The Real Philistines were quite different than portrayed

Books of Joshua, Samuel, Amos, Zephania, Jeremiah, Ezekiel

WARNING: Attempted murder, human disfigurement, hemorrhoids

CONTEXT: ~ 1100 - 700 BCE During these centuries, the proto Greeks or Sea Peoples occupied the coasts of Palestine while the Hebrews were in the hills. The biblical issues with the Philistines had as much to do with real estate than worshiping the wrong god.

Today's Fun Bible Story is about the much vilified people known as the “Philistines” (or Peleset) an ancient people who occupied the Mediterranean coast concurrently with the Hebrew Bible events found in the Books of Genesis through Ezekiel. To this day, the term philistine is used to describe barbarians and lack of culture, when this is the opposite of the historical truth. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures and especially in the Books of Moses, any ethnic peoples who were not the Hebrews or proto-Israelites were vilified. This was about real estate.

HISTORY: Most people know this people primarily as enemies of the Jews, especially as depicted in the fairy tales of Samson and Delilah and David and Goliath. In the books of Judges, Samuel and Amos, God’s people fight the bad Philistines, worshipers of pagan gods. 

Historically and archeologically speaking, however, the Philistines were known as the Sea Peoples. They have been called proto Greeks, sailors and warriors who migrated from the Aegean to the Levantine coast shortly after the Trojan War concluded in about 1200 BCE. This movement was likely part of a massive disruption of civilization known as the Late Bronze Age Collapse.1 The LBAC is also placed shortly after the Exodus story would have taken place (if it had actually taken place). Although not historically true, the Exodus tradition reflects a group memory of traumatic events that convulsed the region as an anthropological bridge to Early Iron Age.

The Hebrews/Israelites were an emerging Canaanite tribal confederation which occupied the hill country around Jerusalem beginning around 1200 BCE. The more advanced Philistines were settled on the coast by Pharaoh Ramesses III, concentrated in five major trading cities: Gath, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, and Gaza.2 The latter is the same region as the troubled Gaza strip of modernish times. In general, Philistia was more urban than the Hebrew hill country societies.3 Hence the ongoing conflict. However, as time passed, the Philistines and Canaanite/Israelites also integrated their cultures, intermarried (see Samson) and exchanged gods.

In addition to the better known biblical Philistine tales, consider these: In Genesis, after pimping his wife Sarah to Pharaoh, Abraham turns around and lends her to a Philistine king named Abimelech for his harem. The fact that the Philistines did not yet exist, nor would they show up in the region for almost a thousand years in no way diminishes the bible lesson: if you lend your wife to a King, he will give you presents. 

It is also overlooked on purpose that the Warlord cum King of Israel led a bunch of merry men comprised of Philistines while he was on the lam from King Saul. Samson himself hung out with Philistines, whence he sources the evil but apparently pretty cute Delilah.
 

The Assyrians defeated and deported the population of Philistia, along with the ten confederated tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. All of these peoples disappear from history at that point, if not from conspiracy theory.

  The term Palestine is derived from the word Philistine. 

When the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant in 1 Samuel, YHWH punished them by afflicting them with hemorrhoids, which caused them give it back filled with gifts. 

"And it was so, that, after they had carried it about, the hand of the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction: and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts.”  - 1Samuel 5:9 [KJV]

The Ark was supposed to contain the tablets of the Law and other items, but it is not clear from this narrative if there was enough room.

_________________________ NOTES________________________

1. Late Bronze Age Collapse was a  period of cataclysmic cultural disruption in the eastern Mediterranean during the 12th century BC. Although the causes are still not completely known, it saw the end of several powerful civilizations and mass movement of peoples. 

2. This is the same Gaza as the horrific warfare and 

3. The Israelites did not arrive in Canaan from bondage in Egypt, but were already a Canaanite group indigenous to the region.