Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT sil.org]

Ian wrote: "it would be extremely unlikely that the Philistines 
totally surplanted the "indigenous" population, merely took control of 
the population found there".

So can we agree that an "indigenous" population (name unknown, if the 
Genesis references are discounted) was conquered by invaders from the 
sea (who are given various names in the sources, but not apparently 
"Philistine"), who ruled them and imposed on them some of their 
culture (though not their language), resulting in the people we know 
as "the Philistines"?

In that case, maybe (it cannot be proved, I know) the origin of the 
name "Philistine" was in Canaan and the people living in that area in 
the 19th century BC were called "Philistine" or something similar. 
There is certainly no clear proof against this hypothesis, and so no 
clear anachronism in the text of Genesis. (Could the name be from the 
Semitic P-L-Sh "dig", perhaps because these people dug wells? - as in 
Genesis 21 and 26, where there is perhaps irony that the "digger" 
people in fact stopped up wells rather than dug them!)

Similar example: Is the use of the name "Britannia" in texts of the 
Roman period an anachronism, and proof that these texts are actually 
mediaeval? After all, the island now known as Great Britain was 
invaded in the 5th century by peoples from the sea (known not as 
Britons but as Angles and Saxons) who did largely supplant the earlier 
inhabitants, at least in eastern areas. The people now known as 
British are largely descended from the invaders, even (for the most 
part) speak a language descended from that of the invaders. Therefore, 
by your argument, the name British must be that of the invaders and 
the name Britannia used before the invasion is anachronistic. Would 
you argue that?

Thank you for helping to increase my confidence in the text of Genesis 
(no doubt not your intention!) by showing that it was not necessarily 
updated in this way.

Peter Kirk