Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Ken wrote:

>1.  You dated the appearance of the Philistines in palestine based on
>Egyuptian inscriptions and the Ugaritic letters.  I noted that it is
>only a hypothesis that the Egyptian materials are talking about PLST. 

Dear Ken,

You seem to be leaving out the fundamental evidence of the Greek-like
material culture found in the Philistine area in the twelfth to tenth
century (which continued to evolve during the following period (as would be
expected of a foreign group adapting the cultural traits of the local
environment to their own particular usage). The pottery for example finds
its closest parallel with Mycenean pottery. The burial customs are anything
but native to Palestine.

The consequence of the arrival of the Philistines in the area at that time
was the subsequent loss of all Egyptian possessions in Palestine.
Philistine (and related) material culture was found at Beth-Shean and later
in the Jordan valley. The people who made inroads in the zone were those
newly arrived invaders.

It is in that archaeologically supplied historical context that the letters
from Ugarit and the Egyptian reliefs contemporary with the arrival of that
material culture in Palestine come into play. Those reliefs fit that
transplanted material culture. There is a lot more evidence here than what
the "House Managers" are trying to get past the Senate. It's hypotheses
like this that win court cases.

>Your response seems lieka non-sequitor to me.  Do you nderstand my
>point?  YOu are basing an argument on a hypothetical transliteration
>ofa  dead langauge.  

(Well, Biblical Hebrew is a dead language as well. What is the point of
your comment?)

>In addition, you seem to put great faith in
>Egyptian texts, as though they were inerrant or something.  

I like the use of "inerrant"!

The Egyptian texts are a very good witness, describing the cataclysmic
arrival of the Peleset and other non-Semitic peoples in Egyptian possessions

>They are
>historical writings, subject o\to the limitations of such, plus they
>seem to be official documents, which makes them quite suspect in my
>mind, because the authors have to protect themselves from looking bad or
>saying the wrong thing.  Note:  the archaeological remains in Paleestine
>are a separate issue entirely.  I am taling about the Egyptian evidence
>you relied on.

The Egyptian evidence by itself, though strong, might have been
insufficient, despite the extremely precise dating. Taken with the other
evidence, which you don't seem to consider, the case is exceedingly powerful.

The Egyptian evidence (and the Ugaritic letters) is of a greater historical
value than the Biblical texts in this matter as they are contemporary with
the events.

It is as though you are ignoring the physical evidence. This is not merely
the configuration and reconfiguration of intellectual combinations. This is
Greek material culture arriving in Palestine at a precise time that
coincides with

1) the Egyptian reliefs at Medinet Habu
2) the Ugaritic letters
3) the non-Semitic cultural remains found in the Philistine area
4) the overthrow of numerous states along the a geographical and
chronological trajectory from Greece to Palestine

>2.  I posited a couple of mutually exclusive possibilities.  PLST is
>used more than once to mean foreigner in the Scriptures of Israel.  In
>contexts where there is a possible apparent discrepancy, if we
>absolutize the archaeological and epigraphic data as you do, which I
>would not do, we should ask if PLST w\should be translated as
>"Philistines" in that case.  

I really can't see the point of using secondary material in this case when
the primary materials are so strong. The name is only icing on the cake:
it's nice to see it remembered in the biblical accounts; but then the
Philistines were in the area for several centuries. The Egyptians could
have kept with the generic "Sea Peoples" yet the evidence would still be
too strong to disregard.

>3.  If an alternate translation does not fit the context, what then may
>we suppose?  I see a few choices.
>a.  The writer was wrong.  If so, can you explain how the same wrier
>seems to know about a great many other groups and seems to treat them
>correctly but does not treat this group correctly?  I can't explain the
>data under this option.  Would none of the writer's contemporaries have
>known otherwise?  If so, why wasn't this blatant error fixed?  

If the Hebrews arrived in the area after the Philistines, they wouldn't
have known that it was a blatant error. This seems a likely explanation to me.

>BTW, data
>from Judtih is of no interest to me, as I don't believe any Jewish group
>ever held Judith to be canonical 

Your criterion for acceptable source materials is interesting.

>(we don't know what the Qumranites
>thoght of this work) and neither did any Christian group so far as I
>know.  Its presence in the LXX does not imply canonicity, as later
>discussions ion medieval Christianity, including Jerome, indicate. So
>I'm bracketing out the data from the APocrypha as not relevant to the
>issue.  

This is simply arbitrary, Ken. You give priority to texts historically
dated to the second century regarding the thirteenth/twelfth centuries and
mark out arbitrary means to exclude other witnesses to the cultural context
of your texts.

>Anyway, how can we explain that a text which, under your view,
>presumably went thorugh significant reworking, never had such a blatant
>error fixed?  If the Egyptians knew when the Philistines arrived (if we
>accept the Egyptian evidence at face value), then it seems inexplicable
>to me that no Jews knew this when the text was slapped together
>carelessly centuries later by the bonehead redactors of JEDP.  

When were the redactors of the texts working, Ken?

>b.  The  term PLST is broader in scope (as noted above ) than Philistine
>and was applied in general to people groups of the same region before
>the Philistines arrived.  There's no way to test tis either positively
>or negatiely that I can think of.

The Hebrews don't distinguish between Teukri, Shardanu or Peleset (or the
other groups), but merely call them all Philistine, indicating that they
are applying the name of the first group they came in contact with to all
groups. It may mean that they couldn't see the difference between them
(though they weren't a homgeneous group when they arrived). Interaction
between them and their new environment led to a reduction of any
differences. This would also suggest that the Hebrews weren't present in
the context to see the differences.

But then, having had a quick look I did find several words for
foreigner/stranger, without seeing such a use for "Philistine". What did
you have in mind?

>c. The writer used a name that would make sense to his/her audience,
>knowing that it wasn't techincially correct.  

This is an instance of how anachronisms often happen. Such an argument
applied to undatable texts means that you should accept the separation in
time between the events and the writing. The audience would not have known
the real group involved in the Gerar stories, despite the fact that Gerar
is less than fifty kilometres from Hebron.

>Supplying the correct
>name, when no one was familar with that name, might not have been
>appropriate for the write's purposes.  A modern historian might not do
>this, but the writer of the Pentateuch was not a modern historian
>(though no more ideologically biased than any modern historian). 
>d.  oOre data would show there's no problem.  Maybe it will be
>discovered some day.  I can validly argue, however, for no position
>based on what hasn't been found, whether it relates to the Philistines
>or anything else, like Jericho.  I can't argue about what happened from
>walls I can't find.  Even if I found data at Jericho, what it means
>would still be formed by the ideology of the archaeologist. 

Last season they found the city gates. Some ideology.

>If you need
>proof that ideology can transform data, just look at the US Senate last
>week. How does the same setof data look so different to so many people?
>So I'd like more data, but I recognzie that if we had it, its
>significance would still be up for debate.
>
>  In short, Ian, I can think of numerous ways to explain the data.  The
>charge that external evidence sows the biblical texts are blatantly
>wrong simply is not the best solution IMO.

The evidence is overwhelming for the arrival of the Philistines. With such
evidence there would seem to be other reasons for your attempting to
discount it.


Ian