Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

Hello James,

This is an interesting summary you posted here about the Philistines.
First off, I did not bow out of the thread.  You asked a polite question which
could only be politely refused.

I direct you to a different description of the Philistines:
http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~maeira/phil.html

Note how little language is mentioned throughout that discussion.
The way that you describe the Philistines, however, is probably not
the way that
would be accepted by the mainstream.

I do not wish to speak for the 'mainstream'.  However, the
'mainstream' would probably
try to find the common ground between the archaeological evidence and
knowledge of
the Philistines (mostly Iron Age II inscriptions in Philistia and
Assyria) and the Biblical
representation of the Philistines.

The Philistines are a group of people that are found in the first
millenium BCE mostly
in the coast of southern Canaan.  They speak a Semitic language very
closely related
to Hebrew, so that at times it is hard to distinguish inscriptions
from the area (such
as the Mesad Hashavyahu ostracon or the Eqron inscription) from Hebrew.  From
epigraphic evidence, we know that they worship the Canaanite gods Baal and
Ashera.  They have Semitic names such as Pdy, Ysd, Y(r, $lm, Ntn.  Their 
cities
have Semitic names, such as Ashdod, Eqron, Ashqelon, and Gath.  However, they
also have elements that can certainly be considered foreign.  A few names can 
be
considered non-Semitic: Ikayusu (Achish), and other names with -s endings 
found
on ostraca.  Although Baal and Ashera are mentioned, so is a goddess by the 
name
of Ptgyh.  On the basis of the archaeological evidence, one would argue that 
the
Philistine cultures represents a mixture of various different
backgrounds, Semitic
and non-Semitic.  Nadav Naaman has argued that Ashdod in Philistia was a
resettlement of a West Semitic people from Crete, known from Ugarit.

Biblically, we see the Philistines as having Semitic gods such as
Dagon, Ashtoret,
and Baal.  They have Semitic names such as Abimelekh, Ahuzzath, but also
non-Semitic names such as Achish and Phichol.  Other names such as Goliath
may be arguably either Semitic or non-Semitic.  The Philistines are
represented in
the Bible as relating to Caphtor (Gen 10:14, Amos 9:7), an island (Jer
47:4), and
to Crete (Ezekiel 25:16), possibly the same island as Caphtor.  The
Philistines in
the Bible are therefore a mixture of Semitic and non-Semitic cultural
elements that
are believed to have come from the area of Crete.

Mainstream views of the relationship of the Philistines to Egypt,
might suggest that
this is a memory of the late Iron I/early Iron IIA period times when
Egypt fortified the
southern coast.  In late Iron Age II memory, the Philistines had
connections with
Egypt, and so Abraham in the distant past is described as going to Egypt and
meeting the Philistines, and in the Table of Nations, the Philistines
are represented
as children of Egypt.  In this same late memory of early events, the 
Philistines
were recognized as having roots in Caphtor.  Gen 10:14 represents a 
combination
of both traditions.

It has been common to try to discern words from an original Philistine
language.
This is very hard.  Some of the words used in conjunction with the
Philistines, such
as qova, may be of Anatolian origin.  It is important to understand
though that the
mainstream view that the Philistines are foreigners, is based on the Biblical
traditions that claim them to be from islands in the area of Crete,
and on the basis
of Egyptian references to Pr$t that are viewed as rogue sea invaders.
The linguistic
elements are an attempt to highlight and emphasize the foreign elements in 
their
culture, that appears from the Biblical and archaeological record to be 
largely
Semitic.  However, even such words as 'seren' are doubtful.  The ruler of 
Eqron,
Achish, dubbed himself &r rather than srn, and even the Bible uses &r 
alongside
srn.  'srn' is a word that appears also in Ugaritic and may be related
to West Chadic
caram 'chief', and Egyptian sr 'elder'.  The comparison with Greek tyrannos 
has
its problems (such as the use of an affricate ts (samekh) for the t,
or alternatively,
and even weaker, the use of the deaffricated samekh for the t.).

So the linguistic elements are an attempt to understand better the
foreign cultural
elements in the mixed Semitic/non-Semitic Philistine culture.  It is
wrong to use
them to prove that the Philistines did or did not come from the Aegean.  The
argument from words was always used as a very weak supporting argument,
given that we have no direct information on the Philistine language,
and language
itself cannot tell us about the history and roots of a particular
nation.  Furthermore,
it is possible the Philistines include West Semitic tribes coming from
the Aegean
(as Nadav Naaman has argued).

James, language doesn't teach us where the people who speak the language
came from.  The mainstream view doesn't try to use language to that end.  It
tries, on the basis of prior traditions regarding the origins of the
Philistines,
and perceived foreign words that are believed to have been borrowed from the
Philistines, to emphasize the foreign elements in a culture that appears in 
the
Bible (and archaeological record) to be largely indigenous.  The one who tries
to use language to prove the ancestry of the Philistines is not mainstream
scholarship.  It is you.  And it is methodologically wrong to do so.

Yitzhak Sapir