The Biblical Tradition for the Plague of the Philistines

OF THE NUMEROUS OLD TESTAMENT REFERENCES TO OUTBREAKS OF EPIDEMIC DISEASE, the account of the Plague of the Philistines in I Samuel has surely been the most prominent in modern scholarship. The identity of the disease described in this tradition, and criticism of the passage in which it appears, have been the subjects of a perennial controversy among biblical scholars and medical historians alike. Even medievalists have been drawn into the fray, since the possibility that the Plague of the Philistines was an outbreak of bubonic plague raises the question of whether this terrible scourge, now known to have afflicted the medieval Near East as severely as it affected Europe,' has been endemic to the region since ancient times. In view of the fact that the biblical account has comprised a fundamental element in a number of significant arguments concerning the plague in the ancient history of the Near East, the controversy surrounding the tradition in I Samuel would seem to pose a problem of considerable importance. In the following pages I will try to separate and consider the various issues involved. Specifically, I will attempt to show how illusory must be any attempts to identify the Plague of the Philistines as an outbreak of bubonic plague, or even to associate it with any particular disease at all

Ancient history · Plague (disease) · Bacillus and Francisella bacterial research · History · Philosophy · Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research

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