ANACHRONISTIC REFERENCES TO PHILISTINES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
We should deal first with who the Philistines were not. Before the
book of Judges, anachronistic and technically incorrect references to “Philistines”
occur in the books of Genesis and Exodus—eras when the Philistines did not yet
exist as a polity nor had settled in Canaan. The earliest contextual appearance
of the Philistines is found in Judges. That reference is a single verse that notes
that the judge Shamgar slew six hundred Philistines with an ox goad (Judges
3:31). No detail or location of the event is offered.
The Shamgar episode might have occurred soon after 1100 BC, and
subsequent Philistine references in Judges almost surely refer to events from
1100 and 1000 BC. Aside from the lack of earliest contextual biblical references,
no archaeological data suggests that Philistines were in Canaan or that they
and Israelites were in contact before the Iron Age I (ca. 1200 BC). But as both
societies continued to settle and grow in the second century of Iron Age I, the
archaeological record demonstrates that contact between Philistines and
Israelites became common. That contact is evident in the book of Judges,
including the allusion to certain of Israel being under the control of Philistines
(10:7; 13:1) and the narrative of Samson’s adventures (13:2-16:31). By the time
of Samson’s story, likely dated to the first half of the eleventh century BC,
the Philistines had grown sufficiently in population, settlement area, and
military power to be able to advance forces as far east as Lehi in Judah, near Jerusalem
(15:9).
. . .
The anachronistic references to Philistines in Genesis and Exodus are
easily explained. In the story of Abraham and Sarah, a Canaanite chieftain
named Abimelech (a proper Semitic Canaanite name) is said to have been “king of
Gerar” (Genesis 20:2), located southeast of Gaza where the southern coastal
plain of Canaan meets the northern Negev desert. Sometime later, Abimelech met
with Abraham at Beersheba, further east in the northern Negev, where the two
men concluded a treaty, after which the Canaanite returned into the land of the
Philistines,” and Abraham was also subsequently able to sojourn “in the Philistines’
land many days” (21:31-34). Isaac is said to have gone “unto Abimelech king of
the Philistines unto Gerar” (26:1; also 26:8) and the subjects of Abimelech are
called “Philistines” in three other verses (26:14-15, 18). But Abraham’s and
Isaac’s lives are realistically dated to 1800 to 1700 BC, some five hundred to
six hundred years before the Philistines’ arrival and settlement of the coastal
plain. Abimelech and his subjects cannot have been Philistines.
The reason for the anachronistic appearance of the term Philistines
in these passages may be traced to the Judahite editor(s) of the Genesis
narrative, who worked in the late seventh century BC, when the coastal plain
and region of Gerar had long been well known as Philistine territory. The
Genesis text, from around 620 BC, used the term Philistine as a
geographic locator for the stories involving the Canaanite chieftain in the
southern coastal plain. Similar anachronisms occur in modern biblical
commentaries when Old or New Testament events are described as having occurred
in “Palestine,” a name not in use for the land of Israel (Matthew 2:20-22)
until the second century AD, or Book of Mormon events as having happened in “America,”
a name not applied to the western hemisphere continents until the sixteenth
century. The reference to “the way of the land of the Philistines” (Exodus 13:17)
in the story of Israel’s departure from Egypt, ca. 1270 BC, is also
anachronistic, because no Philistines had migrated to early thirteenth century
BC period of the Exodus.
The reference in Joshua to “the borders of the Philistines” is also
anachronistic in its seventh century BC literary origins, since it is also
connected to an immediate recitation of the “five lords of the Philistines: the
Gazathites, and the Ashdothites, the Eshkalonites, the Gittites, and the
Ekronites” (Joshua 13:2-3), a combined polity which had not yet developed in
Canaan by the late thirteenth century BC. The Philistine pentapolis league
likely developed only a century later. The initial appearance of Philistines in
the coastal plain, which up until recently was not modeled before about 1175
BC, is now demonstrated by radiocarbon dating and other scientific methods to
have possibly begun in the late 1200s BC. This is based on archaeological finds
at the summit of Tell es-Safi, the Philistine city of Gath. If this be the case
and Philistine settlement in Canaan had already occurred before the reign of Egypt’s
Rameses III and even as early as the late decade of the reign of Rameses II,
who died in 1224 BC, then the Joshua 13 reference to the “borders of the
Philistines” at the time that Israel began its settlement in Canaan would
reflect a certain reality despite its late and anachronistic composition. (Jeffrey
R. Chadwick, “The Philistines in the Old Testament,” in From Wilderness to
Monarchy: The Old Testament Through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel
L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade [Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt
Lake City: Deseret Book, 2025], 66-69)
With respect to
the radiocarbon tests at Tell es-Safi, Chadwick makes reference to the
following articles:
Michael Toffolo
et al., “Characterization
of Contexts for Radiocarbon Dating: Results from the Early Iron Age at Tell
Es-Safi/Gath, Israel,” Radiocarbon 54, nos. 3-4 (2012): 371-90
Yotam Asscher et
al., “Radiocarbon
dating shows an early appearance of Philistine material culture in Tell
es-Safi/Gath, Philistia,” Radiocarbon 57, no. 5 (2015): 825-50
