The adventurer and broadcaster Bear Grylls has withdrawn a reference to Mary, mother of Jesus, as a “Palestinian” girl on social media after the post prompted strong criticism.

In a post on X about Christmas, Grylls tweeted that Jesus was an “impoverished Middle Eastern refugee who, 2,000 years ago, changed the course of the world forever”.

He described Maryam [Mary] as a “young, poor and no doubt terrified Palestinian girl”.

Bear Grylls's original tweet on Jesus and Mary

But reacting to the remarks, the Campaign Against Antisemitism complained that “calling her a ‘Palestinian refugee’ not only imposes modern terminology on ancient history, but completely eradicates her Jewish identity. It’s historical nonsense with an agenda.”

Comedian and TV presenter Josh Howie similarly took Grylls to task, saying that Miriam — as she would have been called in Hebrew in ancient Judea — “wasn’t Palestinian”.

The region, he said, was “renamed Syria-Palestina over 100 years after Jesus’s death by the Roman Empire empire in an effort to erase Jews, just as you are doing now.’

Grylls subsequently revised his tweet, dropping the word “Palestinian” from his reference to Mary.

But explaining his original wording in a follow-up post on Boxing Day, the explorer said he had referred to the area as Palestine “as per the maps you will find in most Bibles”.

He was, he said, “simply setting the scene for the Greatest Story Ever Told. I refer to Palestine as the general area that Mary lived in. I am not referring to her nationality or ethnicity. She was clearly Jewish.”