PHILISTINES IN THE BOOKS OF KINGS* Seymour Gitin W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem 1. Introduction The Philistines have long been of interest to students of the Bible. Although extra-biblical texts – including Egyptian, Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Greek sources – provide a number of important insights into the history of the Philistines, evidence that could address in detail questions relating to their origin, their historical, cultural, religious, and economic development, and their ultimate fate has only come to light in the last half-century as a result of archaeological exca- vations. Most importantly, archaeology has shed new light on the role of the Philistines as one of the chief protagonists in the history of biblical Israel. The Philistines, Philistia, and its cities are mentioned a total of 422 times in the Bible, but only 18 of these references occur in the Book of Kings, and these mention only the Philistines and three of their five capital cities, namely, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza. This indi- cates that in stark contrast to other periods, they played only a minor role during the period covered by the Book of Kings – the period of the United and Divided Monarchies that spanned from the 10th through the 8th c. BCE.1 Even though these 18 references offer only a * I wish to thank Edna Sachar for her careful reading of the text and to acknowl- edge the following credits for the illustrations: Figs. 1–2 from the Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority/photos © the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Figs. 3–5, 13 courtesy of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon; Fig. 14 courtesy the Tell eṣ-Ṣâfī/ Gath Archaeological Project; Figs. 7, 10–12, 15–17 by I. Sztulman and E. Kessel; Figs. 18–19 by Balage; Figs. 8–9 by Z. Radovan; and Fig. 20 by D. Guthrie for the Tel Miqne-Ekron Excavation and Publications Project; Fig. 6 adapted from P. E. Botta and E. Flandin, Monument de Ninive: Inscriptions IV (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1849) Pls. 93, 99. 1 The dating used throughout this chapter follows the traditional high chronol- ogy as summarized in A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000–586 B.C.E. (New York: Doubleday, 1990) 295–96; for a recent review of the high and low chronologies, see A. Mazar, “The Debate over the Chronology of the Iron Age in the Southern Levant,” in T. E. Levy and T. Higham (eds.), The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating: Archaeology, Text and Science (London: Equinox, 2005) 13–28. 302 seymour gitin circumscribed view of the Philistines, they nevertheless provide insights into the biblical author’s perception of certain aspects of the political and economic status and the religion of the Philistines. In posing the question of what we can learn about the Philistines from the Book of Kings, a primary issue is the reliability of the bibli- cal witness. Does the book present actual history, a theological tract, or a combination of both? While the authorship of the Book of Kings has been discussed elsewhere in this volume,2 this issue must also be addressed briefly in this chapter before embarking on the analysis of the text. The scholarly consensus is that the Book of Kings was for the most part composed during the exilic period in the 6th c. BCE, long after some of the events it describes, and that it was authored by the Deu- teronomistic Historian using a number of sources, for example, “The Annals of the Kings of Judah” referred to in 1 Kgs 14:29 and “The Annals of the Kings of Israel” cited in 1 Kgs 15:31. Whether there were one,3 two,4 or three5 editions of the Deuteronomistic History is not pertinent in this context. What is critical for the current study is the understanding that the text still reflects the physical and cultural envi- ronment of the historic periods to which it refers, even if it represents the final compilation of earlier written records and/or a long-standing oral tradition. This can be tested by a comparative analysis of the con- temporary extra-biblical texts and the archaeological data, but even if this is the case, we must bear in mind the possibility that the text was impacted by the views of its final editor, and therefore to some extent reflects his contemporary environment. 2. The Book of Kings Regarding the borders and political status of Philistia, the Book of Kings specifies that this land extended as far south as Gaza up to the boundary with Egypt and that it was under the control of Solomon (1 Kgs 5:1, 4) in the mid-10th century. The extent of this control and 2 See G. N. Knoppers and B. Halpern and A. Lemaire, this volume. 3 M. Noth, The Deuteronomistic History (JSOTSup, 15; Sheffield: JSOT, 1981) 79. 4 M. Cogan, I Kings (AB, 10; New York: Doubleday, 2000) 97. 5 B. Halpern and D. S. Vanderhooft, “The Editions of the Bible in the 7th–6th Centuries B.C.E.,” HUCA 62 (1991) 179..