Arabic form in which the original sound is perhaps more or less preserved, but the sense entirely lost. Occasionally Hebrew, especially Biblical and Talmudic names, remain scarcely altered.
Robinson concluded that the surest way to identify biblical place names in Palestine was to read the Bible conjointly with existing Arab nomenclature, and during a three-month stay in Palestine during 1839 used this method to identify over a hundred biblical sites.
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