‘Dagon Our God’: Iron I Philistine Cult in Text and Archaeology

Abstract

Despite the late date and dubious veracity of the Deuteronomistic history, and despite the Bible’s status as the only Bronze or Iron Age text which indisputably refers to Dagon in a southern Canaanite geographical context, scholars have traditionally accepted 1 Samuel 5:1–8’s portrayal of Philistine cult in the Iron Age I as being centered on this deity and his temple at Ashdod. This study marshals archaeological and historical evidence to assess the level of support for the presence of Dagon in Iron I Philistia, and for a temple at Ashdod as described in the biblical account. Also considered, through comparison with the materially analogous situation in the Bronze Age Aegean, is the critical role that a textual complement to physical evidence (or, in the case of the Philistines, the lack thereof) plays in cultic analysis and pantheonic reconstruction.