Scholar to Offer Views on Philistines

Have the Philistines gotten a bad rap?

Tammi Schneider, a Claremont scholar who has spent six seasons excavating the ancient Philistine city of Ekron under the direction of two world-renowned authorities, will offer her views at a May 4 lecture sponsored by the California Museum of Ancient Art.

The Philistines have been decried since biblical times. Repeatedly at war with the Israelites, the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant and took it to Ekron, according to biblical accounts.

It was a Philistine giant called Goliath that David felled with a slingshot at the gates of Ekron. And the god of Ekron--Beelzebub--is practically a household word among even the most cursory students of the Bible.

So discredited have the Philistines become that today’s English dictionary defines a Philistine as a narrow-minded individual who is conventional in his or her tastes and views--and indifferent to cultural and aesthetic values.

Schneider, the expert on the Philistines, is assistant professor of Old Testament Studies at the Claremont Graduate School and an Assyriologist. She received a doctorate in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. Her field was archeology, history and languages of the Bible and Mesopotamia.

Schneider’s talk is part of a two-lecture series, “Great Peoples of the Ancient Near East,” sponsored by the museum. On June 8, Amand Podangy will speak on “Daily Life in the Old Babylonian Empire.”

Both lectures will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Gallery Theater in Barnsdall Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., half a block west of Vermont Avenue. For more information, call (818) 762-5500.