IDUMAEA - The Greek equivalent (in NT only in Mk.3.8) of the name Edom, originally the territory E. of the Jordan-Arabah valley and S. of the land of Moab. This country was inhabited, when we first catch a glimpse of it, by a primitive race known as Horites, of whom little but the name is known. The apparent meaning of the name ('cave-dwellers') and comparison with the remains of what seems to have been an analogous race discovered in excavations elsewhere, show that this race was at a low stage of civilization. They were partly destroyed, partly absorbed, by the Bedouin tribes who claimed descent through Esau from Abraham, and who were acknowledged by the Israelites as late as the date of the Deuteronomic codes as brethren (Dt.23.7). They were governed by sheikhs and by a non-hereditary monarchy whose records belonged to a period anterior to the time of Saul (Gn.36.31-39, 1Ch.1.43-54). See EDOM.
After the fall of Babylon the pressure of the desert Arabs forced the Edomites across the Jordan-Arabah valley, and the people and name were extended westward. In 1 Mac.5.65 we find Hebron included in Idumaea. Josephus, with whom Jerome agrees, makes Idumaea extend from Beit Jibrin to Petra; Jerome assigns the great caves at the former place to the troglodyte Horites. The Herod family was by origin Idumaean in this extended sense. In the 2nd cent AD the geographer Ptolemy restricts Idumaea to the cis-Jordanic area, and includes the original trans-Jordanic Edom in Arabia. [Article: Dictionary of the Bible, J.Hastings, 2nd Ed., T&T.Clark, 1963 - R.A.S.M. - F.C.G.]