Talk:Philistine language

The disinfobox
Looking at the disinfobox that I have reproduced at right, we see that, as is so often the case, the disinfobox trumps all nuanced discourse— subconsciously done, one hopes, assuming good faith—but coarsely effective. In this case the disinfobox definitively establishes the Philistine language as Semitic: specifically Northwest Semitic. All discussion has been peremptorily halted, because a blank in the otherwise purposeless disinfobox must be filled with something. Disinfoboxes, as anyone may see here, are not required to present any kind of substantiation through references and sources, as text is now so arbitrarily required to do, in a surficial display of an elusive Wikipedian intellectual honesty. The disinfobox sets up an anti-text that is designed to attract the semi-literate eye with lively color and to replace the drab article with which it jostles so uncomfortably on the Wikipedia page. Disinfoboxes rule, dudes! --Wetman (talk) 01:30, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't this info box be simply deleted? G Purevdorj (talk) 23:48, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed. It is not possible to put anything in there that is better than speculative and dubious, so we are better without it.  McKay (talk) 06:25, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The objectionable point of these boxes is that they are in competition with the nuanced text.--Wetman (talk) 09:14, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Agree, and Ethnologue as their most common source is not to be trusted. Anyway, you cannot really start from this article if you want to criticize info-boxes in general, it is too bizarre a mismatch. G Purevdorj (talk) 09:25, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Disinformation regarding supposed "Indo-European roots" of supposed "Philistine" words in the Bible

 * It is truly unscholarly to speculate an Indo-European origin for the Hebrew word for hat, 'koba', כובע, which is also used as the name for Goliath's helmet. First of all, it contains the guttural letter 'Ayin', which is a clear shibboleth of the Semitic languages. Secondly, in the Bible it is also spelled with an inital 'Quf' instead of 'Kaf' and also means helmet, and in both cases can refer to helmets in general, not just in reference to Goliath or the Philistines.
 * Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius in his highly respected 'Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon' conclusively traces the etymology of this word to a Hebrew root meaning "to be high high and rounded at the top". This root gave rise to many cognate Hebrew words, including those meaning "helmet", "cup" or "calix", "to hide", "a tiara", "a mound". A similar cognate root also exists in Arabic. Just because there are similar sounding words in Indo-European languages does not at all mean that their source is from an Indo-European language
 * I find it just a little convenient that Western scholars should hypothesize an Indo-European origin for Philistine language. As evidenced by their own incriptions, the Philistines adopted the local 'lingua franca', which was the ancient Language of Canaan which various tribes in the region, including the Israelites, spoke. Speculation on the ultimate origin of the Philistines would appear to point to coastal Anatolia, Crete, or Cyprus. In all these regions, it is very probable that non-Indo-European languages were spoken by the native populations in remote antiquity, those these peoples were ultimately Hellenized. However, in interior Anatolia, non-Indo-European languages continued to persist for a long time, even under domination by Indo-European-speakers, e.g. the Hurrians and Urartians, Hattians (the original Hittites, as opposed to the Indo-European neo-"Hittite" Nesili), and numerous other tribes.
 * Even some Greek words may be traced to pre-Indo-European sources. Inicidentally, the very word that for captain in Hebrew which is applied to the Philistines, 'seren', is imputed by some linguists to derive from the Greek word 'tyrannos', which itself is not believed to have an Indo-European source.
 * In the "table of nations" in Genesis, the Philistines, who are supposed to descend from Ham, are given a clearly different origin from the Greeks, who are supposed to descend from Japheth.
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.68.95.65 (talk) 23:07, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, as shown in the Gesenius Lexicon, the word 'argaz' is a Hebrew word meaning a chest or cofer, from the root r-g-z, meaning "to tremble wag, move to-and fro-", and there is a cognate word in Arabic meaning "a bag filled with stones, hung at the sides of camels, in order to preserve equilibrium." As for the Philistine name 'Padi', similar names of Israelites do exist, e.g. Padon (one of the Nethinim) and 'Pedaiah', father in law of King Josiah. Both names are derived from the Hebrew root p-d-h or p-d-d, meaning "to cut loose" or "liberation".
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.68.95.65 (talk) 23:53, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Sapir (1936) says "Attempts to explain argaz as a derivative of a Semitic root rgz are not to be taken seriously." McKay (talk) 03:17, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but Wikipedia articles are the wrong place for these arguments. You may well be correct that Gesenius was right on these issues in 1846, and later scholars like Sapir in 1936-7 were wrong, but this article is not the place to present your opinion. Please read WP:OR and WP:RS for what is permitted here and what is not. If you can find a published reliable source arguing (for example) that Sapir was wrong about 'koba', you can report what that source says. But you can't argue whether that source is right or not. You should also follow a chronological order of scholarship; nobody in 1846 "refuted" what someone argued in 1936. The correct report is that someone in 1846 said one thing and someone in 1936 disagreed. Sapir cites Gesenius to argue contrarily, not the other way around. Our task is to report what the scholars say, not to analyse their arguments or take sides. McKay (talk) 03:00, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it is unacceptable that you deleted my entire edits. Your article insists on providing a tenuous, controversial thesis by Edward Sapir, whose area of expertise was in Germanic languages and Native American languages, not Semitic ones. It conveniently omits well established research done by scholars whose area of expertise is in the Semitic languages. Both points of view must be cited together, which is not the case. Sapir's work in the '30s may have aroused the interest of linguists, on account of the discovery and decipherment of the Hittite tablets. (One should not forget that the Hittites adopted Akkadian cuneiform, and with it a number of Akkadian words and deities.)
 * However, Sapir's thesis on the Indo-European origin of certain Hebrew words attributed to the Philistines has not been accepted by scholars, for the simple reason that there is not a shred of evidence to back it up. Since the Philistines are known for a fact to have adopted the local Canaanite dialect akin to Hebrew long before they left any inscriptions, a Hebraic/Semitic etymology for any alleged "Philistine words" in the Bible must first be considered before anything else.
 * Let's examine the facts for a moment. In the case of the words for helmet k/qoba (which is used in many other references than the Philistines), a Semitic root meaning "to be high and rounded" is almost certain.
 * The root Q-B-& is not only the source of the root of the word helmet, but also for the word 'chalice' (Quba'at Kos) used in Isaiah 51:17,22. A cognate word exists in Arabic denoting the property of curvature.
 * The same root Q-B-& indicates to "fasten, fix, establish" in Aramaic, and "to hide one's head" in Arabic, and "to defraud or deceive" (from the sense of covering, hiding) in Hebrew. See "Hebrew in its West Semitic Setting", by A. Murtonen.
 * The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures also mentions the root in the sense of "to be hollow". http://books.google.com/books?id=ire_ndthLp8C&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=qoba+semitic+helmet&source=bl&ots=vlz8ZzwE3y&sig=zVaUZ56r3Vm1mVrzUAjtk9hT_3g&hl=en&ei=VN3sSY-2JpOEtweklN3IBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5
 * Further to that there are the cognate roots in Hebrew and other Semitic languages.
 * There is G-B-& in Hebrew which denoted a "mound or hill", from which is also derived the word for "tiara" (migba'a)
 * There is of course Q-B, which denotes "a hollow vessel".
 * There is Q-B-B, which means to "make gibbous and hollow", also "to arch, to vault".
 * There is also Q-B-H. The Arabic word "al-Qubbah" is the source of our word "alcove". A related word in Hebrew denotes "tent, bedchamber", and another one denotes "stomach".
 * As for the word "Argaz", as I said, at least Gesenius was able to identify a cognate word in Arabic denoting "a bag filled with stones, hung at the sides of camels, to balance and preserve equilibrium". So far as I know, Sapir failed to note a reasonable cognate for the word in any Indo-European language.
 * As for the word "Seren", the case for a non-Hebraic etymology is indeed stronger, and it could well be that it is a word the Philistines carried over from their original language. However, it is exactly at this point that the Indo-Europeanists hit a snag in their own theory. It is alleged that "Seren" is cognate to the Greek "Tyrannos", which is a bona-fide Greek word. However, "Tyrannos" has no known Indo-European etymology, and is believed to have come from Anatolia, which was home to a myriad of non-Indo-European languages.
 * Just for the record, there are a sizeable number of words in Biblical Hebrew that DO have an Indo-European etymology. For instance, "Pardes" (orchard) is believed to derive from Persian, and "argaman" (purple) is thought to derive, via Akkadian, from a Sanskrit word denoting a reddish dye. There are some words in the Book of Daniel for musical instruments that are probably Greek in origin.
 * However, the case made in this article for an Indo-European origin for supposed "Philistine words" in the Bible seems to rest almost entirely on a controversial case made by Sapir, without any hard evidence. The mass of evidence to the contrary is left out of the article altogether. This smacks of profound bias, not a "neutral point of view".
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.68.95.65 (talk) 23:10, 20 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Once again, let me repeat that the article fails to mention the significant weight of scholarly evidence which contradicts the Indo-European theory of Sapir. It is a matter of fact that there exist Semitic roots that can easily explain some of these words (particularly 'Qoba'), which Sapir ignores in his work altogether. It is not a question of Wikipedia taking sides in the debate. It is a question of giving one side a voice, and stifling the other. This goes against the notion that Wikipedia is "The Free Encyclopedia", wouldn't you agree.
 * You expunged my edits, which are based on referenced scholarly sources and on factual information, citing your reservations on wording and stylistic aspects. I have no problem reincorparating the text taking into account your reservations. However, I cannot accept expunging them altogether. Therefore, make edits if you like, but please put them back into the text.
 * If you don't, I will.
 * P.S. In the meantime, I have discovered an Ugaritic (ancient Northwest Semitic) word "S-R-N" meaning prince, cognate to the Hebrew "seren", which Mr. Sapir would have us believe is based on some Indo-European etymology. Sapir also claimed that there is apparently no Akkadian cognate for 'Qoba', but he is apparently wrong, because after a quick look at an Akkadian glossary, I discovered the word "kippatu", meaning circle or circumference, derived from "kapapu", to curve. 'Qoba' also has cognates referring to headgear throughout West Semitic, including Amharic (Qob), the Aramaic languages, and Arabic. The Hebrew word for chalice, 'Quba'at', which contains the same Qoph-beth-'Ayin root as 'Qoba', has cognates in Arabic, Ugaritic, and Akkadian.
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.68.95.65 (talk) 20:51, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You don't seem to get the point. Almost all of what you wrote is again your own analysis. For all I know, you are 100% correct, but that is not the issue at all. The way to get an alternative view into the article is actually very simple. Just find a "published reliable source" that says Sapir is wrong and cite it! But you aren't allowed to say Sapir is wrong, you have to say that says he is wrong. Note how we cite Sapir: "Edward Sapir[16] made a case for kōbá, "helmet", used of Goliath's copper helmet." We don't say he is right or wrong, we only report what he wrote. If you can extend that into something like "Edward Sapir[16] made a case for kōbá, "helmet", used of Goliath's copper helmet, but Fred Nurk[XX] contested this etymology.", where [XX] is a "published reliable source" which actually does argue against a Philistine origin of the word, that would be just lovely. But you aren't allowed to use the article to make your own case either for or against. (This is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia that applies even to world-renowned experts.) McKay (talk) 02:38, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Incidentally, G. Bonfante, Who were the Philistines, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 50, No. 2 (1946), 251-262, supports Sapir on a Philistine origin of koba and suggests connection to two Germanic words. More support for an Indo-European origin of koba is in C. Rabin, Hittite Words in Hebrew, Orientalia 32 (1963), 113–39; cited uncritically by A. Demsky, The name of the goddess of Ekron: a new reading, The Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society, vol 25 (1997). Azzan Yadin, Vetus Testamentum, Volume 54, Number 3, 2004, 373-395 also accepts Sapir on koba. So your claim that Sapir's thesis "has not been accepted by scholars" is not correct. McKay (talk) 03:17, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * McCay, if the the Biblical Hebrew word q/koba' originally comes from Hittite, it would not mean that the word originally comes from Old Philistine, only that it may have diffused to Hebrew via the Philistines (who were probably Aegean, not Hittite in origin), since its ultimate source comes from Hittite. Assuming that the proposal by Theodore Gaster is correct, that the source of this word is the Hittite kupaḫi-, “headgear”, then we can cite at least two other languages unrelated to Hebrew that borrowed the same word: "kuwaḫi" in Hurrian (non-Semitic/non-Indo-European), and κύμβαχος kumbachos, 'crest of helmet' in Ancient Greek (see Hendel and Joosten, "How Old is the Hebrew Bible", pg. 172).
 * If that's the case, then the word may be simply be a "cultural word", not specifically or even originally Philistine, which simply spread among various cultures in the region, and was adopted into various different languages. See the following source, on pg. 640.
 * ''https://jewishstudies.rutgers.edu/docman/rendsburg/596-ehll-cultural-words-bh/file
 * Jacob D (talk) 11:41, 26 July 2020 (UTC)Jacob D


 * Well said, McKay.--Wetman (talk) 07:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * well said, indeed, but (leaving the Indo-Euro vs Semitic debates aside) some care should be taken with such offered etymological connections, just so the various positions aren't overstated. the prehistorical linguistics of the area have sometimes offered unbelievably awful (and unbelievably many, since so little is actually known) theories that were proven to be completely bunk over time. 85.72.72.117 (talk) 09:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Mckay. The etymological information I gave is not the result of my own analysis, but the result of the research of just about every Hebraist and specialist in Semitic languages, certainly preceding Sapir, who was, I said, not a specialist on the Semitic languages. What you are suggesting is that Sapir's research be treated as though it superceded the previous research, simply because it is more recent, instead of allowing the information to be presented together without preference.
 * Sapir's research may indeed be relevant to the article, but it neither refuted the research which preceded it, nor has it been accepted by a clear majority in the scholarly community, the examples you provided notwithstanding. I think you will find that the majority of specialists in the field are extremely skeptical or at least non-commital about attempts to categorize alleged Philistine words to language groups outside of ancient Canaan, whether Hittite, Greek, etc.
 * If and when I find more recent research that refutes Sapir, you can be rest assured that I will insert it into the article. In the meantime, I will be content with saying that the article has been written to reflect the opinion/bias of the author, despite the fact that bona-fide research to the contrary is abundant and worth mentioning.
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.68.95.65 (talk) 18:53, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Slavic claim, bad ref
The last paragraph currently states: "In 2016 two scientists Giancarlo T. Tomezzoli and Reinhardt S. Stein revealed that one recently discovered Philistine inscription 'LIUDI PADI PA WEDIMI' can be read as Slavic 'People come and see', so they claimed that Philistine language had to be Proto-Slavic, Proto-Balto-Slavic or Indo-Iranic."

This sounds more than a little questionable, and the ref was just text, so I went to see if I could find the article. When I attempted to fill out the ref with a doi, as such:

...I got a warning that this DOI links to a predatory publisher (Scientific Research Publishing).

Is there any reason to retain this claim? Has there been further research? Are there quality references on the subject? pauli133 (talk) 19:27, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The claims made in that article are improbable, bordering on the ridiculous.
 * The authors state that the script of the Philistine Inscription 4.5 from Ashkelon is Cypro-Minoan, yet scholars have cautioned repeatedly for many years that Cypro-Minoan script is as yet undeciphered, and claims to have deciphered languages written in that script cannot be taken seriously.
 * Jacob D (talk) 11:07, 26 July 2020 (UTC)Jacob D

a comment with regard to the name Padi

 * the article proposes the thesis that Padi is a title.
 * there is an alternative thesis which defines Padi as a personal name.
 * this view was proposed by Philip Schmitz in year 2008.
 * ShlomoKatzav (talk) 16:10, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Persistent vandalism regarding the language family of philistine
A user is regularly vandalizing the article to class philistine as a member of the Austronesian language family (which it is not) Bluefish213 (talk) 15:42, 10 November 2023 (UTC)