But Greece, the southern and seaward extension of this land and mountain mass, has features of its own to mark it off geographically from Spain’s firm square and Italy’s spined ridge of land. It would have been a solid mass of land almost touching Asia in the E, as Spain almost touches Africa in the W. Bury remarked that Illyricum in the E would have closely resembled Spain in the W if its structure had been cut off N of Thessaly.
Geographically considered, Greece is the shattered southeastern end of the mountain core of southern and central Europe. Europe fronts the Mediterranean with three peninsulas, two of them formed by the seaward intrusion of the continent’s mountain system. “Grecians” in the NT is ambiguous, referring sometimes to Greeks proper ( Acts 11:20-in which contexts KJV usually employs “Greeks” quite correctly: John 12:20 Acts 14:1 16:1), and sometimes to Jews domiciled in the Hel. The name Greece (KJV Grecia) occurs specifically three times in Daniel ( 8:21 10:20 11:2) and once in Zechariah ( 9:13). writer used the term Hellenes and Pan-hellenes, the Greeks generally were named by him in tribal appelations-Achaeans, Argives, Danai so in the OT, Javan and Dodanim may refer to Ionians (the Greeks of Asia Minor) and Danai.
The name seems to have spread S in the wake of the Dorian invasions, the last wave of tribal migration to infiltrate the peninsula. The Greeks themselves called their country Hellas, and the people Hellenes, though there seems to be some evidence that this name too was originally applicable to a small tribe in southern Thessaly (Homer, II. The French provided the term “Franks” for all Europeans among the people of the Middle E, whose first significant contact with the W was with the armies of the French Crusaders. Hence “Palestine” from the name of the Philistine tribe settled on the southwestern corner of the land, the “Gaza Strip” of today. It is a not infrequent phenomenon of geographical nomenclature that an area and its inhabitants acquire a name abroad from that area or contact first familiar to those who bestow and perpetuate the name. Graecia, whence Graeci or Greeks, was a geographical term properly applicable to an Indo-European group in the NW corner of the southeastern Mediterranean peninsula of Europe, opposite the “heel” of the Italian peninsula.
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