In Israel, diggers unearth the Bible's bad guys

[rug]

TEL EL-SAFI, Israel (AP) — 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.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2011-07-10-Bible-israel-archeology-10_ST_N.htm

[Leontius]

1. Is the current opinion that the Philistines were a predominate

native Semitic population with an Indo-European elite or were the majority remnants of Indo-European migration?

[okasha]

2. It seems to have been about 50-50

Agean/Mycenean and Canaanite, with a similar degree of cultural melding. The pottery we have shows Agean influence, but the Philistines seem to have adopted Canaanite religion without much foreign influence.

[rug]

3. Under the current opinion I'd expect predator drones to be launched on a humanitarian mission.

[Odin2005]

4. Mix of Greeks, Minoans, and native Canaanites is what I've heard.

many early Philistine artifacts are identical to Mycenaean and sub-Minoan artifacts in the Aegean.