Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

SOJOURN IN THE NEGEB 2O:l-21:34
D, Alon, surveyed the site of Gerar and “found evidence
from potsherds that the city had enjoyed a period of
prosperity during the Middle Bronze Age, the period of the
Biblical patriarchs” (DISCT:DBA, 25 1). Cornfeld (AtD,
72) gives a consistent account of this problem of the
origin of the Philistines in the Near East, as follows: “This
designation [.‘Philistine’] is generally regarded as anachron-
istic because the name Philistine was applied to a Western
people (Peoples of the Sea) which had migrated from
Crete and the Aegean coastlands and isles around 1200
B.C.E., and settled in the coastal regions of southern Pales-
tine. C. H. Gordon and I. Grinz consider that these ‘early’
Philistines of Gerar came from a previous migration of sea
people from the Aegean and Minoan sphere, including
Crete, which is called Caphtor in the Bible and Ugarit
tablets, and Caphtorian is the Canaanite name for Minoan.
Their earlier home was that other great cultural center of
antiquity, the Aegean, which flourished throughout the
2nd millenium B.C.E., and is considered a major cradle
of East Mediterranean, Near Eastern and European civiliza-
tion. It has a close connection with the Hittite civilization,
which stems also from an Indo-European migration into
this sphere. This civilization spread by trade, navigation,
and migration to Asia Minor, North Canaan (Ugarit, etc.) ,
South Canaan (Gerar). The early Philistines who came
into contact with the early Hebrews, and the Mycenaeans
of proto-historic Greece, to whom the most prominent
Homeric heroes belonged, were different sections of this
Minoan (Caphtorian) world, By the time of the Amarna .
Age, or late patriarchal age, these immigrants formed an
important segment of the coastal dwellers of Canaan.
Vestiges of Aegeo-Minoan art, pottery, and tools abound
in archaeological finds of this period. The art is remark-
able for its vivacity and it injected a notable degree of
liveliness into the art of the Near East, including Egypt.
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