Why was Joseph buried in Shechem? (Q&A)

 Q:  I was rather astonished to realize, in reading Joshua 24, that they buried the bones of Joseph in Shechem instead of in the cave of Machpelah, where Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were buried...  Do a word-search on Shechem and you'll find that it is a rather nefarious place. Why did they bury him there?  I was also a little distressed to realize that Stephen, in the book of Acts, says that Abraham bought the land in Shechem, but Moses wrote that it was Jacob that bought land there. –Sarah P.

A:  Welcome to the tension between the north and the south in Israel.  This tension goes all the way back to the division of Saul’s kingdom in the time of David, a division that reemerged when the kingdom was divided again after the death of Solomon.  It then reappears in the time of the New Testament in the tension between the Samaritans in the north and the Judeans in the south.  Among these tensions were some different and conflicting traditions. 

What does this have to do with Shechem?  Let’s begin with the burial place of the twelve patriarchs, the sons of Jacob, one of whom was Joseph.  Acts 7:16 implies that they were all buried in Shechem:  “And they [the antecedent of “they” is “our fathers” in vs. 15] were removed to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had purchased for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.”*  That the brothers were buried in Shechem certainly makes sense, as the children of Israel under Joshua came into possession of this area before they did of Hebron.  And it seems logical that they would bury the others where Joseph was buried: “And they buried the bones of Joseph, which the sons of Israel brought up from Egypt, at Shechem” (Joshua 24:32).  However, the Bible only mentions the bones of Joseph being brought along in the Exodus: “And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him” (Exo. 13:19).  Nothing is said, except in the book of Acts, about the burial of his brothers.

If the Philistines were Greeks, why did they worship Dagon? (Q&A)

 Q:  In my devotions the other day I was reading about when the Philistines captured the ark, and how God showed the Philistines that he was greater than Dagon…  If the Philistines were Greeks, why don’t we see them worshipping any of the Greek gods – only Dagon? --Sarah P.

A:  You’re right that the Philistines have now been identified as Greeks of some kind—or at least that they developed from an original core of Greeks that settled in what is today Israel and intermarried with the local population.  This is the result of both DNA analysis, pottery analysis, and the similarity of cultural practices that point to a connection with Greece and/or other areas of Greek influence (such as Cyprus, Crete, and western Turkey).  These include the bronze greaves worn by Goliath, the Philistine hero that was defeated by David (1 Sam. 17:6), and even Goliath’s call to one-on-one combat (representative warfare), otherwise unknown in the area.  However, the connection with the Philistines is at a very early time in Greek history known as the Mycenaean Age (15th-11th cent. BC).  This was long before the Classical Age of Greece (5th-4th cent. BC) with its well-known Greek gods (the Olympian gods).  It was even before the Archaic Period (8th-6th cent. BC) in which the Greek alphabet first appears.  (See diagram)