Philistines

The Philistines (/ˈfɪlɨstiːnz/, /ˈfɪlɨstaɪnz/, /fɨˈlɪstɨnz/, or /fɨˈlɪstiːnz/; Hebrew: פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Plištim) were a people described in the Bible. The Hebrew term ""pelistim"" occurs 286 times in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible (of which 152 times in 1 Samuel), whereas in the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible, the equivalent term phylistiim occurs only 12 times, with the remaining 269 references instead using the term ""allophylos"" (""of another tribe""). According to Joshua 13:3 and 1 Samuel 6:17, the land of the Philistines (or Allophyloi), called Philistia, was a pentapolis in southwestern Levant comprising the five city-states of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath, from Wadi Gaza in the south to the Yarqon River in the north, but with no fixed border to the east. The Bible portrays them at one period of time as among the Kingdom of Israel's most dangerous enemies. Biblical scholars have connected the Philistines to other biblical groups such as Caphtorim and the Cherethites and Pelethites, which have both been identified with Crete, and leading to the tradition of an Aegean origin, although this theory has been disputed.Outside of the Bible, the evidence for and origins of the Philistines are not clear and is the subject of considerable research and speculation in biblical archaeology. Since 1822, scholars have connected the Biblical Philistines with the Egyptian ""Peleset"" inscriptions, all five of which appear from c.1150 BCE just as archaeological references to ""Kinaḫḫu"" or ""Ka-na-na"" (Canaan) come to an end, and since 1873 comparisons were drawn between them and to the Aegean ""Pelasgians"". While the evidence for these connections is etymological and has been disputed, this identification is held by the majority of egyptologists and biblical archaeologists. Archaeological research to date has been unable to corroborate a mass settlement of Philistines during the Ramesses III era.