101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

172 101 Myths of the Bible
The Sea Peoples were not a united political or geographical entity. They were a
loose coalition of several groups, the composition of which constantly changed. Primarily,
they came from Anatolia, Crete, and other Mediterranean locations.Their archaeological
remains in Canaan show a close cultural connection to the Mycenaean Greeks.
The Philistine faction appears to have come from Crete and occupied five major
cities in Canaan—Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and Gath (where Goliath came
from). Each city functioned as an independent city-state, and the leaders of the city
were called“seranim,”which a number of scholars have, coincidentally, translated as“judge.”
Among the Sea Peoples arriving in Canaan was a group known as the Danuna,
and the Danuna appear to be the remnant of the Greek Danoi, the people identified
by Homer as the invaders of Troy. In fact, several of the Sea Peoples groups have
names similar to those of some of the participants in the Trojan War. For example, the
Drdnw appear to correspond to the Dardanians of Homer, the Trs to the Etruscans,
and the Lukka to the Lycians.
The Danuna first appeared in the records as part of a major Sea Peoples advance
during the reign of Ramesses III at about 1190 B.C., a date that precedes the Song
of Deborah.
Another Sea Peoples group, the Ekwesh, is sometimes identified with a group
referred to in Hittite texts as the Ahhiyawa, and this suggests Homer’s Achaeans.
Homer uses Danoi and Achaean interchangeably to identify the invaders of Troy. The
Ekwesh and the existence of Israel are both mentioned for the first time on the same
Egyptian stele, erected during the reign of Merneptah at about 1220 B.C.
Sometime after 1220 B.C., the tribe of Dan relocated itself from the coast to the far
north of Israel, supposedly because of Philistine pressures. Interestingly, archaeologists
have found some Philistine style pottery in northern Dan, one of the few areas in
Canaan outside of the main Philistine center where such materials have been found.
This suggests that the Danites/Danuna split from the Philistines, were chased north,
and joined the Israelite confederation for protection.
Dan, therefore, was not a son of Jacob. The tribe named after him was descended
from the Greek Danuna, which explains why it was identified as a sea-faring people
and why the Danite hero Samson spent so much time with the Philistines.