Bible.is

[mrstickball]

Soriku said:

Mr Khan said:
Can you tell me why Iron Chariots > God?

(not an atheist thing. Supposedly it's in the old testament somewhere, though it's been widely cited by atheists to lampoon the abrahamic god). Wondering if you can't catch it when you zoom through.

What?

*looks up*

“And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.”

—Judges 1:19

lol what is this?

They are talking about the Philistines. They were a small but very powerful rival to the Israelites, and deployed far greater numbers of Iron-Age weapons and tools as compared to their neighbors. AFAIK, the Israelis never developed blacksmithing and other Iron Age techniques like the Philistines did, and because of that, could never truly overtake them.

As far as we understand, they were likely from Asia Minor, which would correlate with the first developments of Iron weapons in Anatolia (now modern day Turkey).

So yeah, the Israelites never defeated the Philistines. The Bible is pockmarked with references to them being in a forever war with the Israelis, with them never getting the upper hand. As far as we know of non-Biblical history, they were eventually overtaken by the Assyrians, then Babylonians, and finally the Achemenaeds, Greeks and Romans, where they were annexed along with the remnants of Israel into Palestine.. Seemingly, their history was mostly lost, sans for what the Bible mentions.