"Who Were the Philistines?" Topic

"The Philistines were a group of people who arrived in the Levant (an area that includes modern-day Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria) during the 12th century B.C. They came during a time when cities and civilizations in the Middle East and Greece were collapsing.

Much of what we know about the Philistines comes from Egyptian and Assyrian texts as well as the stories told in the Hebrew Bible. The Book of Joshua claims that the cities of Ashkelon, Gaza, Ashdod, Gath and Ekron were controlled by the Philistines about 3,000 years ago.

The Philistines themselves left no texts and, as such, much of what we know about them comes from the people they encountered. These texts often describe them negatively and today the name "Philistine" is sometimes used to describe someone who is warlike or who doesn't appreciate art or culture.

In addition to the ancient texts, modern-day archaeologists have tried to identify Philistine burials and the artifacts that the Philistines used by excavating the cities that the texts say the Philistines controlled. However what constitutes a "Philistine" artifact or a "Philistine" burial is disputed by scholars…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Who were the philistines? Evidently, C19th Americans….but they could bite back as Oscar Wilde found out:

"Wilde became irritated during a lecture in the United States with the uncomprehending response he received while discussing the importance of aesthetics. He berated his audience and referred to them as philistines.

Finally, a voice in the back of the room called out, "Yes, we are Philistines, and now I see why for the past hour you have been assaulting us with the jawbone of an ass."

Nobody is really sure who their god Moloch was, or even if he really was a god. He might had been a king or priest or a wizard of some kind.

The Philistines themselves left no texts…

Actually, a monumental inscription has been found in Ekron, that is very interesting on many counts. The language is Phoenician, the characters and personal names are Philistine:

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Nobody is really sure who their god Moloch was…

Moloch is mentioned in the Old Testament as a pagan god, but not specifically as a Philistine deity; he seems rather to have been a Semite god. One epithet denounces Moloch as 'the abomination of the Ammonites'. The name Moloch seems to have the root 'melech' (MLK) = 'king', and is often punned in the Old Testament as 'Molech' = 'shame'.

Moloch seems to be the Hebrew equivalent of the Phoenician chief god Melkart, who was later worshipped in Carthage. The Old Testament associates child sacrifice by burnt offering with Moloch. Roman sources state that the Carthaginians sacrificed humans, including their own children, as burnt offerings to Melkart. Archaeological finds in Carthage confirm that families sometimes offered an infant as a 'mlk imr' sacrifice.

The only Philistine god mentioned in the Old Testament is Dagon, whose statue is described as a merman, with a human upper body and a fish-like tail.

Coincidentally, I happen to be painting Foundry Sea People with feather crowns at the moment.

Zippy, I'm pretty sure Dagon was also a Semitic god, but I wonder if the god of the Philistines could have been Poseidon, and the Canaanites and Hebrews called it Dagon because of the similarity in iconography- a guy with a fish tail is a guy with a fish tail, etc.

Not that I'm considering the Philistines necessarily proto-Greeks, but the Sea Peoples seem to have been a mixed Aegean horde. Poseidon also looks to have been a very ancient Aegean sea god that the Hellenes adopted as their own when they moved into the area. Maybe the inhabitants of the Anatolian coast, Cyprus, Crete and so on, had their own versions of Poseidon.

Philistines! Arnt those guys from Philadelphia? Coz that's what I'm gonna write for the answer in my test.
(Chip answer to his history teacher question)

modern day Palestinians refer to themselves as Filisteenia.
There is no F sound in Arabic.
leaving modern politics out of it, I see no reason not to accept the idea that they are one and the same people.

Woody, I've been told that it was the Romans who changed the name of their province from Judea to Palestina after the Jewish War, in order to further remove the Jewish presence from the land. The Philistines as a people were long gone by that time.

rvandusen, the received view of the Philistines, with their Aegean pottery and their swine, is that they were proto-Greeks. The Old Testament reference to the Philistines as "…the remnant of Caphtor…" places them previously in Crete. But the discovery of the Ekron inscription, in the Phoenician language, is interesting.

Cultural links between the Aegean and the Levant go far back into prehistory. Herodotus relates that King Cadmus brought the alphabet to the Greeks from Phoenicia, and the modern Greek alphabet is derived from a Phoenician model. The Greek word (and ours) for wine, 'oenos', is a loan-word from the Semitic, 'yayin' in Hebrew. Dionysus, god of wine, who was worshiped as far back as Mycenaean times, was said to come from Phoenicia.

Could the Philistines have been an Aegean people of Levantine language and culture? Further discoveries await.

Also rvandusen, you could be right about Dagon being a Semitic god, but the Old Testament places his temples in Gaza and Ashdod, among the Philistines. However, I've raised the possibility above that the Philistines were of Levantine culture even before they settled in their Pentapolis.

Also I must correct myself, the Old Testament also mentions Baal-zebub as a Philistine god, but what that name means and who it represents is much debated.

…you could be right about Dagon being a Semitic god, but the Old Testament places his temples in Gaza and Ashdod, among the Philistines.

…the Old Testament also mentions Baal-zebub as a Philistine god…

"Could it be that the Philistine gods Dagon and Baal-zebub were actually Ancient Alien Astronauts?"

And of course the answer is a resounding yes!

" Baal-zebub! Bluddy fly god my arss" just before Tim Arizona heard the ominous buzzing of a very large insect further back of the tomb he was exploring.

bogeymen of the Bible seems to be the way I know them Don't know anything truly factual about them

Ancient Aliens! OMG….someone should do a show on that….it would be soooo interesti…..oh wait…..

Funnily enough, in the Embassy Suites in Alexandria…….and they're discussing the "Annunnaki" as extra terrestrials…..'tis to laugh! But I'm watching it…

I missed typed in my last post…. Arabic has no P sound.
The Romans indeed renames Judea to Palestine but the Philistines were there before it was Judea as well.

Who were the Philistines? Only a Philistine would ask such a question.

Great answers zippy

Agree… Zippy is a champion when he write here!… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand