archal Age, as
it has been disclosed by archaeological research, not the Palestine in
which the revelation of God's will to man was to be made. It is
sufficient for us that the Patriarchal Age has been shown by modern
discovery to be a fact, and that in the narratives of the Book of
Genesis we have authentic records of the past. There was indeed a
Patriarchal Palestine, and the glimpses of it that we get in the Old
Testament have been illustrated and supplemented by the ancient
monuments of the Oriental world.

Whether the name of Palestine can be applied to the country with strict
accuracy at this early period is a different question. Palestine is
Philistia, the land of the Philistines, and the introduction of the name
was subsequent to the settlement of the Philistines in Canaan and the
era of their victories over Israel. As we shall see later on, it is
probable that they did not reach the Canaanitish coast until the
Patriarchal Age was almost, if not entirely, past Their name does not
occur in the cuneiform correspondence which was carried on between
Canaan and Egypt in the century before the Exodus, and they are first
heard of as forming part of that great confederacy of northern tribes
which attacked Egypt and Canaan in the days of Moses. But, though the
term Canaan would doubtless be more correct than Palestine, the latter
has become so purely geographical in meaning that we can employ it
without reference to history or date. Its signification is too familiar
to cause mistakes, and it can therefore be used proleptically, just as
the name of the Philistines themselves is used proleptically in the
twenty-first chapter of Genesis. Abimelech was king of a people who
inhabited the same part of the country as the Philistines in later
times, and were thus their earlier representatives.

The term "Palestine" then is used geographically without any reference
to its historical origin. It denotes the country which is known as
Canaan in the Old Testament, which was promised to Abraham and conquered
by his descendants. It is the land in which David ruled and in which
Christ was born, where the prophets prepared the way for the Gospel and
the Christian Church was founded.

Shut in between the Desert of Arabia and the Mediterranean Sea on the
east and west, it is a narrow strip of territory, for the most part
mountainous, rugged, and barren. Northward the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon
come to meet it from Syria, the Anti-Lebanon c