Valleys of friction: a regional consideration of Israelite and Philistine interrelationship during their early encounters in the northern Shephelah
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2016-03-23
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Towson University. Jewish Studies Program
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Abstract
Dr. William G. Dever, in his book “What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?” expressed in part the issue to be addressed by this study. Speaking of “Primary” and “Secondary” Sources and the separate yet parallel disciplines of Biblical Interpretation and Archaeology he comments, ´Biblical scholars, until recently, trained primarily as philologians, have always tended to overvalue texts as the more ‘objective’ evidence, even when they acknowledge as they must the inherent differences in interpretation. In my judgment, this reflects a certain naïveté about how texts serve as ‘symbols’ and an abysmal ignorance of how artifacts can serve in the same way” (Dever, 2001, p.87).
This statement could also apply to the trained archaeologist who often undervalues the biblical text when evaluating the physical data uncovered in his or her professional activities. Thus, the extant literature addressing Philistine and Israelite interaction tends to reflect a parochial and often isolated view confined to the given researcher’s discipline. This dissertation will add a third parallel discipline, often neglected or ignored altogether, to the two aforementioned disciplines. The biblical narrative and the archaeologist’s understanding of material remains both exist within a “physical setting” which can be defined in terms of geography, geology and topography. The elements of that definition have a direct contextual connection with the Biblical text and the archaeological data. It is the purpose of this dissertation to combine the geographic environment, the Biblical narrative and the physical remains to further define and understand the Israelite and Philistine interrelationships during their early encounters in the northern Shephelah.