Who Were The Philistines?

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This documentary explores the real history of the Philistines — one of the most misunderstood peoples of the ancient world. Known today mainly as the biblical enemies of Israel, the Philistines were in fact a powerful Iron Age civilization whose cities ranked among the largest and richest in the eastern Mediterranean.

The video traces their origins in the chaos of the Late Bronze Age collapse, when drought, famine, and mass migrations reshaped the ancient world. Drawing on Egyptian inscriptions, archaeology, and modern DNA studies, it explains how the Sea Peoples — identified in Egyptian sources as the Peleset — were defeated by Ramesses III and resettled in southern Canaan, where they merged with the local population and formed what later sources call the Philistines.

You will learn how the Philistine Pentapolis — Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath — functioned as a unique political confederation, why their material culture points to Aegean origins, and how their early use of iron technology gave them a decisive military edge over their neighbors. The video also examines their religion, language, and rapid cultural assimilation into the Semitic world, including the worship of deities such as Dagon and Baal-Zebub.

A major focus is the long conflict between the Philistines and the Israelites, including the historical background behind figures like Saul, David, and Goliath, as well as archaeological finds from Gath that shed light on biblical traditions. The story then follows Philistia under Assyrian domination, its transformation into an industrial powerhouse producing olive oil on a massive scale, and its eventual destruction by the Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar II.

Finally, the documentary explains how the Philistines disappeared as a distinct people through deportation and assimilation, yet left behind one of the most enduring names in history. From Peleset and Pelištim came the term Palestine, later used by Greek authors such as Herodotus and ultimately adopted by Rome when Emperor Hadrian renamed the province Syria Palaestina.

This video is based on primary sources, archaeology, and modern scholarship, offering a full historical reconstruction of who the Philistines really were — beyond myth, polemic, and later tradition.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:31 Sea Peoples
3:45 Settlers in Canaan
5:40 Origins of the Philistines
08:28 Language and Religion
10:33 Wars against Israel
15:54 Under imperial rule

Bibliography
1. Ben-Shlomo, David, et al. Philistine Culture: A Comparative Perspective.
2. Dothan, Moshe, and Trude Dothan. People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines
3. Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.
4. Gitin, Seymour. The Philistines: Neighbors of the Canaanites, Phoenicians, and Israelites.
5. Harrison, Timothy P. Neo-Hittites in the Land of Palistin.
6. Killebrew, Ann E. Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel
7. Maeir, Aren M. Goliath’s Hometown: Gath of the Philistines.
8. Maeir, Aren M., et al. Iron Age Population Dynamics in Philistia: A Genetic Perspective.
9. Mazar, Amihai. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible
10. O’Connor, David. The Sea Peoples and the Egyptian Sources.
11. Redford, Donald B. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times.
12. Singer, Itamar. The Philistines in the Bible: A Late Tradition?
13. Stager, Lawrence E. Ashkelon and the Archaeology of Destruction: Kislev 604 BCE.
14. Yasur-Landau, Assaf. The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the Late Bronze Age.

🎤 ⁠Voiceover by: Nick Banas
Instagram:   / nickbanas