The respect which was excited by their warlike prowess
can easily be read between the lines of the Hebrew story. A race
that to its opponents appears to breed giants is a race that has
proved itself thoroughly respectable on the field of war; and the
fact that a small league of five towns maintained itself so long as
it did, and was able to make itself so dreaded, points to bravery
and skill in arms altogether out of proportion to its actual strength
in mere numbers. Evidently the last Minoans succeeded in creating
an atmosphere for themselves in Palestine, and in impressing the
surrounding peoples with a wholesome terror of them. We may imagine
the men from Crete, lithe and agile, as we see them on the Boxer
Vase of Hagia Triada, swaggering in their bronze armour among the
weaker Orientals, much as the later Greek hoplite of the times of
Psamtek I. or Haa-ab-ra domineered over the native Egyptians.
But all the same the Philistine was an anachronism, a survival from
an older world. The day of the Minoan, like that of his early friend
the Egyptian, had passed away. The stars of new races were rising
above the horizon, and new claimants were dividing the heritage of
the ancient world. To the new Greek the realm of knowledge and
art which his Cretan forerunner had not unworthily cultivated; to
the Mesopotamian the realm of armed dominance, to which also the
Cretan had once laid claim; to the Hebrew the realm of spiritual
thought, in which, by reason of our ignorance, we can say next to
nothing of the Cretan's achievement, save only that he too sought
for God, if haply he might feel after Him and find Him.
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