Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Polycarp66 AT aol.com]

In a message dated 1/25/2004 2:27:36 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
kwrandolph AT email.com writes:
I noticed that these terms were used exclusively to refer to soldiers. What 
made me suspect that it may refer to classes of professional soldiers was the 
realization that the PLTY is always written with a definite article prefix in 
Tanakh, which would have had a pronunciation of “hapeleti”. This sounds 
awfully similar to a class of soldiers among the Greeks, who had imported a 
lot of 
their culture along with their alphabet from Semitic sources.

The terms, as well as the weaponry, may have been Philistine, but in the list 
of David’s top soldiers, almost all of them were native Israelis (2 Samuel 
23).
_________

Are you implying that the Greek "hoplite" derives from this?

gfsomsel