Judea and Samaria - Biblical and Very Much Modern

The New York Times' Isabel Kershner writes

The indictment said that all were residents of Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the West Bank.

Well, yes, those place names are Biblical.

And they are quite modern:

a) in the 1947 UN Partition Plan boundaries -

The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River at the Wadi Malih south-east of Beisan and runs...

...From here it follows the northern and eastern boundaries of the village of Ar'ara, rejoining the Haifa-Samaria district boundary at Wadi'Ara...

b) Encyclopedia Britannica-

Judaea, also spelled Judea, or Judah, Hebrew Yehudaḥ, the southernmost of the three traditional divisions of ancient Palestine; the other two were Galilee in the north and Samaria in the centre. No clearly marked boundary divided Judaea from Samaria, but the town of Beersheba was traditionally the southernmost limit...The name Judaea is still used to describe approximately the same area in modern Israel.

c) more -

Some examples of reference works using the names Judea and Samaria:

•A map published by the US State Department designating the Middle East’s “Military Situation” on July 18, 1948 calls the “Arab held” area north of Jerusalem “Samaria”;

•In A Survey of Palestine prepared by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in December 1945 and January 1946 the authors used the titles “Judea” and “Samaria” as a matter of course when referring to what later became the “West Bank”

•Every edition of the Encyclop?dia Britannica, up to the latest (1994) writes extensively concerning the areas politically called the West Bank, and calls them by their historically accurate names: Samaria and Judea. The fact that the “West Bank” is not mentioned once in the 1954 edition of the Encyclop?dia Britannica indicates just how recently this title entered popular usage, and just how quickly, and deeply, it has taken root.

The NYTimes is so stuck with itself.

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