"Jesus was Palestinian" takes are dumb. This take is equally dumb. Because all nationalist historiography is dumb.

THREAD. https://twitter.com/Daniel_Sugarman/status/1077867066827423745

1. All nationalist historical narratives are necessarily going to be selective and misleading. They are formed by fitting everything into a story of a clearly defined primordial "nation". Except history is more complicated than that.

2. Almost always, this supposed primordial nation is either at least a partially modern invention or the understanding of what exactly it is has changed over time.

3. Many nationalist movements claim supposed precursors as national figures, even though no-one at the time would have recognised this. No-one called Decebalus a Romanian, or Vercingetorix a Frenchman, or Viriathus Portuguese. Yet all those countries consider those figures to

4. be within their national pantheon of heroes. Nothing unique about Palestinians claiming the same of Jesus. Arguing over what nationality or ethnicity Jesus "really" was misses the point that he wasn't "really" anything because ethnicity is something we've made up.

5. Also, neither this nor any of the subsequent tweets actually explains where the name "Palestine" actually comes from. If the implication is that it's originally Latin and wasn't used before 70 CE, then that's flat out false, as Herodotus used it.
https://twitter.com/Daniel_Sugarman/status/1077870013380476928

6. And this. It's worth noting that names, like identities, can shift over time, and many names originally given by conquerors/colonisers have ended up being patriotically adopted by the native population. Spain and Russia, for instance.
https://twitter.com/Daniel_Sugarman/status/1077874733834817536

7. Sure, there's no obligation to do that. But it has happened with the Palestinians. Just as the Bosniak communities of Serbia and Montenegro remain attached to the name "Sandžak" and resist "Rashka", despite the former's initially imperial connotations.