In earlier times, place names or area names varied by size, thru time, and between beholders. Like today, where does west Texas end and begin or where is the border between S. California and N. California. There were no nation states or borders back then. Places like Palestine or Syria waxed and waned.
I still have a copy of Josephus. I used to have a sizable library of books dealing with history, archeology, religion, etc. I sold almost all of them when I retired but kept a few for reference, including Josephus. On one hand I regret selling them but I didn't have to haul them around.
So today's Zionist Jews are mostly Ashkenazi Jews? It seems like I recall that the Christian Long Haired Kings of France were originally part of the Jewish diaspora. But I'm not sure about Charles de Gaulle. Or Prince Charles.
One of the 6th-century Merovingian kings forced a number of Jews in his kingdom to convert to Christianity. Presumably those people have many living descendants who are unaware of what happened to their 6th-century ancestors. There are undoubtedly a lot of Europeans who an unaware of being descended from someone who was Jewish but converted either under compulsion or voluntarily--probably it would be impossible for a European to prove he has no Jewish ancestry whatever (expect possibly Icelanders).
“So today’s Zionist Jews are mostly Ashkenazi Jews?”
Aboout 1/2, I think. The remainder are Mizrahim (a semi-subset of Sephardic who were in arab/muslim countries).
Todays Zionists are from the entire range of Jewish groups.
“Zionist” simply means that you want to live in your historic, indigenous homeland- Israel. I am a Zionist and I am totally Sefardic- I am an Orthodox Jew who’s family is Egyptian, Turkish and Spanish. 3/4 of Israel’s population is Sefardic.
Most folks do not realize that over 900,000 Jews were forced to flee- thrown out with just the clothes on their back - from the Arab nations when Israel declared its rebirth in 1948. They were taken back in by the State of Israel. They make up the majority of the Israeli population.
They can dispute all they want, but they cannot argue with the archeology- the facts in the ground, and there is plenty of it- along with the ancient writings of other nations, and the artifacts, such as the Arch of Titus, and the spoils of the siege, acknowledged by, and still kept in the Vatican.
There were indeed borders back then- very clearly so. And, we know the ancient names. As an example, in the Torah you will find the specific areas, their size and locations of each tribe’s portion of land. One thing that makes the Torah so fascinating is that it contains what are probably the world’s first recorded real estate deeds and land titles.
But for an interesting glance at the old maps, here is a link to an English portion of a Hebrew site that features a good look into the ancient world, the nations, their ancient names, and boundaries of that entire region: http://hashem1.net/?p=361#Magogs_Land_Borders.
The Jewish Diaspora was wide reaching, but it was actually rather well documented. But, there no French kings among them. Some nobility of Europe may have had one of us in the woodpile, but for the most part, that is just nonsense from the Revisionists. The European royalty was too busy persecuting Jews to marry into them. And the Revisionists just want to claim Israel as their own, so they re-write history, can’t read Hebrew, and ignore the facts - like archeology.
Rabbi Ken Spiro produced a 33 part series on Jewish history from Abraham to the present. You may want to look into it:
http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video/History/World-History/Crash-Course-on-Jewish-History/18149