Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk>]

> On Tue  1 Feb 2000 (23:28:01 +0100), jonathan.bailey AT gmx.de wrote:
> > I am wondering about how strong the identification of the pelest with
> > the Philistines is.
> 
>  Dear Jonathan
> 
>  I was always given to understand that  P:Li$:TiYM  meant immigrants or
>  migrants generally, not any specific national or ethnic group. Like the
>  "Sea Peoples", they were not a single identifiable ethnic unit. They
>  were just tribes who "rolled" or "wallowed" around (root P-L-$).
> 
        [Niels Peter Lemche]  
        Like the habiru/ibri (I still stay with this linguistic
identification in spite of the phonetic problem about the long vowel),
mening most likely refugees, i.e. people that have transgressed a border
('-b-r)? However, their identity was strong enough to warrant a continuous
namegiving to a specific territory, in the end all of 'Palestine'. And when
speaking about identity, Hebrew plst(im) seems very much the same as the
Egyptian plst, or for the matter the modern Arabic filistin.

        Already a hundred years ago, scholars were discussing the identity
of the Sea People, proposing that the shklsh were the ancestors of the
Sicilians, the Srdn of the Island of Sardinia. Sherden mercenaries were
already present on the Egyptian side at Qadesh. So what can we say? The
Egyptian evidence of the great battle against the Sea people in t he time of
Ramses III may be telescoping a development that had lasted for perhaps more
than one generation. Something like the tradition of the German migrations
into the Roman Empire that escalated in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, but
were in evidence at least since the time of the Cimbians and Teutonians
around 100 BCE.

        I would ask people to be careful about the terms 'tribe' and
'ethnicity'. These terms are used in a very unprecise way. A tribe is so
many thing so to say that the early Philistines constituted tribes does not
say anything, and as to their ethnicity, we only know about it from their
enemies. What they believed themselves to be, we do not know. The basic
literature on this is still Fredrik Barth, his introduction to Ethnic Groups
and Boundaris (Oslo 1969), and literature that spun óff from his position.
The question is, however, extremely complicated.

        The funny thing about the Hyksos expulsion is that it was followed
by an Egyptian conquest during the next generation of Palestine, not quite
what we find in Joshua. People should, however, ask about the size of this
expulsion. How many Hyksos were actually thrown out of Egypt? Was the Delta
area empty of people after the expulsion? Or are we speaking about Egyptian
propaganda that relied on a partial expulsion especially of the leaders of
the Hyksos? How to distinguish between a Hyksos person having lived for two
hundred years in Egypt, and his Egyptian neighbour? Maybe they already had
intermarried several generations ago? Again, propagnda, also the Egyptian,
can be so easy with a very complicated demographic situation. And since
people are--maybe correctly--speaking about a Egyptian tradition turned
against the Egyptians themselves, why not propose that Moses is reeally
Ahmose (Amosis) who is supposed to have been the expeller...turning the
expellor into the liberator, thereby usurping the Egyptian tradition. When
it was done may be the subject of discusion. The earliest extra-biblical
evidence would probably be Hecataios (300 BCE). 

        Then when people move on to the conquest, Mernephtah's Israel is of
course decisive for the name of Israel. It is not there in the Amarna
period--the central Israelite territory is covered by several letters, from
Lab'aya of Shechem, IR-chepa of Jerusalem, and other guys. We have the
habiru in IR-chepa's letters, that's true, but habiru means a lot of things
in the EA letters. Mendenhall made a good point about this in his The Tenth
Generation (Baltimore, 1974). Before the el-Amarna period, we have other
Egyptians sources dealing with Palestine, including lists of captives
brought from Palestine, espec. the one by Amenophis II (late 15th century),
mentioning various groups such as maryannu, Canaanites, relatives of
princely families, but not a word about Israelites.

        People should realize that the LBA is not a dark age, not at all. We
have plenty of sources relating to this period and a fair control of events.
Scholars realized this generations ago. That is why any discussion among
scholars that suppose the exodus to have happened, must end up with the idea
that it was a tiny group of refugees from Egypt that carried the tradition
of the exodus with them to Palestine, and they will also give up the idea
that any conquest of Palestine happened. If we are speaking about this Moses
group, then iit probably migrated to Palestine, settled there and created a
congregation there, but all of this is guesswork.

        The discussion around these subjects has ben quite interesting. I
have saved most of it for the sake of my students. It will be fun to see
whether they can deconstruct it into its separate elements and find the
governing motives behind the various positions taken by the participants in
this discussion.

        NPL


>  Amos 9:7 identifies the "Philistines" as wanderers from the land of
> Caphtor
>  (Crete?), along with the "Syrians" from Kir, and the "Cushites" from
> Ethiopia.
> 
>  According to Deuteronomy 26:5, even Jacob was an Aramean ready to perish
>  who became a sojourner in Egypt. Another "Philistine"?
> 
>  Just my 2 Pfennige
>  Ben
> -- 
>  Revd Ben Crick, BA CF
>  <ben.crick AT argonet.co.uk>
>  232 Canterbury Road, Birchington, Kent, CT7 9TD (UK)
>  http://www.cnetwork.co.uk/crick.htm
> 
> 
> 
> 
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