Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Peter,

I am a little non-plussed by this recent post of yours.

>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"?

This has nicely sidestepped a point I made: it is precisely the fact that
the  people are called "Philistine" that dates the reference to twelfth
century BCE or later. The Philistines were named and portrayed by the
Medinet Habu temple reliefs as part of the invading Sea Peoples along with
other Indo-European groups as coming from the sea and not belonging to part
of the Egyptian possessions in southern Paelstine -- for Palestine was at
that time all under the control of the Egyptians.

The arguments that people want to put forward regarding the Philistines seem
not to be based on evidence but on apologetic aims. The sea peoples are
shown by the reliefs not to have been Semitic, not to have originated in
southern Palestine, and not to have borne cultural traits of local
populations into the Philistine area.


Ian

>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