Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>]

At 08:15 PM 9/6/2002 +0200, Ian Charles Hutchesson wrote:
>> >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.

How could you know that?

>
>> >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. 

Just look at the geography. The Philistines and their "pentapolis" are not
mentioned among the "nations of Canaan" in the Pentateuch. While the
territory involved is clearly a part of Cannan, they are not "Canaanite".
The Philistines of Abimelech live in the western Negeb, while the
Philistines of Joshua and later live along the coastal plain and the Shphelah.

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

I never said otherwise. I'm not trying to defend a Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch. What i am saying is that the writers/redactors/editors had more
of a sense of history than you give them credit for.

>
>> >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.
>

Not if you read the graet Haris papyrus, and not according to
archaeological evidence, which suggests that Egyptians and Philstines (or
other so-called "sea peoples") co-existed in parts of Canaan at least until
the latter part of the 12th century. Though the Egyptians didn't invite
them, they did end up accomodating them and using their services. Only
after the final Egyptian retreat c. 1100 did the Philistines become
independant agents. To the Canaanite/Israelite, it may well have seemed
that they came as a part of the Egyptian administration.


>> >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.

I don't doubt that for a minute.

 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 

"Well known" to whom? To Heroditus? Or to the Judahites? How would you know
what they knew?

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).

What "kingdom of Arad". We're talking about the 6th century. Arad was a
Judahite border outpost.

>
>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.
>

So?

>

Dr. Yigal Levin
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
U.S.A.