Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hi Yitzhak,

I have noted your comments but I think you still seem to be missing  
the point. You are approaching this as if there was a single question:

1) Where did the philistines come from?

Whereas in reality there are two questions:

1) Where did the indigenous philistines come from?
2) Where did the invaders of the indigenous philistines come from?

Only when you realise that these are two separate issues do the  
references to Philistines in Genesis become clear.

James Christian

Quoting 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
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