A general term for the several and varied groups of people who were set adrift around the Mediterranean when there occurred in the 13th Cent BC (about the same time that Israel was making her way to Palestine) and for reasons that historians still do not know, a general collapse of civilizations in the region. It is believed that most of them originated from the Aegean and/or the Anatolia. There is a view that this has something to do first with the collapse of the Mycenean civilization, but whether the Myceneans were the cause or victim remainds unclear. Some of these grounds retreated to the fringes of civilization while others migrated to as far as Italy and the eastern Mediterranean seaboard in search of new lands to call their home. The first report of them are found in the annals of the Egyptian pharaoh Merenptah, in which he named five groups of Sea People: Sherdan and Lukka (both previously known), Ekwash, Teresh, and the Shekelesh. Later records included groups called Tjeker, Denyen, Weshesh, and the Peleset, whom most scholars identify with the Philitines, who settled along the Mediterranean coast of Canaan.
While the outline of their history and origins remain unclear what seems certain is that their seach for new homelands brought them into conflict with the great empires of the time and that these resulted, directly or indirectly, in the fatal collapse of the Hittite and the decline of the great and ancient Egyptian empire. Assyrian also seemed to have suffered a setback as a result of these peoples and it would take them several centuries to recover. Though the Sea Peoples are not mentioned in the Bible as such, it was against this background of global dislocation that distracted from imposing their hegemony more strongly in Canaan so that juvenile Israelite nation was able to conquer and remain in Canaan as they did.
Further Reading & Resources:
David M. Howard, Jr., "Philistines," in Peoples of the Old Testament World, ed. by Alfred J. Hoerth, Gerald L. Mattingly, and Edwin M. Yamauchi. Cambridge/Grand Rapids: Lutterworth Press/Baker Books, 1998.
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