Apikorus

Nota bene: this thread continues a discussion in another thread of a somewhat obscure title. I would not be surprised to learn that this topic has arisen on more than one previous occasion.

Who killed Goliath? The familiar story from 1 Samuel 17 has the young David, armed with only a slingshot, vanquishing the behemoth Philistine. However, according to a separate account in 2 Samuel 21, it is not David but Elhanan, one of David's mighty men, who kills Goliath. And just to complicate matters, in 1 Chronicles 20:5 it is written that Elhanan kills Goliath's brother! Let's look at these three texts: How can we make sense out of these different texts? Was it David or Elhanan who killed Goliath? Or did Elhanan kill Goliath’s brother? What was the name of Elhanan’s father? Clearly all this is major trouble for fundamentalists who maintain that “scripture� is “inerrant.� In order to harmonize these accounts, they generally resort to one of three positions: (i) David is to be identified with Elhanan, (ii) there is more than one Goliath, or (iii) 2 Sam 21:19 contains scribal error, and the correct statement is found in 1 Chr 20:5.

We can dismiss (i) right away, for two good reasons. First, the patronym of Elhanan in 2 Sam 21:19 shows that he is not the son of Jesse, hence he cannot be David. Further identification of David’s father Jesse with Elhanan’s father Jaare-Orgim is grasping at straws. Furthermore, at the beginning of this pericope in 2 Sam 21:15-17, David, who is elderly in this account, is almost killed, and his men forbid him from further entering into battle. So David is not Elhanan.

Alternative (iii) holds for scribal error in 2 Sam 21:19, essentially replacing it with 1 Chr 20:5. Indeed there is reason to suspect some scribal error in 2 Sam 21:19, but not of the nature that is needed to eliminate the contradiction. (Both 1 and 2 Samuel are among the more corrupt books of the Hebrew Bible, in terms of accreted transmission errors.) At any rate, it is also problematic for a fundamentalist to rely upon scribal error to solve a textual problem, as it admits imperfections in the notionally divine text. In what follows, a more coherent and compelling interpretation of the textual data will be presented.

Incidentally, the King James Bible deliberately mistranslates 2 Sam 21:19 : The words “the brother of� do not appear in the original Hebrew (and, accordingly, are italicized in the KJV). The KJV translators “corrected� 2 Sam 21:19 in light of 1 Chr 20:5, about which we shall have more to say below.

The third alternative is (ii) multiple Goliaths. This is untenable because of the confluence of descriptors used in the different accounts. Both speak of a Philistine named Goliath who is from Gath and who does battle with David (or his men) and of whom it is said, �the shaft of his spear was as a weaver’s beam.� This last very particular descriptive phrase, v’eitz chanito kim’nor orgim in Hebrew, is found in all three accounts (1 Sam 17:7, 2 Sam 21:19, 1 Chr 20:5). If we were to read a story which spoke of a reindeer named Rudolf who is from the North Pole and who works with Santa Claus and of whom it is said, �his red nose was as a bright light,� none of us would have any trouble discerning to whom this description refers. The “multiple goliaths� theory strains credulity.

Some have tried to claim that “Goliath� (Heb. galyat) is not a proper name, but rather a descriptor, like “superman.� This is again grasping at straws. Everywhere the name appears in the Hebrew Bible, Goliath appears as either galyat hagiti (Goliath the Gittite = Goliath of Gath, one of the five cities in the Philistine pentapolis) or galyat haplishti (Goliath the Philistine). There is no cause to presume that the lexical range of galyat within the HB (= Hebrew Bible) includes anything other than a proper name. And finally, there is the clincher: The Hebrew reads galyat sh’mo, which literally means “galyat his name� = “his name was Goliath.�

Furthermore, observe how absurd is the fundamentalist’s position here. He must posit that there are two (or more) Goliaths, Philistine warriors, from Gath, who battle against David, and of whom it is said, “the shaft of his spear was as a weaver’s beam.� Furthermore, he must believe that two characters named Elhanan, one the son of Jair and the other the son of Jaare-Orgim, each killed a Goliath. Or rather one killed a Goliath, just not David’s Goliath, and the other killed the brother of a Goliath (either David’s Goliath or the other Elhanan’s Goliath – we can’t be absolutely sure which, since both these Goliaths were famous for their thick spears) – and that he too was likely a Goliath. This is all comically convoluted.

What does modern scholarship have to say about all this? First of all let’s look a little closer at the pericope in 2 Sam 21:15-22. Therein Goliath is one of four sons of the “Giant of Gath� (Heb. harafa b’gat, cf. 2 Sam 21:22), each of whom is killed by one of David’s mighty men. (Here we see how a descriptive noun like “giant� (Heb. rafa) appears with the definite article (ha-).) Scholars generally believe that the account in 2 Sam 21:15-22 is older than the familiar story in 1 Sam 17.

Indeed, there are several problems with the familiar David and Goliath story in 1 Sam 17, if we try to read it in context. David’s arrival at Saul’s court is described in 1 Sam 16:14-23 : Here we note several important data: (i) David is a “mighty man of valor� (Heb. gibbor chayil) and a “man of war� (Heb. ish milchamah); (ii) Saul knows that Jesse is David’s father – indeed Saul directly addresses Jesse in 26:22 regarding David; (iii) David became Saul’s armor bearer (16:21) and court musician (16:23). David was well-known to Saul.

In chapter 17, however, there is a sudden and jarring change. David is not the mighty warrior of 16:18, but is instead a simple shepherd boy, pressed by his father into delivering food supplies to the fighting men at Efes Damim (17:17-18). He is rebuked by his eldest brother (17:28) for leaving his sheep to come and “see the battle.� He is but a youth: Unfamiliar with the tools of a warrior (17:39), and armed with only a slingshot, David proceeds to vanquish the Philistine champion. After this impressive display, Saul is curious: Thus David, the king’s armor bearer and favorite musician in 16:21-23, is suddenly totally unknown to both King Saul and Avner, the commander of the army. Saul, who had explicitly written to David’s father Jesse in 16:22 now enquires, �Whose son are you, young man? in 17:58.

Something is not right. The internal evidence suggests that the story here is both conflate as well as secondary. That is, it is an amalgamation of two versions as well as being a later addition to the biblical text. That the text is conflate seems upon disentangling the narrative into two separate accounts. The discussion of why the text is conflate is somewhat involved and here I want to focus on why it is secondary. We see that the contradictions – suddenly David is a youth again and Saul does not know him – mitigate against a unified composition. Furthermore, in 18:6 the women sing a ditty: Perhaps the reference to riv’vot (= ten thousand / very large amount) is figurative and refers solely to Goliath. But given the jarring contradictions in the text, it seems quite likely that something else is going on here. That is, the David and Goliath story in 1 Sam 17 (which is, again, composite within the Masoretic Text) has displaced an earlier account in which the mighty and valorous warrior David from 16:22 vanquished ten thousand or more Philistines.

It is interesting to note that the Goliath of 1 Sam 17 seems to be somewhat of a composite figure, encompassing characteristics of several of the sons of the Giant of Gath described in the original account in 2 Sam 21:15-22. The description of the weight of Goliath’s spear and his armor in 1 Sam 17:5-7 is derived from the weaponry of Ishbi benov in 2 Sam 21:16. Goliath’s name and the precise description of his spear in 1 Sam 17:4,7 are taken from the description of Goliath in 2 Sam 21:19. Goliath’s stature in chapter 17 derives from his genealogy in 2 Sam 21 – he and his brothers are yildei harafa b’gat – sons of the Giant of Gath.

It is interesting to note that the text of 1 Sam 17 was evidently not completely stable in the late centuries BCE. The Septuagint (LXX) version is much shorter – it is missing some 39 of the 88 verses of the story. Furthermore, scholars such as P. Kyle McCarter Jr. and especially Emanuel Tov have concluded that the LXX version is not simple a shortened version of that found in the MT, but rather a distinct coherent account. Pre-Christian, Hebrew scrolls of 1 Samuel, which predominantly agree with the LXX over the MT, have been found at Qumran. The three cave 4 scrolls 4QSam(a), 4QSam(b), and 4QSam(c) are older by a millennium than any extant masoretic exemplar. These scrolls, as recognized by Frank Moore Cross, are widely at variance with the MT but consistently close to what one would get by retroverting the LXX to Hebrew.

Finally, the discussion here gives us insight into why the postexilic author of Chronicles modified 2 Sam 21:19, replacing it with Here, as elsewhere, Chronicles harmonizes difficulties in the Deuteronomistic History (the books of the Hebrew Bible from Joshua through 2 Kings). There are many examples of this and if people are interested we can open a discussion of this in a new thread. In this particular case, the conflict between 1 Sam 17 and 2 Sam 21 proved embarrassing, so the Chronicler "corrected" 2 Sam 21:19 by inventing the character of Lahmi, the brother of Goliath. The origin of lahmi is probably the term beit hallahmi (= "Bethlehemite") in 2 Sam 21:19. The Chronicler has also corrected Elhanan's patronym. Indeed, yaarei-orgim (= "forests of weavers") is a bizarre name for Elhanan's father, and it is natural to suspect that the resh and yod in the familiar name yair were at one point accidentally interchanged, by scribal error. The reference to orgim is particularly interesting, since this term also appears in the description of Goliath's weaponry. Some scholars think the text is corrupt here, but the evidence is not quite compelling, as it is in the cases discussed above.

Mountain Man

It doesn't matter who killed Goliath. It's a myth! Why would one waste so much time and effort to tease out the details of a myth?

Apikorus

Yes, that is very much a possibility. Still, the text presents us with some difficulties, and I believe it is possible to make some progress in addressing them.

BigJim

It was a sling, not a slingshot.

Toto

I have split the Goliath posts from the NT errors thread out here.

I can merge them with this thread if needed.

judge

I don't know who deserves the credit for this. I cut and psted it from theologyweb, but I have seen it on various discussion forums for some time.

I think I originally saw it posted by a guy "named" Christopher Elwood (?) who used to post on some forums but I think he may have got it from some other scholar.

So we see that two stories ahve merged into one.

John Kesler

Another factor which increases the likelihood that Elhanan was originally Goliath's slayer is that in the David and Goliath narrative, the name Goliath only appears in vv 4 and 23; elsewhere David's opponent is simply referred to as "the Philistine."

Also note how repetitive even these two verses are:

Such repetition is understandable since verse 23 is missing from the LXX version of the story.

Apikorus

References to the sword of Goliath the Philistine also appear in 21:9 and 22:10. The Goliath story in 1 Sam has a couple more stitches in it.

Incidentally, the Hebrew of 1 Sam 17:23 would better be translated as "...Goliath the Philistine (was) his name, from Gath, from the ranks of the Philistines..."