Philistine Cult and Religion According to Archaeological Evidence

Abstract

The paper surveys and discusses the updated archaeological evidence for Philistine cult and religion, and cult and religion in Philistia during the Iron Age. The evidence can be related to public or official cult, represented in temple and shrine structures, and to that coming from households, representing possibly more popular religion. The evidence of public cult, so far mostly from peripheral sites, includes largely cultural elements linked with the local Canaanite cult and religion. Yet, within households at the Philistine cities there is more evidence for cultic elements of Aegean affinity during Iron Age I. In particular, figurines and ceramic figurative vessels and objects will be discussed. It seems that the Philistine religion may have retained certain distinctive elements also during Iron Age II. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to reconstruct the details of the nature of the Philistine religion due to the limited amount of evidence and lack of textual records.

Between Rocks and ‘High Places’: On Religious Architecture in the Iron Age Southern Levant

“…Taxonomies are more widely deployed than checklists as a means of imposing order on the diversity of evidence from the Iron Age of the Southern Levant. Perhaps the most common typology is to divide sites according to their assumed ethno-political affiliation such that temples in Philistia, or Ammon or Israel/ Judah become examples of Philistine, Ammonite or Israelite Temples (e.g., Ben-Shlomo 2019;Tyson 2019;Zevit 2001, pp. 84-85, 113-21).…”

“…The most common division is a binary, one between "state" and "popular" religion (see Ben-Shlomo 2019;Burke 2011;Dever 2005, p. 5;Holladay 1987). Temple or 'state' cult is associated with the larger, more elaborate religious architecture and presumed to have been presided over by 'official' or 'royal' authorities.…”

Plant-related Philistine ritual practices at biblical Gath

“…While biblical depictions present a polytheistic Philistine culture worshipping gods and goddesses, the details and exact identities of their deities remain largely unknown 20 . Despite intensive research on Philistine culture, relatively little is known about their cultic practices, including the use of plants in ritual contexts and the role of temples for communal crop storage and public feasting 21 , 22 . The only known plants from a Philistine temple, Tell Qasile (mid-eleventh century BCE, Fig.…”

Religion on the move: Mobility, migration and internal religious: Diversity in Biblical and Early Israel and Judah

“…William Dever (2002: 113-114) characterizes this drastic drop in the occurrence of cultic sites as indicative of a transition to a "simple, aniconic, noninstitutionalized cult." The differences in Israel are especially stark when seen in conjunction with the comparatively abundant number of cultic sites among Israel's contemporaries (Ben-Shlomo 2019;Faust 2010Faust , 2019Steiner 2019;Tyson 2019).…”