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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJames Hastings Dictionary of the Bible: Judaea
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JUDÆA.—A name first appearing in Tob_1:18 as applied to the old kingdom of Judah (of which Judæa is merely the Græco-Roman equivalent),—as it was reoccupied after the Captivity by the returned descendants of subjects of the Southern Kingdom. Though sometimes (as in Luk_23:5, and more definitely in Act_10:37; Act_26:10) loosely employed to denote the whole of Western Palestine, the name was properly confined to the southernmost of the three districts into which the Roman province of Western Palestine was divided—the other two being Galilee and Samaria. It lay between Samaria on the north and the desert of Arabia Petræa on the south; but its exact boundaries cannot be stated more definitely. After the death of Herod, Archelaus became ethnarch of Judæa, and after his deposition it was added to the province of Syria, and governed by a procurator with his headquarters in Cæsarea.
It was in the wilderness of Judæa that John the Baptist came forward as the forerunner of Christ (Mat_3:1; cf. Mar_1:4; and Luk_3:2, ‘the wilderness’). It is probably the same as the ‘wilderness of Judah’ (Jdg_1:16, Psa_63:1 [title], the desert tract to the W. of the Dead Sea. R. A. S. Macalister.