Chapter 43. The Seranim and Sarim
“Lord,” in the Philistine applications, is translated from ceren, meaning lord, ruler, tyrant, or plate, and pronounced seh’ren, cryptically deriving from an “unused root of an uncertain meaning.” Historian Israel Finkelstein, identified the five rulers of the Philistine pentapolis as the Seranim, but in other biblical passages the Seranim are numbered as greater than five—yet another important clue to the composition of the Philistine hegemony.
Ceren’s transliterate plural format is Seranim, a mysterious word/title understood by scholars to be an adopted non-Semitic word into the Hebrew language. The Philistine Indo-Aryan branch language largely went extinct; only a few words survived. Ceren is thought then to be one of those surviving Philistine words. Cereniym/Seranim’s etymology derives from and is cognate with Greek tyrannos/tyrant. Gyges, a king of Lydia in Asia Minor, was the first documented tyrannos. Earthborn Greek Titans were called Gyges, from the source word gygas for giant and gigantic, and from Greek gigantes/gigentes, from which King Gyges took his heraldic name. Tyrannos was introduced into the Greek language as the transliterated equivalent of the Luwian word tarwanus, a title assigned to their rulers.
Luwian was a member of the Anatolian family of languages originated from or influenced by Indo-European languages, and a sibling language of the Hittites. Early Luwian cuneiform writings reflected their dynastic and dialectal origins from Indo-European and Hurrian. As such, scholars conclude the Caphtorim, Cherethim, Pelethim, and the Sea Peoples originated from Aboriginal Anatolian settlements. The Aegean Sea Basin settlers were part of the four or five branches of Aboriginal Indo-European nations.
The Indo-European kingship title, Ceren/Seran was accepted by Avvim, Philistine, and Anakim rulers that perhaps was re-introduced by the Cretan invaders. Seran is thought to have represented a political system governing over a league of cities. According to Strong’s Cyclopaedia, Seran was a title awarded to many of the pentapolis kings, but not all, indicating a higher council of Seranim the kings of Philistine answered to.
