On the Meaning of "Judea" (like in "Judea & Samaria")

Chapter 5 opens the second Part on Judean society and first-century history. It tackles the basic problem of the historical categories of “Judea” and “Judeans” and demonstrates that a word which is so easily used (and abused), that is, “Judaism”, was employed extremely rarely,
and meant something else. The Greco-Roman world knew no category of religion, no -isms, denoting religious allegiance, and no “Judaism”, thus we should try to align modern categories with those actually used by the ancients. The word Ioudaios or Iudaeus should be translated as
“Judean”, as Judeans understood themselves as an ethnos, a nation associated with a place and its customs, no matter how far, or how long, they had been away from Judea. Consequently, Judean law, tradition and custom (not “Judaism”) must be understood as a cultural complex very different from belief.

From
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2011.06.25
Steve Mason, Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins: Methods and
Categories. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009. Pp. xx, 443


You realize what that means.


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