The Philistines were likely southern Europeans

[pantheory]

Genetic evidence form 10 individuals buried in the old Philistine city and port of Ashkelon indicate that these individuals, and likely the Philistines of the Bible in general, had their genetic origins from southern Europe. As bronze age cities went through wars and disruptions about 3000 years ago groups of migrants moved to the Eastern Mediterranean in the areas which are now Turkey, Lebanon and Syria, areas which they shared with the Phoenicians.  In time these new cities conquered developing cities in what is now Israel and the middle east in general.  This extended population became known as the Philistines.

The ancient Hebrews that occupied Israel and Judea at the time of the Biblical Philistines trace much of their DNA origins to Mesopotamia and present day populations in Syria, and the Arabs of Irag.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-dna-origins-philistines-bible-europe-israel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews

 

 

 

[mwc]

     I had also read this.  It's been hypothesized for awhile.  You also have the accounts of Philistines being very "Greek" (for lack of a better term here) in nature (although somewhat anachronous in the telling) in things like the story of David and Goliath and elsewhere.

 

          mwc

 

[LogicalFallacy]

So Samson fell in love with a southern European Woman? Cool.

 

I wonder if their gods bear any resemblance to European gods of the time, or did the 'borrow' from lands around them?

[pantheory]

17 hours ago, LogicalFallacy said:

So Samson fell in love with a southern European Woman? Cool.

 

I wonder if their gods bear any resemblance to European gods of the time, or did the 'borrow' from lands around them?

 

From my brief research it looks like the principal god of the Philistines was Dagon whose ancestors migrated to Palestinian shores from Crete. The religion was believed to have originally come from Mesopotamia. Dagon was the god of fertility, bountiful crops, harvest, and abundance in general. Dagon figured prominently in the Philistine concepts of death and the afterlife. In addition to his major role in Philistine religion, Dagon was also worshiped as the primary god of fruitfulness and tranquility in the more general society of the Canaanite peoples of the surrounding areas. He was worshiped by fisherman as the god that provided a plentiful catch, sometimes depicted as a fish-god.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagon

[pantheory]

On 7/6/2019 at 2:49 PM, mwc said:

     I had also read this.  It's been hypothesized for awhile.  You also have the accounts of Philistines being very "Greek" (for lack of a better term here) in nature (although somewhat anachronous in the telling) in things like the story of David and Goliath and elsewhere.

 

          mwc

 

 

Their DNA was associated with southern Italians which was an admixture of various warring kingdoms of Indigenous Italians of the time, immigrant Greeks and Macedonians, according to the article.

[Tsathoggua9]

Interesting!

[TABA]

I’ve often thought that modern-day people in Syria and Lebanon resemble people from Greece and southern Italy more than they do their Arab kinfolk in Egypt and the Arabian peninsula, in appearance if not in culture.