Talk:Caphtor

message: As someone who is not an expert on the matter and simply came here to read  about Capthor, this article  was not helpful at all. Names of places and peoples are thrown around like grains of sand at the beach, along with scientific research , religious beliefs and personal views.  After reading this, i am far more confused than before.
Unfortunately, i can't offer anything to improve this. But i need to voice my frustration over this. That's an "insert you favorite theory here" kind of article. Stroumel (talk) 03:34, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not helpful at all  

message: Some points which can serve as basis for reworking the section of the identification of Caphtor:
#The term "Caphtorim" is used in the Hebrew Bible as a name for an ethnic division of the Egyptian nation and it occurs in a list of other ethnic divisions constituting the Egyptians. The article should state this clearly, it is not some 19th or 20th century hypothesis that they came form Egypt, its part of the way the term is used in the primary source. Modern(ist) conjectures claiming that they were something other than an Egyptian people are thus in conflict with the actual usage of the term in the primary source.
#Although the Bible does not tell us the location of Caphtor, the traditional understanding of the term is preserved in the Aramic Targums which translate the name as Caphutkia (=Pelusium in Egypt) and reafirmed independantly by the later writer Benjamin of Tudela.
#The translation of the term as Cappadocia or similar although normally the name of a region of Anatolia was recognized already in John Gill's commentary as relating to the Aramaic Caphutkia for Pelusium and not a reference to the place in Anatolia.
#With John Gill we also find an attempt to relate this to the locality Coptus in Egypt which the article currently hardly mentions. This identification was popular in the 19th century but is erroneous as a) Coptus is known to be a different locality to Caphutkia/Pelusium contrary to Gill's claim and b) it is a late Latin name derived from Arabic Qubt itself deriving from Aegyptus and thus the similarity to Caphtor is coincidental.
#Identification with Crete arose out of attempts to find mention of the Minoan civilization in the Bible and some highly speculative arguments starting with Evans and is not supported by any hard evidence.
#Wainwright and Strong demolish the identification with Crete and cited articles currently in the article which continue to make the equation with Crete do not address their arguments.
#Wainwright's own identification with Cilicia was influenced by the mistaken understanding of Cappadicia and was criticized by Strong and others.
#Strong's identification with Cyprus is itself not mainstream, mainstream view is that Kittim in the Table of Nations is Cyprus and this goes back to an explicit identification made by Josephus, although that is a complex subject in its own right.
#Finkelstein and others have argued solely from archaeological evidence that the Philistines i.e Caphtorites came to Canaan from Egypt (while recognizing that they may have  had earlier origins amongst the Sea Peoples) and this evidence of a migration from Egypt accords with the usage of the term in the Bible for a divsion of the Egyptian people.
Kuratowski's Ghost (talk) 04:09, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Reality check on the identification of Caphtor

message: :)
GeŢi(Romania=GeŢia)
GoTS (germans)
SCyTians...
oSCi(Italy)
HiTTiTe...(from Anatolia=country of Nod?...Keftiu=Cush?)
euSKaDi=baSQues-GaSCones(Spain-France)...oCCiTan(aQuiTania-France)
SKanDi...navia...
JuTes...
SCoT...land
Giza...Gaza...
KurDS...(Kurdistan)...
GruZi(georgians in Caucasus Mountains)...
oSSeTians-yaZyGeS(Caucasus mountains)...
Had enough?
Eurasia and N.Africa(GeTuLi, CopTeS) are full with GeTai (dogs-wolfs) EUROPEAN-"pelasgian" tribes/nations...
Same 2 groups of consonants: C-G-H and T-D-Z-S...various combinations give these names... but I'm sticking with Josephus Flavius... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bigshotnews (talk • contribs) 23:54, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Keftiu = Hittite ? 

message: PiCo please stop reverting the addition of sourced material simply because you don't like it. The earlier version of the article was a confused mess. I am slowly trying to address various topics such as what tradition actually says, what the various archaeological references really say about Caphtor, an honest discussion of the comparison with Keftiu (still more to add here, a paper in 2003 showed that Keftiu is in Egypt and the idea that it was in or across the sea was based on a mistranslation). I will also add a discussion of the various revisionist interpretations placing Caphtor outside Egypt (none of which have stood up to criticism). Kuratowski's Ghost (talk) 09:12, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not an article or topic I care about, and will certainly leave it alone. However, you are not simply adding material, you are deleting wholesale and replacing with your own pov. Please consider carefully what it is you are doing. PiCo (talk) 09:24, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I am mainly adding material on what tradition says and what the archaeological sources say, I will try put something in addressing all the various interpretations and the debate around them. A lot of the existing stuff did not take into account the more recent work of Vandersleyen who pointed out that the idea that Keftiu is an island in the sea derives from a mistranslation by Vercoutter and that the text in question places Keftiu in the Nile Delta. Kuratowski's Ghost (talk) 09:53, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Reverting/blanking by PiCo

message: I have removed the following paragraph from the "Traditional accounts" section:
Deuteronomy 2:23 speaks of the Caphtorites coming out of Caphtor and destroying the Philistine people called Avvites and settling in their place. The Talmud (Talmud Bavli, Chullin 60b) explains that the Avvites were the original Philistine people in the days of Abraham and that the Philistines of later times were descended from these conquering Caphtorites. This is also the understanding in Rashi's commentary. Amos 9:7 alludes to these events by speaking of the Philistines having come from Caphtor. (Genesis 10:13-14 and Chronicles I 1:12 speak of Philistines originating from the Casluhim but are here referring to the original Philistines who were later conquered by the Caphtorites.) Jeremiah 47:4 similarly speaks of the Philistines being the remnant of Caphtor and refers to the region as a coastland (Hebrew iy) New American Standard Bible, Lexicon for Jeremiah 47:4, Biblos.com.
1. In , the Philistines came out of Casluhim, who was from Mizraim (Egypt).
2. In the  parenthetical, Philistines are not mentioned. The Avims, who were a race of the giants, were dwelling between Egypt and Azzah(Gaza) to the northeast. Some of the Caphtorims displaced the Avims and dwelt in the country along the coast, southwest of Gaza, which was the southern bound of the land of the Philistines.
3. Although Jeremiah appears in the Bible before Amos, in chronological order Amos prophesied in the days of Uzziah, but Jeremiah prophesied later, from Josiah to the dispersion.
4. The passage in  was after Tiglath-pilezer took the Syrians of Damascus captive and settled them in Kir (), and the captive Philistines were settled in the country of Caphtor. The same LORD that brought Israel out of Egypt, also later brought out the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir in Amos 9:7.
5.  deals with those Philistines that were the restored remnant of the country of Caphtor, that the LORD had brought out. They were not "of" Caphtor originally, but descended from Casluhim.
Attempts to equate Caphtor with Crete or Cyprus are vain.<BR>Telpardec (talk) 00:49, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Philistines were <U>captives</U> in Caphtor 

message: Kuratowski's Ghost has clearly violated WP:OWN in this article. The original article, which ascribed the location as probably Crete or Cyprus, is all but gone. To recap: 
*2006: The article before he first edited it vs. his version
*2006-2009: Several edits showing a similar claim on the article, changing wording and adding/removing content often to change its tone considerably: 1, 2, 3, 4
*2009-2010: An extremely long edit conflict between KG and an IP that lasted 75 edits
*2010: Most considerably, a series of 80 edits by KG that changed the article from this to this.
Relatively little has changed in the 6 years since then, with the article still heavily leaning towards the Biblical version (or, as KG calls it, "traditional") while describing modern scholarly efforts as merely "alternative" or "non-traditional" and putting them at the end of the article. I have no idea how to fix such a huge bias. It's important to at least have it noted here, though. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 12:44, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ownership by [[user:Kuratowski's Ghost]] 

message: In the "Traditional accounts" section, the last sentence is "The Midrash Rabbah on Genesis 37:5 (page 298 in the 1961 edition of Maurice Simon's translation) says that the "Caphtorim were dwarfs".[7] However Goliath, is a giant Philistine warrior." 
#Initially I did not know what Midrash Rabbah was, it might be a good idea to link to Midrash Rabbah or Genesis Rabbah
#Genesis 37:5 is about Joseph's dream of becoming greater than his brothers. No mention of Caphtor. If the Genesis Rabbah is broken down in the same way as the bible, but the subsections do not align, then the sentence should clearly reflect that "37:5" belongs to the Genesis Rabbah and not Genesis itself.
#"However Goliath, is a giant Philistine warrior." The comma is in the incorrect place. Also, this sentence doesn't make sense anymore after the edits listed above (Philistines were captives) had removed the part about Philistines after the time of Abraham being from Caphtor. 
Wcichello (talk) 20:09, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Confusing sentences

message: Accounts from the city state of Mari call the island of Crete "Kaptara" (Wikipedia Link (see sited source also)). I cross referenced with the German Wikipedia's Keftiu and it says that Egyptian sources call it names like Keftiu, Keft, Keftu, Kaftu, Kafta, Keftdet, and Keftyu, the Akkadians called the island Kaptaritum, the Ugarit called it Kptwr or Kptr, and the Mykenaeans likely called it "Kapte", but I can't access the source for that last one.
Lastly, there is the phonetic connection; the Minoans were major trade partners with the Egyptians and Pelusium was a major port town, so having a lot of foreign traders there wouldn't be uncommon. It's likely that the original author heard about them through Egyptian sources and misunderstood who they were, explaining the similarities to the Egyptian version of the name (both use a labial fricative as opposed to the other Semitic languages which all seem to use a labial plosive). smoltran (talk) 19:22, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Caphtor is Crete.