Philistines or pĕlištîm. were a supposedly barbarous and violent warrior ethnicity who may have come from Crete as part of the confederation of “sea peoples.” This invasion of sea peoples occurred during the Bronze Age collapse (1550–1200 BCE), which comprised the purported time of Moses. Contrary to the barbaric impression given by the Bible, the Philistines, a non-Semitic, apparently Indo-European people, possessed fine pottery, artwork, furniture and architecture, and were relatively civilized. The Philistines evidently arrived in the Levant around 1175 BCE, the year of the supposed defeat of the sea peoples by Ramesses III, claimed to have destroyed Amor/Amurru, ancestral homeland of the Amorites in Syria.
As we can see, the homeland of the Amorites was one source and waystation of these migrating and rampaging hordes of sea peoples. It was into this fray that Moses supposedly stepped, but these destroyers of the land and conquerors of Canaan were not Israelites, as the Bible claims.