GAULANI´TIS
GAULANI´TIS (
Γαυλανῖτις), the name of a division of Palaestine, the limits of which are not very accurately defined by Josephus.
He assigns Galadena and Gaulanitis to the dominion of Og, king of Bashan (
Ant. 4.5.3), and extends these districts (the former he now calls Galaaditis) to Mount Lebanon (8.2.3), making them identical with what is described in Scripture as Ramoth Gilead, the cities of Jair, the regions of Argob, which is Bashan, sixty large cities, &c. (1
Kings, 4.13.)
He makes it, with Hippene and Gadaris, the eastern limit of Galilee, and therefore the westernmost of the districts which he assigns as the dominions of king Agrippa, viz., Gamalitica, Gaulanitis, Batanaea, and Trachonitis. (
B. J. 3.3. § § 1,5.)
These divisions,however, are not always observed, even by the Jewish historian himself; for Gamala, which in the last-cited passage gives its name to a district, is elsewhere reckoned to Gaulanitis (
Ant. 18.1.1); and Judas, who is in this passage called a Gaulanite, is usually designated a Galilaean (Ib. § 6, 20.5.2,
B. J. 2.8.1, and 17.8), as he is also in
Acts (5.37) For the solution of this difficulty, it is not necessary to resort, as Reland and others have done. to the hypothesis of two Gamalas, but to suppose that Galilee is sometimes used in a wider sense, to include the eastern side of the sea of Tiberias. From these scattered notices, the district of Gaulanitis Proper may be safely fixed to the eastern side of the river Jordan from the northern extremity of the sea of Galilee (for Bethsaida Julias was situated in Lower Gaulanitis
B. J. 2.9.1) to the sources of the Jordan and the roots of Lebanon and Hermon. Its extent in width it is impossible to define with any accuracy, as then is no well-defined natural boundary to the mountain region and high table-land of the country east of the Jordan, until it sinks into the great plain of the Hauran. [
BATANAEA] It is supposed to have de rived its name from the town of Gaulan, the Scripture GOLAN. (Reland,
Palaest. p. 317.)
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G.W]
