Who Has Claim? 3,000 Years of Religion in the Land Between

I can’t talk about population until we decide what to call this area. I will be calling it the Land Between. If you want an account of that name, <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Holman-Illustrated-Guide-Biblical-Geography/dp/0805494839" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">buy and read this nice archaeo-geographic reference book for your coffee table</a>. But broadly, “Land Between” refers to the important fact for understanding this region: it is between other things. It is between the Mediterranean, Dead, Red, and Galilee seas, for instance. It is between Anatolia, Mesopatamia, Arabia, and Egypt. It is between cultures. It is torn between religions. This name is neutral, and it highlights the important liminality of the space. Crucially, it is not a historic name assigned by any group in the region. I considered the archaeologically precise “Cisjordan Southern Levant” but rejected it because both “Cisjordan” and “Levant” as terms presuppose an eastward-looking-orientation, which already biases us into seeing the Land Between “from the outside,” with the gaze of the conqueror. For those in the land, the relevant geographic fact is they are sandwhiched between — everything. <a href="https://medium.com/migration-issues/who-has-claim-3-000-years-of-religion-in-the-land-between-23f220a697f7">Website</a>