Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Charles Hutchesson <MC2499 AT mclink.it>]

> >This seems to be hard to fathom, but the HB/OT knows 
> >nothing about the arrival of the Philistines in the twelfth
> >century.
> 
> That's not quite true. Gen. 10:14 and Deut. 2:23 . And Amos 9:7 

I'll get back to you on this as I am away from all literature at the moment. 
But if I remember correctly the Hebrews believed that Caphtor was located 
south of Egypt, given its position in the table of nations.

> >Had the Hebrews already been in Southern Levant at that time
> >they had to know about their arrival. The texts simply show
> >them as being there when the Israelites, as they spread into
> >the area, became aquainted with them. This means that the
> >stories of Abraham and Abimelek and Isaac and Abimelek post-
> >date the arrival of the Philistines, but post-date them by
> >far, so that there is no awareness that there were no
> >Philistines at the time of attributed to Abraham or Isaac.
> 
> I think that, at least on some level, they knew full well that the Semitic
> named "Philistines" of patriarchal-period Gerar were not the same as the
> later Kaphtorian Philistines of Gaza etc. 

Why on earth do you think that? There is no evidence for it. 


> I suspect that the use of the title "Philistine" for Abimelech
> and friends is just another anachronism, caused by the (later) 
> reference to the Ziklag area as "Philistine-Land". 

Sadly, this does not seem possible. The Philistine reference is in both the 
Abraham and Isaac versions of the story, ie it is prior to the separation of 
the two versions. Or would you like to propose that scribal intervention 
accounts for the injection of Philistines into the two separate stories? The 
contrary is evidently more transparent and likely.

But then, if you think that "Philistine" is a later act of anachronism 
through scribal activity, why couldn't the whole passage have been scribal 
activity of a later period? While we have a pointer to a later period through 
the mention of the Philistines what actually makes you think that it is not 
late? We normally work on substantive evidence.

> As is evident from many examples, this kind of anachronism, 
> even when blatently obvious, did not bother the biblical 
> authors.

And suggests late writing.

> >The Philistines, who were definitely from Greek or Luwian
> >background, were even placed within Ham, as though they 
> >were semi-autochthonous.
> 
> Not exactly. Read Gen. 10:14 again. They are not "descended" 
> from Ham, but rather "came out" from "there". 

They came out of Caphtor who was a son of Egypt and thus a descendent of Ham.

> This is a 
> reflection of the Philistines' political ties to Egypt, either in the 
> days of Ramses III or at the time of writing.

The Philistines had no political ties with Egypt. They simply attempted to 
invade (and Ramses III bearly stopped them), before their final entrenchment 
in Southern Levant. You can trace the arrival of the sea peoples from their 
wake of havoc along the Anatolian coast, Cyprus, Hatti, Carchemish and 
Ugarit: there was no coming out of the south, no ties with Egypt. They simply 
dispossessed the Egyptian holdings in Southern Levant, which stratification 
clearly indicates. Any relationship with the Egyptians was purely de facto.

> >And what is an 8th century Nubian pharaoh doing as a son of
> >Cush in a text you want Moses to have written?
> 
> If you're reffering to Nimrod, 

No I'm referring to Nubian, ie Cushite, *pharaohs* of Egypt circa 715 BCE by 
the names of Shabtaka and Shabaka, names found as sons of Cush, ie Cush not 
Kish. 

But I think all the table of nations is a late construction. Remember that 
Kittim is a son of Javan, yet Kition was not founded until the tenth century 
BCE and didn't become a well-known entity until the Persian period, when the 
Persians gave it scope to come out of the shadow of the Greek cities (though 
kittim were known from the Arad ostraca and have been hypothesized as 
soldiers or traders, but what the activities of the kingdom of Arad might 
have to do with Jerusalem I don't know).

If you look at other versions of the table of nations than that in Genesis, 
such as the one in Josephus (and I think Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees -- 
one of them at least, I did a comparison some time back, while Pseudo-Philo 
follows Genesis), it can only be derived by hacking out most of the Genesis 
content. I'd say that Josephus was simply using another shorter source for 
the table which was followed up by different traditions of the settlement of 
the nations.


Ian