How often our "new" ideas are simply old ones dressed up in new clothes.  This is why commentaries on books in the Bible first spend time recapitulating the thoughts of earlier scholars lest we reinvent the wheel. 

There is more sanctity in a person’s ability to come up with new ideas and insights than there is in all your backlog of books and blah-blah-blah combined. If there wasn’t, we wouldn’t need people like Bart Ehrman to help find our way out and on, through and past it all.  

This is interesting because in the field Prof Ehrman holds many very traditional ideas that have come under increasing scrutiny as of late.  It speaks well of him because he is using his teaching foundation to platform scholars whose ideas challenge many of his basic opinions.  For example, a scholar with less confidence and maturity would have run away as far as he could from the work of Robyn Faith Walsh.

But look on the Ehrman YouTube channel and ** you do not have permission to see this link **?   And Walsh has participated in his online NT teaching sessions.  Prof Ehrman obviously doesn't feel threatened and I suspect that's because he knows there's something at stake here more important than ego gratification.

A personal wish (for anyone who might be listening in) is that Ehrman and Walsh sit down on a couch for about three hours in front of a video camera and talk through some of their issues.  Not a debate!  If all they did was discuss what they regard as the important questions that need to be asked that would be excellent.  I would love for them to discuss why they think the idea of a Christian "community"  became so important.  

Helen Young said 
If you think that a person's individual intelligence and insight have no foundation, then Idk if you should respond at all.

I'm sorry if you feel I have had that attitude toward you. I actually had quite the opposite assessment of your cleverness and explicitly said so.

Is it wrong to try out and work out new ideas here? Or are only ideas that have been worked out in the past, sometimes the over-petrified past, allowed?

Of course not. This very thread is what I myself called an "intriguing rabbit hole" of "wild speculation" and asked myself if it is nothing more than "merely an entertaining Alice in Wonderland version of scholarship." I don't know how you could have read those words and come up with the idea that I am only interested in or allow ideas that have been worked out in the over-petrified past.

There is more sanctity in a person's ability to come up with new ideas and insights than there is in all your backlog of books and blah-blah-blah combined. If there wasn't, we wouldn't need people like Bart Ehrman to help find our way out and on, through and past it all.  

As someone facing old age and a loss of this sanctity, I certainly value most highly anyone's ability to come up with new ideas and insights, but that does not diminish my love of the old books surrounding me in my library, they are old friends, dead and gone, but I keep their words and spirits alive as a sign of love and devotion for their sometimes heroic lives of sacrifice and scholarship. I see no reason to divorce the former from the latter, none at all.

Robert said

Helen Young said
Robert - Would you please stop addressing me (or anyone) in this way:
"You really haven’t read your Bible, have you?" - comment 22
"I totally reject your elaborate fantasy"  - comment 30
"Geez, Helen, please take it down a notch" - comment 45
"maybe I gave you too much credit for being clever" - comment 47
"First, I’m very glad you did some research and have presumably abandoned at least some of your earlier ideas & conjectures" - comment 47
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These are just a few of the statements you have made to me on this one thread. You have done similar things on other threads. I'll leave it to you to have some powers of self-correction, to look at them and make intelligent self-evaluation and correction on your own.

In an ideal world, Helen, how would you like me to respond to your continual arguing for a personal theory without any substantive foundation? 
  

If you think that a person's individual intelligence and insight have no foundation, then Idk if you should respond at all.

Is it wrong to try out and work out new ideas here? Or are only ideas that have been worked out in the past, sometimes the over-petrified past, allowed?

There is more sanctity in a person's ability to come up with new ideas and insights than there is in all your backlog of books and blah-blah-blah combined. If there wasn't, we wouldn't need people like Bart Ehrman to help find our way out and on, through and past it all.

Helen Young said
Robert - Would you please stop addressing me (or anyone) in this way:
"You really haven’t read your Bible, have you?" - comment 22
"I totally reject your elaborate fantasy"  - comment 30
"Geez, Helen, please take it down a notch" - comment 45
"maybe I gave you too much credit for being clever" - comment 47
"First, I’m very glad you did some research and have presumably abandoned at least some of your earlier ideas & conjectures" - comment 47
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These are just a few of the statements you have made to me on this one thread. You have done similar things on other threads. I'll leave it to you to have some powers of self-correction, to look at them and make intelligent self-evaluation and correction on your own.

In an ideal world, Helen, how would you like me to respond to your continual arguing for a personal theory without any substantive foundation? 

2380 said
Robert, it's ok to refer to me this way.
I don't like it when others decide how I should be referenced.
  

Sorry, didn't mean to speak for you. Apologies.

Some others may feel the same way as I do, all the same.

I don't like it when others decide how I should be referenced.

"You really haven’t read your Bible, have you?" - comment 22

"I totally reject your elaborate fantasy"  - comment 30

"Geez, Helen, please take it down a notch" - comment 45

"maybe I gave you too much credit for being clever" - comment 47

"First, I’m very glad you did some research and have presumably abandoned at least some of your earlier ideas & conjectures" - comment 47

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These are just a few of the statements you have made to me on this one thread. You have done similar things on other threads. I'll leave it to you to have some powers of self-correction, to look at them and make intelligent self-evaluation and correction on your own.

Helen Young said
I never said the Romans made up the geographical name "Palestine"

Sorry, maybe I gave you too much credit for being clever. You said:

It’s my understanding that the word Philistine comes from the ancient Hebrew word ‘plishtim’, which means invaders.

The Jews probably called the Romans plishtim as well. The Romans then took up this word, perhaps to say, “Yeah, ha-ha-ha, we’re the invaders, – What you gonna do about it!” and named the land Palestine. This name for the land of Israel has stuck, down through the centuries.

So, following your earlier defended scenario, when the Romans took over the word 'plishtim' to describe themselves as "the invaders" and cleverly named the land land 'Palestine', what was it the Romans intended to convey with this name for the land, if not something like the 'land of the invaders' or the 'invaded land'?   

Copilot says we are both wrong:

First, I'm very glad you did some research and have presumably abandoned at least some of your earlier ideas & conjectures, but your Copilot has not really contradicted anything I've said here. Rather it's reproduced much of what I've already said.

Copilot says we are both wrong:

🧭 Core Takeaway

The Plishtim were an Aegean‑influenced Iron Age people who settled on the southern coast of Canaan around 1175 BCE, formed a powerful pentapolis, clashed with early Israel, and eventually disappeared as a distinct culture under imperial pressure. They are not ancestors of any modern population.

🌊 Origins: Sea Peoples and the Aegean Pulse

• Egyptian inscriptions from the reign of Ramesses III list the Peleset among the Sea Peoples—migratory groups arriving from the Aegean world during the Late Bronze Age collapse.
• Archaeology at Ashkelon, Ekron, and Gath shows early Philistine pottery with clear Mycenaean motifs.
• DNA from Philistine burials at Ashkelon reveals a European genetic signature that later blended with Levantine ancestry.

This is why biblical references to Caphtor (often linked to Crete) make sense: the Israelites remembered them as outsiders with a maritime origin.

🏙️ Their Cities and Society

The Plishtim organized themselves into a pentapolis:

• Gaza
• Ashkelon
• Ashdod
• Ekron
• Gath

Each city had its own ruler (“seren”), but they coordinated militarily and politically. Their culture blended Aegean and Canaanite elements:

• Distinctive bichrome pottery
• Aegean-style hearths
• Unique feathered helmets depicted in Egyptian reliefs
• Strong emphasis on urban fortification
• Adoption of local Semitic language over time

They were not a monolithic “invading horde,” but a hybrid society adapting to a new land.

⚔️ Biblical Portrayal vs. Archaeology

In the Hebrew Bible, the Plishtim are the archetypal antagonists:

• Samson and the Philistine elite
• Goliath of Gath
• The wars of Saul and David

But archaeology paints a more nuanced picture:

• Trade and cultural exchange occurred alongside conflict.
• They were technologically sophisticated, not “uncultured.”
• Their rivalry with Israel was regional and political, not ethnic in the modern sense.

Your open tab titled “Was David a Philistine/Palestinian?” reflects how modern debates often project contemporary identities backward. Historically, David was not a Philistine; he lived among them briefly while fleeing Saul, but that’s political refuge, not ethnic identity.

🏛️ Disappearance

By the 7th–6th centuries BCE:

• Assyria reduced Philistine autonomy.
• Egypt intervened.
• Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar II, destroyed their major cities around 604 BCE.

After this, the Plishtim vanish from the historical record. Their name survives only as a geographic term used by later Greeks and Romans (Palaistinē), which is linguistically related but not ethnically continuous.

🧩 Why “Plishtim” Matters Today

Because the term appears in biblical texts, modern discussions sometimes try to map it onto present-day identities. Historically, that’s incorrect:

• The ancient Plishtim were an Iron Age Aegean-Levantine culture that disappeared 2,500 years ago.
• The modern Palestinian identity emerges from Arabic-speaking populations of the Levant in the last two millennia.
• The similarity in names is linguistic, not genealogical.

Understanding this distinction helps keep ancient history grounded rather than retrofitted to modern politics.

Helen Young said
Right now I'm in the middle of paying bills and balancing my checkbook. This really needs to be done.  Is it okay with you if I do this first? Or do I need your permission? I also want to think about it for a bit. ... But you go ahead and demand that I do what you want me to do when you want me to, and see what kind of impression that makes on me or anyone else ...

Geez, Helen, please take it down a notch. I made no such demand, look again at my post. I was only reacting to your word "maybe." That's only because I don't want all your arguing and my attempts to explain the scholarship to be totally wasted. Your words, "I just want to know the truth," more than satisfies my question about your saying "Maybe I will," in response to my suggestion that you either "Ask them again, show them this thread, have them show it to you in a dictionary, or check a dictionary of modern Hebrew yourself".  

No, it will take more than a few seconds. It may take some real time to contact the people who told me what the word plishtim means. Not everything is in your dictionary. ... These people might not take it well if they think someone is questioning whether they know their own language or not. I know I myself wouldn't like it too much.

A dictionary is not typically meant to be comprehensive; it need not be to show you that there are two different words, two different roots being used here. 

And it's not really a question of whether they know their language of modern Hebrew well. It's more about whether they've realized that these are two different roots, and that 'peleset' is not a native Hebrew or Semitic triliteral root but a foreign loan word with a four-letter root, as has been clearly demonstrated by much older Egyptian hieroglyphic evidence from the 12th-century BCE and abundant Neo-Syrian Akkadian evidence from the 8th- and 7th-centuries. If you're worried about offending them regarding their knowledge of Modern Hebrew, just ask them (or anyone else, for that matter) if they know someone who can help you decipher some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and Akkadian cuneiform. Take your time, there's no hurry, I just do not want the time and effort expended in this conversation to be wasted.

Are you now at least in agreement that the Romans certainly did not make up the geographical name 'Palestine'?

I don't believe what anyone says is always absolutely true. Cept for God and JC, and we don't always know what they say or have said, so there we are with that.

I'm glad we are together in faith and belief in Jesus. It's good to know. 🙂 

And please forgive me for jumping in. We are fellow believers so I'm with you in faith and belief in Jesus.

I'm not into proving myself right and proving you wrong, or winning the conversation. I just want to know the truth and for things to go right in this world.

Right now I'm in the middle of paying bills and balancing my checkbook. This really needs to be done.  Is it okay with you if I do this first? Or do I need your permission? I also want to think about it for a bit. These people might not take it well if they think someone is questioning whether they know their own language or not. I know I myself wouldn't like it too much.

But you go ahead and demand that I do what you want me to do when you want me to, and see what kind of impression that makes on me or anyone else, and see if I do it at all, or tell you the results when and if I do.