Ps 108.9: Moab is my washbowl; Over Edom I shall throw my shoe; Over Philistia I will shout aloud. - NASB We mentioned the Philistines yesterday, how that they arrived in Canaan a few years after 1200 BC, not long after the Israelites crossed the Jordan into the land[1]. The Philistines are mentioned a lot in scripture; they are the people that Saul and David fought most frequently. But there is one mention of them that causes people to doubt the accuracy of the scriptures: Gen 21.34: And Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines for many days. We know the Philistines didnt arrive in Canaan until around 1180 BC, so how can Abraham in 1800ish BC sojourn in the land of the Philistines for many days? Kitchen writes[2]: In Gen 21 the sole usage with Abraham is in the phrase the land of the Philistines (vv.32-34), and this would fall into the same category as the phrases the route of the land of the Philistines in Ex 13.17 and the bounds from the sea of reeds to the sea of the Philistines in Ex 23.31. Likewise in Josh 13.2-3. Here we see a usage from the 12-10th centuries (1180 and following) that replaced an earlier, obsolete term - just as we would say The Dutch founded New York although they did so as New Amsterdam, the present name replacing the former under their British successors. And nobody ceaselessly squawks Anachronism about this! Compare already the tacit later substitution of Dan for Laish in Gen 14.14[3]. Thus some earlier and obsolete term would have been replaced in such cases. Kitchen is right: if in conversation we mentioned New York was founded by the Dutch and were interrupted by a whiny, nasal ACTUALLY, it was called New Amsterdam, not New York, we would dismiss the unfortunate individual for the snivelling, big-picture-missing and ignorant pedant that they are. PS: Why is the second half of this psalm essentially a copy-and-paste of the second half of Ps 60!? [1] Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2006), p 137 [2] Ibid., p 340 [3] We covered this here: https://facebook/biblicalhistoricalcontext/posts/778441822183363
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 06:30:00 +0000
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