Philistines

PHILISTINES. - A people known almost exclusively from the books of the Old Testament.

In the time of the Judges and the first kings, Saul and David, the P. settled in the coastal zone of the Mediterranean between Tell Refah (Raphia) and Joppa (Jaffa), about 100 km. long, about 20 km. wide in the north, about 60 km. in the south. Their centers are the five cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath and Ekron, governed by chiefs called sérānim, independent of one another, but allied

(from B. Germaine, Alfermat). Boll. sen. Alice I., Bellina-Lipino, B.B., p. 20. PHILISTINES - Female divinity of Byblos.

at least for military enterprises. In the time of the Judges the P. pushed forward into the interior of the tribe of Dan (which yielded and moved to the sources of the Jordan: Judg. 18), Judah and Benjamin. The Israelites were defeated in a hard battle, from which the sacred Ark was also carried off as spoil (1 Sam. 4:10 ff.); the victories won by the Israelites under Samuel (1 Sam. 7:13 ff.) did not prevent the P. from pushing forward little by little as far as Michmash and Gibeah (1 Sam. 13:3, 5, 11 ff.), while the people of Israel were disarmed and powerless (1 Sam. 13:19 ff.).

During the same period the P. seem also to have occupied the plains of Sharon and of Esdraelon, thereby making themselves masters of the trade route leading toward Mesopotamia. Saul defeated them several times and drove them back from the mountain to the plain (1 Sam. 13-14; 17); but in the hard decisive battle near Mount Gilboa he was defeated, and took his own life (1 Sam. 31; 2 Sam. 1). David, who, having fled from Saul's court, had stayed for some time at Gath (1 Sam. 27:1-7) offering his services to King Achish, maintained good relations with the P. at the beginning of his reign, but then, having occupied the strong city of Jerusalem (Jebus) and united the Israelite tribes to his kingdom as well, he felt strong enough to break the relation of vassalage: he defeated the P. and drove them back definitively within their original borders (2 Sam. 5:17-25; 8:1; cf. 22:15-22; 23:9-17). From then on the P. no longer undertook major campaigns against the Israelites, but rather there were disputes over borders (cf. 1 Kings 15:27; 16:15); indeed in time the Israelites took the offensive: King Uzziah (8th century) dismantled the cities of Gath and Jabneh and built fortresses in the Philistine region (2 Chron. 26:6 ff.; cf. Amos 6:2), and Hezekiah struck the P. as far as Gaza and throughout all their border (1 Kings 18:8). By the Assyrians the P. too were made tributary; their cities fell into the hands of the invaders, Gaza under Tiglath-Pileser III (735), Ekron under Sennacherib. Ashdod, made tributary by Tiglath-Pileser (734), captured in 711 by Sargon, was for some time the capital of the Assyrian province of Ashdodu (Isa. 20:1). From those times on, under the Neo-Babylonians, the Persians, the successors of Alexander the Great, each of the Philistine cities has its own history.

As regards the origin of the P., according to the Bible they come from Caphtor (Amos 9:7; Jer. 47:

4 ff.; cf. Deut. 2:23). The Jewish interpreters of the later period, as well as the Septuagint and not a few Fathers, identify Caphtor with Cappadocia, but profane sources do not support such an explanation; the Assyrian Kaptura or the Egyptian Kefitiu seem rather to indicate the Island of Crete. In the Old Testament too the P. are associated with the Kéréthim (Cretans); cf. Zeph. 2:5; Ezek. 25:16; and probably also the formula Kéréthi and Pélethi (2 Sam. 8:18; 15:18; 20:7, 23), in which Pélethi seems to be the name of the P. (Pélethi), assimilated to the preceding Kéréthi. Some authors include under the name of Caphtor the Island of Crete and the nearby coasts of Asia Minor, or even those coasts only. Be that as it may, one may say that the immediate point of departure of the P. was the Island of Crete, although perhaps they arrived there coming from Asia Minor. In this supposition the P. form part of the powerful wave of the "sea peoples," who invaded toward the end of the 13th century the Islands of the Aegean, Syria and Phoenicia and pushed, partly by sea, partly by land, as far as southern Palestine, where they were defeated by Ramses III (ca. 1194). In his palace of Medinet Habu (near Thebes), the defeated peoples are represented in a manner that recalls the description of the Philistine Goliath (1 Sam. 17:4-7). Moreover, one of the peoples represented there is called Príti (Purusati), which is the Egyptian pronunciation of Péleth; another are the Zahari, whom the Egyptian Wen-Amon around 1100 finds settled north of the P. in ancient Dor (ca. 11 km. north of Caesarea). Therefore authors generally hold that the P., although defeated by Ramses III, managed to maintain themselves in the southern part of the Palestinian coast, while the Zahari, their kin, occupied the plain of Sharon. In the Old Testament there is talk of the P. and of the Philistine land already in the time of the Patriarchs (Gen. 21:32, 34; 26:1, 8, 14 ff., 18), of the Exodus (Ex. 13:17) and of Joshua (Josh. 13:2), whether because of a purely literary anticipation of later terminology or because from the times of the Patriarchs the Egyptians maintained in that region military garrisons composed of Cretan mercenaries (who with later terminology are called P.).

It is commonly admitted that the P. are not Semites. The Israelites themselves call them "uncircumcised" (1 Sam. 17:26; 18:25; Judg. 14:3; 15:18), thereby indicating their diversity from the Semitic peoples; the Septuagint translates the proper name of P. in the majority of cases as ἀλλόφυλος (Vulg. alienigena). Even the very few remains of the Philistine language that are preserved are not Semitic: the name ἀνάμνη ("king") seems to be, like the Greek τύραννος, of Lydian or Phrygian origin; the name Goliath could be identical to Ἀλλόφυλος; the name Achish of the king of Gath (1 Sam. 21:11 etc.) has been preserved in Egyptian in the name Aksau of a Kefitiu (Cretan). Apart from these few remains the language proper to the P. is unknown; they seem to have adopted early the language of the indigenous population, Canaanite, and later Aramaic (the "Ashdodite" of Neh. 13:24 seems to be an Aramaic dialect, not the Philistine language).

Nor has the civilization of the P. been preserved. They brought with them the iron industry, and with it a military and cultural superiority that severely tested the Israelites, to whom they forbade the manufacture of iron weapons and tools (1 Sam. 13:19 ff.). At Tell Jemmeh (in the Wadi Gazzeh) and at 'Ajn Sema (Beth-shemesh) furnaces for smelting iron have been found, probably coming from the P. On the other hand the so-called "Philistine" pottery is not connected with certainty to the Philistine invasion, but is a type akin to the last phase of Mycenaean pottery, mixed with indigenous elements, and is found in the 12th century also elsewhere in Palestine and in Syria.

Nothing of the religion of the P. has been preserved. From the Old Testament it is known that at Gaza and Ashdod the god Dagon was worshiped (v.; cf. Judg. 16:23; 1 Sam. 5:1-7; 1 Macc. 10:83 ff.); at Ashkelon the cult of Atargatis or Derketo was practiced, a more recent designation of the goddess Astarte (cf. 1 Sam. 31:10), and at Ekron that of Baal-zebub (Aram. Beelzebub): 2 Kings 1:1-16. But all these divinities were of Semitic origin.

Kefitium, Philistines and other peoples of the Levant, in The Cambridge ancient history, II, Cambridge 1926, pp. 273-94; G. Levi Della Vida, Filistei, in Enc. Ital., XV (1932), p. 237 ff.; F.-M. Abel, Philiste, in Géographie de la Palestine, I, Paris 1933, pp. 261-70; O. Ensfeldt, Philister in Pauly-Wiesowa, XXXVII, pp. 2390-2401.

Agostino Bea