Migration – lessons ancient and modern

I’m writing this from the island of Crete where I am filming with the Christian Television Association. It’s a land rich in archaeology and creates a great backdrop for teaching the Bible. The associations with Paul’s missionary travels and the leadership of Titus in the early church make it an important location for Christian history.

But Crete is also a key location for the origin of the Philistines. Who were the Philistines? Many of us remember them only for the story of Goliath and assume they were just the “baddies” of the Bible, enemies of Israel, but there is a lot more to them.

Home of the Philistines

The Bible mentions the origins of the Philistines, in Amos 9 v7 and Jeremiah 47v4, as the island of “Caphtor”. That this is an ancient word for Crete is made more likely by a 15th-century BC Egyptian wall relief from the Tomb of Rekhmire which shows Minoan visitors from Crete, which the Egyptians called “Keftiu”.