Pliny the Elder, whose great work, the Natural History, aspired to present universal knowledge, wrote admiringly of Judea's capital and religious center: "Jerusalem, by far the most illustrious city of the East, not merely of Judea." This description reflects a view of Judea as an important country. Pliny described Machaerus this way: "Machaerus, formerly the fortress of Judea next in importance to Jerusalem". Machaerus was east of the Dead Sea (now in Jordan). It fell to the Romans in 72 CE in the first Jewish revolt, the last stronghold to fall before Masada (in 73 CE). Tacitus, a Roman historian, also indicates Judea's geographic expanse. He tells us: "Judaea was divided: the Samaritans came under Felix and the Galileans under Ventidius ". Thus Tacitus clearly placed both Samaria and Galilee within Judea. Strabo the geographer does likewise. He writes: "Phoenicia is a narrow country and lies flat along the sea, whereas the interior above Phoenicia, as far as the Arabians, between Gaza and Antilibanus, is called Judaea". Strabo's Judea is larger than that which Tacitus indicated here. It also includes the Golan and a strip of land on the east bank of the Jordan. Elsewhere in Strabo, Judea's southern borders reach into the Sinai, touching on Egypt. The Latin and Greek authors used Judea in a broad sense, although Rome changed Judea's outer and inner political borders from time to time, assigning parts of the whole to various Herodian princes or Roman officials. The Greco-Roman usage of Judea was much broader than the Jewish notion of Judea. The latter was Judah (Yehudah), the southern kingdom after the split of the kingdom of David and Solomon. A certain confusion now arises between the narrow Jewish and the broad Greco-Roman usages. The rough Jewish equivalent for the latter broad usage is the Land of Israel.
In other words, the historical justification for the Jewish claim to Judea is evident in non-Jewish (and even anti-Jewish) sources from 2,000 years ago. [Plagiarized from http://focusonjerusalem.com/whatromecalledthepromisedland.html but verified with other sources.]
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