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 4. Conclusions.—The Philistines appear in the Old Testament as a Semitic or at least a thoroughly Semitized people. Their proper names show that before and even during the Persian age their languages differed only dialectically from Hebrew. Among the exceptions must be reckoned Achish (Sept. ), with which has been compared Ikausu, a king of Ekron (7th century) and the “Keftian” name Akashau of the XIXth Egyptian dynasty. Names in -ath (Goliath; Ahuzzath, Gen. xxvi.) are not restricted to Philistines, and Phicol (ibid.) is too obscure to serve as evidence. The religion is not novel. The male god has his partner  (qq.v.), and Baal-zebub, a famous oracle of Ekron (2 Kings i.) finds a parallel in the local “baals” of Palestine. Even when the region seems to be completely Hellenized after the Persian age, it is not so certain that Greek culture pervaded all classes (see G. F. Moore, Ency. Bib. col. 3726), although a certain amount of foreign influence probably made itself felt upon the coast-towns at all times. The use of the term in Maccabaean and later writings (cf. the contemptuous hatred of Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus l. 26, and the author of Jubilees xxiv. 30 sqq.) correctly expresses the conditions of the Greek age and the Maccabaean wars, and naturally any allusion to the situations of many centuries previously is quite unnecessary. Similarly, the biblical evidence represents the traditions in the form which they had reached in the writer's time, the true date of which is often uncertain. Antagonism between Philistines and Israelites was not a persisting feature, and, although the former are styled “uncircumcised” (chiefly in the stories in the book of Samuel), the term gained new force when the expulsion of uncircumcised aliens from the sanctuary of Jerusalem was proclaimed in the writings ascribed to Ezekiel (ch. xliv.).

In fact the question arises whether the history of the Philistines is not that of a territorial designation, rather than that of the lineal descendants of the Purasati, who, if one of the peoples who took part in the events of the XXth Dynasty, may well have bequeathed their name. The Mediterranean coast-land was always exposed to incursions of aliens, and when Carians appear as royal and temple guards at Jerusalem (2 Kings xi. 4), it is sufficient to recall old Greek traditions of a Carian sea-power and relations between Philistia and Greek lands. Even the presence of Carians and Ionians in the time of Psammetichus I. may be assumed, and when these are planted at Defneh it is noteworthy that this is also closely associated with a Jewish colony (viz. Tahpanhes, Jer. xliii. seq.). Although the Purasati appear after the 15th–14th centuries, now illuminated by the Amarna tablets, their own history is perhaps earlier. But there is no reason at present to believe that their entrance caused any break in the archaeological history. The apparently “Aegean” influence which enters into the general “Amarna” period seems to begin before the age of the Amarna tablets (at Lachish), and it passes gradually into later phases contemporary with the

Israelite monarchy. There is a fairly continuous intercourse with external culture (Cypriote, early and late Greek), and, if Gath be identified with Tel eṣ-Ṣāfi, Bliss and Macalister, who excavated it, found no trace of any interruption in its history. Only at Gezer—perhaps Philistine, 2 Sam. v. 25—has there been found evidence for a strange race with several distinctive features. Bricked vault tombs were discovered containing bodies outstretched (not contracted); the deposits were of an unusually fine character and comprised silver, alabaster and even iron. The culture appears to find Carian and Lydian parallels, and has been ascribed provisionally to the 13th–10th centuries. So far, however, of the cities lying within or immediately exposed to Philistine influence, the discoveries at Gezer are unique.

According to the biblical traditions the Philistines are the remnant of Caphtor (Jer. xlvii. 4, Amos ix. 7), and the Caphtōrīm drove out the aboriginal Avva from Gaza and district, as the Horites and Rephaim were displaced by Edom and Ammon (Deut. ii. 23). These Caphtōrīm, together with Ludim (Lydians) and other petty peoples, apparently of the Delta, are once reckoned to Egypt (Gen. x. 14). By Caphtor the Septuagint has sometimes understood Cappadocia, which indeed may be valid for its age, but the name is to be identified with the Egyptian K(a)ptar, which in later Ptolemaic times seems to mean Phoenicia, although Keftiu had had another connotation. The Cherethites, associated with the Philistine district (1 Sam. xxx. 14, 16, Ezek. xxv. 16, Zeph. ii. 5 seq.), are sometimes recognized by the Septuagint as Cretans, and, with the Pelethites (often taken to be a rhyming form of Philistines), they form part of the royal body-guard of Judaeah kings (2 Sam. viii. 18, xv. 18. xx. 7, 1 Kings i. 38, 44; in 2 Sam. xx. 23 the Hebrew text has Carites). However adequate these identifications may seem, the persistence of an independent clan or tribe of Cherethites-Cretans to the close of the 7th century would imply an unbroken chain of nearly six hundred years, unless, as is inherently more probable, later immigrations had occurred within the interval. But upon the ethnological relations either of the south Palestinian coast or of the Delta it would be unsafe to dogmatize. So far as can be ascertained, then, the first mention of the Philistines belongs to an age of disturbance and change in connexion with movements in Asia Minor. Archaeological evidence for their influence has indeed been adduced, but it is certain that some account must be taken also of the influence by land from North Syria and Asia Minor. The influences, whether from the Levant, or from the north, were not confined to the age of Rameses III. alone, and the biblical evidence, especially, while possibly preserving some recollection of the invasion of the Purasati, is in every case late and may be shaped by later historical vicissitudes. It is impossible that Palestine should have remained untouched by the external movements in connexion with the Delta, the Levant and Asia Minor, and it is possible that the course of internal history in the age immediately before and after 1000 ran upon lines different from the detailed popular religious traditions which the biblical historians have employed. (See further : History.)

For older studies, see F. Hitzig, Urgeschichte der Philister (1845), with the theory of the Pelasgic origin of the Philistines; K. Stark, ''Gaza u. d. philist. Küste'' (1852), and (with special reference to earlier theories) W. Robertson Smith's art. in ''Ency. Brit.'', 9th ed.

 PHILISTUS, Greek historian of Sicily, was born at Syracuse about the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (432 ). He was a faithful supporter of the elder Dionysius, and commander