Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Bailey <jonathan.bailey AT gmx.de>]

I am wondering about how strong the identification of the pelest with the 
Philistines is.
As far as I know, we don't know the vowels in Egyptian, so all we really have 
is plst.
Now I also hear that "l" and "r" have the same consonant in Egyptian, so it 
may have
been prst. Now I also hear that some tests have only pls/prs. So I am 
wondering
where we get the idea that a word identified as plst, prst, pls, or prs just 
has to mean
"Philistines", particularly when we are not sure if the Egyptians would even 
call them
"Philistines" even if they were dealing with them. Since there is no record 
of the
"Hyskos" in any semitic record that I know of, apparently the Egyptians made 
up a
name for them. What would keep them from doing the same for the Philistines?

And then, once the texts are established as definitively speaking of the 
biblical
Philistines, we of course need to establish that our knowledge of the dating 
and
reliability of the texts is unshakeably correct.

So I would like info from people up on their Egyptology about how strong this
connection is and exactly what the textual situation is like.




"If there are many wisemen in a city, this means that the city will soon 
fall."
Babylonian proverb

Jonathan Bailey
Hochschule für Jüdische Studien
Heidelberg
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Column/9707/index.html