Apikorus

It has long been recognized (since Wellhausen) that the familiar story of David and Goliath in 1 Sam 17 is secondary. Here are some reasons.

Note that Saul has been introduced to David, and that David is already acknowledged to be a "mighty man of valor."

David is sent to the camp at Socoh to bring food to the troops, and not to fight.

Here, David is not the "mighty man of valor" of 1 Sam 16, but rather is a youth, inexperienced in the art of warfare. Apparently David was so scrawny that Goliath "disdained him" (17:42).

Again, David is but a "stripling." In chapter 16, Saul is already introduced to David the mighty warrior. In chapter 17, he has apparently never before seen the scrawny stripling.

Clearly the story in 1 Sam 17 functions as a testament not to the power of David, but to the power of Yahweh. And it is clearly an interpolation, for the reasons indentified here. And still there is more. In 1 Sam 18, the women sing a little ditty, Originally, then, 1 Sam 17 should have contained a story about David the mighty warrior slaying tens of thousands (rather than just one!).

And there is yet more scribal error: Jesse has eight sons in 1 Sam 17:12. In 1 Chr 2:13-15 there are only seven sons. David was simultaneously the youngest of seven sons and the youngest of eight. Clearly this is impossible, even if one posits (with zero textual support of course) that Jesse had another son after David.

Apikorus

I'm still waiting for praxeus to indicate where the Hebrew Bible refers to the "sons of goliath".

Steven Avery

Hi Api. This was my post a couple of days ago..

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php...9&postcount=98
2 Samuel 21:19 - (the brother of) Goliath the Gittite,

2 Samuel 21:22
These four were born to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants. (1 Chronicles 20:8)

Api, I'm not sure what difficulty you are having here.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Apikorus

The difficulty, Steven, is that you are confusing the rafa for galyat. There is no mention of the "sons of goliath" anywhere in Samuel. Rather, goliath (and ishbi benob, and saf, and ish madon) were all sons of the rafa.

There is nothing to suggest that the lexical range of galyat in the HB includes anything other than a proper name. The term appears six times in the HB: four times in 1 Sam, once in 2 Sam, and once in 1 Chr. It always appears with a gentilic: galyat hagiti or galyat haplishti. It never appears with a definite article (hagalyat), unlike rafa.

Hope this helps.

Steven Avery

Sure, however there the inverse is a reasonable interp, that the rafa of Gath who had the sons was the same Goliath of Gath. I haven't seen anything to preclude that. However I will be happy to do more comparing of the two scenarios in full. I don't see either view affecting the 2 Samuel 21:19 discussion much, since that was clearly a different Goliath than the one killed by David much earlier.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Apikorus

Well, it is healthy for you to admit that you are reading things into the text which are not there in the Hebrew.

We don't know for sure that the rafa engaged in any battles -- only his sons are reported to have fought with David and his men. The rafa can't be galyat, because galyat is one of the sons of the rafa.

You are asking for much if you want us to believe that there are two characters, (a) both named Goliath, (b) both Philistines, (c) both from Gath, (d) both who lived at the time of David, (e) both of whom did battle with David or David's mighty men, and (f) both of whom were described by the exact same precise phrase, "the shaft of his spear was as thick as a weaver's beam". This is simply too great a confluence of similarities to be coincidence. As I showed, there is no cause to hold that galyat is a classification or anything other than a proper name.

Seems you're stuck, Steven.

Steven Avery

Not at all. The weaver's beam description is used elsewhere as well. One question first. Are you taking the position that the text actually supports that the account with David and the account in chapter 22 are the same person ? Or simply that your list of coincidences is too high a probability for you to accept ? and therefore the text is errant. (Pretty amazing if you are an evolutionist, but lets not go too far astray). If it is a probability argument, we can address it as such, perhaps on Sunday. Maybe you go spell it out in a more rigorous fashion meanwhile.

Shalom Shabbat,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Apikorus

Hmmm...at some point we should discuss the number of steps involved in billions of years of microscopic biochemical processes and a few hundred years of infrequent scribal copying, but let's leave that for another day.

My position, which I trust is clear to most people who have followed this thread and have read the texts, is as follows: We have a problem understanding the various references to Goliath in the Hebrew Bible, particularly in 1 Sam 17 and 2 Sam 21. In the former, David kills Goliath. In the latter, Elhanan kills Goliath. Indeed, the conflict was disconcerting enough that the postexilic author of Chronicles rewrote 2 Sam 21:19 to harmonize it with the earlier account.

I believe that the pericope in 2 Sam 21 is "original" and that the familiar David and Goliath story from 1 Sam 17 is secondary (as is later material deriving from it, e.g. 1 Sam 21:10). That is, originally goliath was simply one of the sons of the rafa of Gath, and he was killed by Elhanan, one of David's mighty men. Furthermore, originally 1 Sam 17 contained a pericope which described a battle in which the mighty David (as described in 16:7) killed tens of thousands of Israel's enemies (cf. the women's ditty in 18:6).

At some point, a story was told of how King David slew the Philistine champion Goliath, and eventually this story displaced what was originally in 1 Sam 17.

This model explains several odd features of the MT of Samuel:

• (1) The sudden diminution of David's stature between 16:18 and 17:33,56.
  (2) Saul's sudden forgetfulness of both David and the identity of David's father
  (3) The sudden reference to David's slaying of "tens of thousands" in 18:6
  (4) The multiple versions of the death of Goliath
  (5) The purpose of the Chronicler in composing 1 Chr 20:5

As for chapter 22, I don't know what you mean. A typo, perhaps?

Finally, just to be sure, the phrase v'eitz chanito kim'nor orgim (= "the shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam") occurs only in 1 Sam 17:7, 2 Sam 21:19, and 1 Chr 20:5. There is exactly one other occurrence in the Tanakh where a spear is compared with a weaver's beam, in 1 Chr 11:23, but the phrasing is slightly different (uv'yad hamitzri chanit kim'nor orgim), and seems clearly derived from the goliath pericopes in 2 Sam. Remember that Chronicles is late.

Steven Avery

Yes Chapter 21, thanks.

Now I realize that you have a theory of the text. How checkable, falsifiable, probable it is, is a whole nother story. It is likely one of many such theories, so if one is demonstrated to be extremely unlikely, that could simply lead to an alternate scenario (again, as in evolution where severe anomalies can be integrated by convergent evolution theories). Such theories are moving goal posts when addressed.

My question to you was to rigorously state your objection to chapters 17 and 21 being two separate events. As discussed earlier, clearly they have a good number of quite distinctive elements, so any Occamish view (even one of scribal mishegas) should first start from the viewpoint that they represent different events. You seem to have a probabilistic difficulty with that revolving around two (or more) Goliaths and a weaver's beam spear. I was simply asking you to expound a bit, a quantification perhaps, giving your probabilistic objection to there being two separate Goliaths (one the brother of the Goliath of David) killed by two separate men.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Apikorus

Yes, Steven, we each have a theory of the text. Neither can be ascertained with 100% surety. The best we can do is to array our facts and appeal to common sense. That's the way these arguments go.

Well, to borrow from Halpern and Mark Twain, perhaps David did not kill Goliath, but rather another man of the same name.