PHILISTIM
102
piiilistim:
at certain times the Philistines had also in possession large portions of the interior (Psa. be, 7; lxxxvii, 4; cviiijlO; 1 Sam. xxxi, 8; 1 Kings xv, 27; I'-a. lxxxiii. 7 i. I 'he land of the Philistines partakes of the general desolation common to it with Judaea and other neigh- boring state-. According to Volney, except the imme- diate environs of a few villages, the whole country is a desert abandoned to the Bedawln Arabs, who feed their flocks on it (Zeph. ii, 4-7). See Philistine.
Philis'tim (Gen. x, 1 i>. See Philistine.
Philis'tine (Heb. PelUhti', ~~-~z. gentile from r:'". Philistia; Sept. aXX6<pvXoc, but Bometiraes $w- Xinnti/i for the plur.. which is the usual form; A. V. once "Philistim," Gen. x, 14; Josephus, fJaXaiortvoi, A i,i. v, 1,18), a race of aboriginal Canaanites inhabiting the land of Philistia (q. v.). (The following article is mainly based upon thai in Smith's Diet, oftfo Bible.)
I. Early History. — 1. Tki origin of the Philistines is nowhere expressly stated in the Bible; bul since the prophets describe them as -the Philistines from Caphtor" (Amos ix. 7 i. and " i lie remnant of the maritime district of Caphtor" (Jer. xlvii, 4), it is prima facie probable thai they were the "Caphtorims which came out of Caphtor" who expelled the Avion from their territory and occupied it in their place (Dent. ii. 23), and thai these attain were the Caphtorim mentioned in the Mo- saic genealogical table among the descendants ofMiz- raiui (Gen. x. 14). But in establishing this conclusion certain difficulties present themselves : in the first place. it is observable that in Gen. x, 14 the Philistines are connected with the Casluhim rather than the Caphto- rim. It has generally been assumed thai the text has suffered a transposition, and that the parenthetical clause "out of whom came Philistim" ought to follow the words -and Caphtorim." This explanation is. however, inadmissible; for (1 ) there is no external evi- dence whatever of any variation in the text, either here or in the parallel passage in 1 Chron. i. L2; and (2) if the transposition were effected, the desired sense would not be gained : for the words rendered in the A. V. "out of whom" (D19H "-">*> really mean "whence." and de- note a local movement rather than a genealogical de- scent, so that, as applied to the Caphtorim, they would merely indicate a sojourn of the Philistines in their land, and not the identity of the two races. The clause seems to have an appropriate meaning in its present po- sition: it looks like an interpolation into the original document with the view of explaining when and where the name Philistine was first applied to the people whose proper appellation was Caphtorim. It is an ety- mological as well as a historical memorandum; for ii is based on the meaning of the name Philistine (from the rool IZ33S the ZBthiopic falasa, "to migrate;" a term
which is said to be still current in Abyssinia | Knobel.
Volkert. p. 281 ]. and which on the Egyptian monu- ments appears under the form of Pulost [ BrugSch. Hist. cC Egypt, p. 1*7 |), viz. "emigrant," and is designed nl for the application oi thai name. Bul a sec- ond and more Berious difficulty arises out of the lan- guage of the Philistines; for while the Caphtorim were Hamitic, the Philistine language is held to have been Shemitic. (Hitzig, in his Urgeschichte </. Phil., how- ever, maintains thai the language is Indo-European, with a view to prove the Philistines to be Pelasgi. He i-. we believe, singular in his \ iew.) It has hence been inferred that the Philistines were in reality a Shemitic race, and that they derived the title of Caphtorim sim- ply from a residence in Caphtor (Ewald, i,331 ; \lo\ers. Phoniz. iii, 258), and it has been noticed in confirmation
Of this that their land is termed Canaan (Zeph. ii, 5).
Bul this seems to be inconsistent with the expn ss as- sertion of the Bible thai they were Caphtorim i Di ut. ii,
23), and not simply that they came from Caphtor; and
the ti i in t lanaan is applied to their country, not < thno- logically bul etyroologically, to describe the trading
habits of the Philistines. The difficulty arising out of the question of language has been met by assuming either thai the Caphtorim adopted the language of the conquered A vim (a not unusual circumstance where the conquered form the bulk of the population), or that they diverged from the Hamitic stock at a period when the distinctive features of Hamitism and Sbemitism were yet in embryo. (See below.) A third objection to their Egyptian origin is raised from the application of the term " uncircumcised" to them (1 Sam. xvii, 26; •_' Sam. i. 20), whereas the Egyptians were circumcised i Herod, ii. 36). But ibis objection is answered by Jer. ix, 25, 26, " here the same term is in Bome sense applied to the Egyptians, however it may be reconciled with the statement of Herodotus. See c iphtoe.
There is additional evidence to the above that the Philistines belonged to the Shemitic family. The names of their cities and their proper names are of She- mitic origin. In their intercourse with the- Israelites there are many intimations that the two used a com- mon language. How is this, if they were immigrants in Palestine? This difficulty is removed by supposing that originally they were in Palestine, being a pari ol the greal shemitic family, went westward, under press- ure from the wave of population which came down from the higher country to the sea-coast, but after- wards returned eastward, back from Crete to Palestine; so that in Amos ix, 7 it is to be understood that Cod brought them up to Palestine, as he brought the Israel- ites "in of Egypt back to their home. This view the passage undoubtedly admits: but we cannot agree with Movers in holding that it gives direct evidence in its favor, though his general position is probably correct, that the Philistines lirst quitted the mainland for the neighboring islands of the .Mediterranean sea. and then, after a nine, returned to their original home i Movers, 1 1. 19. 29, 35). Creek writers, however, give evidence of a wide diffusion of the Shemitic race over the islands of the Mediterranean. Thucydides says i, 8) thai most of the islands were inhabited by Carians and Phoeni- cians. Of Crete. Herodotus (i. 173) declares that bar- barians had. before Minos, formed the population of the island. There is evidence in Homer to the same effect {Ud. ix. 171 ; comp. Strabo, p. 475). Many proofs offer themselves that, before the spread of the Hellenes, these