Posted on 07/08/2011 5:19:43 AM PDT by SJackson
TEL EL-SAFI, Israel At the remains of an ancient metropolis in southern Israel, archaeologists are piecing together the history of a people remembered chiefly as the bad guys of the Hebrew Bible.
The city of Gath, where the annual digging season began this week, is helping scholars paint a more nuanced portrait of the Philistines, who appear in the biblical story as the perennial enemies of the Israelites.
Close to three millennia ago, Gath was on the frontier between the Philistines, who occupied the Mediterranean coastal plain, and the Israelites, who controlled the inland hills. The city's most famous resident, according to the Book of Samuel, was Goliath - the giant warrior improbably felled by the young shepherd David and his sling.
The Philistines "are the ultimate other, almost, in the biblical story," said Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, the archaeologist in charge of the excavation.
(Excerpt) Read more at charlotteobserver.com ...
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Lots of opinions to the contrary if you google the subject.
The dating of the Trojan War is indeed usually given as circa 1200 BC (or a little earlier, sometimes as far back as 1300 BC), and I’m not going to argue that the 1200 BC date isn’t out there — it’s just that it is dead wrong.
As an aside, I find it particularly odd that a siege that, 140 years ago, was practically universally held to be a fiction, has a fixed date. :’) Bravo for Heinrich Schliemann.
You’re only saying that because I’ve got five of ‘em, and it’s a five for five shot in the dark. ;’)
Philistines: Giving Goliath His DueThe name Goliath, like Achish, is not Semitic, but rather Anatolian (McCarter 1980, 291, Mitchell 1967, 415; Wainwright 1959, 79). Not all agree though; the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (2:524) proposes that Goliath may have been a remnant of one of the aboriginal groups of giants of Palestine who now were in the employ of the Philistines. [1. Naveh (1985, 9, 13 n. 14) states that Ikausu, the name of the king of Ekron in the seventh century b.c., is a non-Semitic name that can be associated with that of the Achish of Gath in David's time. The name in the seventh century has a shin ending that is non-West Semitic.]
Marco Polo Monographs, No. 7.
by Neal Bierling
foreword by Joe E. Seger
old edition on Amazon
Giving Goliath His Due:
New Archaeological Light on the Philistines
by Neal Bierling
foreword by Paul L. Maier
I think we’re too quick to dismiss myth as pure fiction. These things have a root somewhere.
After Schliemann, there was an apparently organized campaign to undermine the whole idea of the veracity of surviving ancient texts. The most notorious example (besides the construction of the Egyptian pseudochronology, which is mostly earlier in date) may be the jokers who claimed that there was never any flowing water, no cracks in the ground etc inside the Temple of the Delphic Oracle.
After more than a century of generations just believing that concoction, a geologist finally surveyed the site and found not only one fault line, but two — intersecting at the point where the oracle used to sit. Another researcher who had been brought up to reject the texts got talked into taking a look (the geologist basically told him, you haven’t been there, and you don’t know what you’re talking about), and then got permission to take some samples. A hallucinogenic gas (that’s one of its characeristics anyway) used to bubble out with the water (y’know, the water that someone claimed wasn’t there; the spring dried up in ancient times), and that’s what made the pythoness babble.
I’ve often wondered how the stone could penetrate Goliath’s skull if he was wearing his helmet, but then I supposed that Goliath, as another way of insulting David, took off his helmet and gave it to his shield bearer, shouting out “I won’t need this!.”
Very interesting article, but I hoped it might be about Sihon and Og... :-)
What? Suddenly your ‘courage’ leaves you?
What would you say?
The Philistines are, alas, alive and well in their recent incarnation as Philistinians (Palestinians).
CCD?
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine???
It’s regrettable that, by and large, journalists abandoned the respectable code of intellectual honesty and journalistic integrity.
> What? Suddenly your ‘courage’ leaves you?
>
> What would you say?
You seem to be the only one that doesn’t get it.
Oh I get it. You’re afriad to put the concept into your own words, as they will sound just like the words you are criticizing.
Oh, Please.
I already gave a demosntration of how to correctly report a piece.
Do your own bloody homework.
Reporting, by REAL journalists, which I don’t even pretend to be, even though I’ve take a course, does not have the reporter’s opinion in it. That’s for the goons in the editorial room, not the trench warriors on the street with a note pad and pen.
I’m not going to rewrite the stupid piece to show you how it’s correctly done.
If you don’t get it, that’s your problem.
Chuckle
You sure are going to a lot of effort and twisting yourself into pretzels just to avoid your iteration of the two words 'improbably felled'.
That's because they accurately describe the incident. You can't think of any other words to simply describe such an improbability, so you have to come up with hundreds of words to try and divert attention from your lack of ability.
> ‘improbably felled’
OK, since you seem to be too dense to get it.
“allegedly felled”
“felled according to the account”
“the author records that he was felled ...”
Please.
If you don’t have any imagination and skill, don’t accuse me of “twisting myself into pretzels”.
No go away and play with people your own mental age.
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