Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Thanks for giving me the go ahead Yigal.

As Yitzhak has bowed out of this thread I shall attempt, in his place,  
to present a summary of the 'mainstream' view of the origin of the  
philistines. Apologies in advance for any slight errors as I am by no  
means as familiar with the relevant literature as Yitzhak probably is.  
No doubt, if I make any serious mistakes he will correct me. But, in  
any case, I'm just going to provide a broad outline.

The mainstream view is that the original language of the Philistines  
is of Indo-european origin. The basic line of reasoning is that  
archaeology in cities of Philistine territories have revealed pottery  
of Mycenaean style of certain building features also seemingly of  
Mycenaean architectural styles. That although no written records  
survive of the Philistine language before they adopted 'Canaanite'  
language and culture the existence of a few non-Semitic load words in  
their language are indicative of a non-Semitic origin. Names like  
Goliath, Phicol have been postulated to be of Indo-european origin.

However, there are certain factors which make this view a little  
extreme. Firstly, the author of the table of nations in Genesis 10  
quite plainly tells us that the Philistines came out of Mizraim. They  
have a common ancestor with the Egyptian people. Abraham makes a  
covenant with the Philistine king of his time, Abimelech. Abimelech is  
a very Semitic name.

It seems more likely that the Philistine language has always been of  
Semitic origin and any traces of Indo-European loan words and  
Mycenaean pottery can perhaps be better explained by the influence of  
later invaders. Indigenous peoples tend to cherish their language and  
culture and not all invasions are successful in supplanting the  
language (there are still communities in Wales that speak a Gaelic  
dialect to this day).

And so the above linguistic and archaeological observations perhaps  
best answer the question of where those who later invaded and  
influenced the philistines came from but not what the original  
language of the philistines was or where the philistines originally  
came from. The accounts in Genesis make it clear to us that the  
philistines are

a) of Hamitic origin (more precisely from Egypt)
b) spoke a Semitic language from their very conception as a nation

James Christian




Quoting James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>:

> There was no discussion. It was contentless.
>
> Anyway, I interpret your refusal to present the 'mainstream' view of
> the origin of the Philistines as your admission that the 'mainstream'
> view follows pretty much the same logic as the ridiculous analysis I
> gave of the English language.
>
> Case closed.
>
> James Christian
>
> Quoting Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>:
>
> > On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 2:15 AM, James Read wrote:
> >
> > > So now, without looking like a total hypocrite would you like to
> > > expound to myself and the list members the 'mainstream' view of the
> > > origin of the Philistines as presented in the literature that you
> > > evidently very familiar with?
> >
> > No, James.  Let's keep to the original discussion.
> >
> > Yitzhak Sapir
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>
>
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The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.