The southern region of the land, centred on Jerusalem — under Rome, a formal province (Iudaea) governed directly by a prefect or procurator (Pilate among them) rather than by a client king, after Herod Archelaus was deposed in AD 6. It is drier and more mountainous than Galilee to its north, and its hill country is where John the Baptist preaches and where Jesus is finally tried and executed. 'Judea' can mean the narrower region around Jerusalem or, more loosely, the whole territory of the Jewish people (so 'the land of Judea' at times stretches to cover Galilee as well) — the word carries both a tight administrative sense and a looser ethnic one, and which is meant has to be read from context each time.