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There are significant differences between the [[Masoretic]] (Hebrew), [[Septuagint]] (Greek), and [[Dead Sea Scrolls]] versions of 1 Samuel 17.<ref>[http://prophetess.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/textcrit.pdf Outline of then textual history of Samuel].</ref> One of the most interesting of these relates to Goliath's height: "4QSam(a)[the Dead Sea Scrolls text of Samuel] gives the height of Goliath as "four cubits" (equaling about six feet), and this is what the original Septuagint, followed by the [1st century CE] historian [[Josephus]], also records. Later Septuagint manuscripts reads "six cubits" (equaling about nine feet)."<ref>Quotation from "The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, Translated With Commentary", by Martin Abegg, jr., Peter Flint & Eugene Ulrich, in [http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/James_Juris.htm Variants of Bible Manuscripts].</ref>
There are significant differences between the [[Masoretic]] (Hebrew), [[Septuagint]] (Greek), and [[Dead Sea Scrolls]] versions of 1 Samuel 17.<ref>[http://prophetess.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/textcrit.pdf Outline of then textual history of Samuel].</ref> One of the most interesting of these relates to Goliath's height: "4QSam(a)[the Dead Sea Scrolls text of Samuel] gives the height of Goliath as "four cubits" (equaling about six feet), and this is what the original Septuagint, followed by the [1st century CE] historian [[Josephus]], also records. Later Septuagint manuscripts reads "six cubits" (equaling about nine feet)."<ref>Quotation from "The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, Translated With Commentary", by Martin Abegg, jr., Peter Flint & Eugene Ulrich, in [http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/James_Juris.htm Variants of Bible Manuscripts].</ref>


The second major difference lies between the Masoretic text, which forms the basis of modern translations, and early Septuagint manuscripts such as the 3rd century CE [[Codex Vaticanus]]. Vaticanus does not contain the verses describing David coming each day with food for his brothers, nor 1 Samuel 17:55-58 in which Saul seems unaware of David's identity, referring to him as "this youth" and asking Abner to find out the name his father. The narrative therefore reads that Goliath is challenging the Israelites to combat, the Israelites are afraid, and David, already with Saul (presumably by by virtue of his position as Saul's shield-bearer), accepts the challenge.<ref>[http://kukis.org/Samuel/1Sam_17.htm#The%20LXX%20%E2%82%AC%20of%20I%20Samuel%2017%20(with%20the%20Missing%20Portions%20in%20Magenta) Compare texts of short and long versions of 1 Samuel 17].</ref> Scholars drawing on studies of oral transmission and foklore have concluded that the non-Septuagint material "is a folktale grafted onto the initial text of the court history which comprises the bulk of 1 Samuel."<ref>[http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/OralTrans.html#Parallels See end of section, "The Effects of Oral Tradition"]</ref> The shorter Septuagint version removes a number of ambiguities which have puzzled commentators: it removes 1 Samuel 17:55-58 in which Saul seems not to know David, despite having taken him as his shield-bearer and harpist; it removes 1 Samuel 17:50, the presence of which makes it seem as if David kills Goliath twice, once with his sling and then again with a sword; and it gives David a clear reason, as Saul's personal shield-bearer, for accepting Goliath's challenge.
The second major difference lies between the Masoretic text, which forms the basis of modern translations, and early Septuagint manuscripts such as the 3rd century CE [[Codex Vaticanus]]. Vaticanus does not contain the verses describing David coming each day with food for his brothers, nor 1 Samuel 17:55-58 in which Saul seems unaware of David's identity, referring to him as "this youth" and asking Abner to find out the name his father. The narrative therefore reads that Goliath is challenging the Israelites to combat, the Israelites are afraid, and David, already with Saul, accepts the challenge.<ref>[http://kukis.org/Samuel/1Sam_17.htm#The%20LXX%20%E2%82%AC%20of%20I%20Samuel%2017%20(with%20the%20Missing%20Portions%20in%20Magenta) Compare texts of short and long versions of 1 Samuel 17].</ref> The shorter Septuagint version removes a number of ambiguities which have puzzled commentators: it removes 1 Samuel 17:55-58 in which Saul seems not to know David, despite having taken him as his shield-bearer and harpist; it removes 1 Samuel 17:50, the presence of which makes it seem as if David kills Goliath twice, once with his sling and then again with a sword; and it gives David a clear reason, as Saul's personal shield-bearer, for accepting Goliath's challenge. Scholars drawing on studies of oral transmission and foklore have concluded that the non-Septuagint material "is a folktale grafted onto the initial text of the court history which comprises the bulk of 1 Samuel."<ref>[http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/OralTrans.html#Parallels See end of section, "The Effects of Oral Tradition"]</ref>


=== Comparison of 1 Samuel 17, 2 Samuel 21, and 1 Chronicles 20 ===
=== Comparison of 1 Samuel 17, 2 Samuel 21, and 1 Chronicles 20 ===

Revision as of 07:10, 10 July 2007

This article is about the biblical warrior. For other uses of "Goliath", see Goliath (disambiguation).
David faces Goliath in single combat.

Goliath (גָּלְיָת, Standard Hebrew Golyat, Tiberian Hebrew Golyāṯ, Arabic: جالوت Jalut) is a Philistine warrior mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. He is famous for his battle in the 11th century BC with David, the young Israelite boy who had already been chosen by God and anointed by Samuel to become the King of Israel. He hailed from Gath, one of five ancient city states in Philistia.

The account of David and Goliath is given in the Hebrew Bible (and hence the Christian Old Testament) and in the Qur'an.

Summary: 1 Samuel 17

David hoists the severed head of Goliath.

The account of David's battle with Goliath is in the book of Samuel, espeially 1 Samuel 17. Further mention of Goliath is found in 2 Samuel and the book of Chronicles. This is the account of the battle between David and Goliath given in 1 Samuel, chapter 17:[1]

Saul and the Israelites are facing the Philistines at Socoh. Each day Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, comes out between the lines and challenges the Israelites to send out their own champion to decide the outcome in single combat, but Saul and all the Israelities are afraid. David is present, bringing food for his older brothers. He hears Goliath and hears also that Saul has promised to reward any man who will defeat the Philistine champion, and is not afraid. Saul hears of David's words and sends for him, and David offers to fight the Philistine. Saul reluctantly agrees and offers his armour, which David declines in favour of his sling and five stones which he takes from the brook.

David and Goliath confront each other, Goliath with his armour and shield-bearer, David with his staff and sling. "And the Philistine cursed David by his gods", but David replies: "This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down, and cut off your head; and I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that Yahweh saves not with sword and spear; for the battle is Yahweh's, and he will give you into our hand."[2] David then kills Goliath with a stone from his sling, and the Philistine falls on his face before David.

David seizes the sword of the dead giant and kills him,[3] and cuts off his head, and the Philistines flee and are pursued by the Israelites "as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron". David puts the armour of Goliath in his own tent, and takes the head to Jerusalem. Saul sends Abner to inquire who this is who has routed the Philistines and killed their champion; Abner brings David before Saul, who asks him whose son he is, "And David answered, 'I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite'."

Later traditions

The authors of the Babylonian Talmud, a compilation of Jewish tradition and scholarship dating from the Exile to the first centuries of the Christian era, gave Goliath a pedigree suited to his character as the adversary of David: Sotah 42b tells that he was a son of Orpah, the sister-in-law of Ruth, David's own grandmother. (The Ruth Rabbah, a haggadic and homiletic interpretation of the Book of Ruth, makes the blood-relationship even closer, considering Orpah and Ruth to have been full sisters). Orpah was said to have made a pretense of accompanying Ruth but after forty paces left her; thereafter she led a dissolute life, so that the identity of Goliath's father was impossible to ascertain.

The Talmud stresses Goliath's ungodliness: his taunts before the Israelites included the boast that it was he who had captured the Ark of the Covenant and brought it to the temple of Dagon; and his challenges to combat were made at morning and evening in order to disturb the Israelites in their prayers. His armour weighed 60 tons, according to rabbi Hanina; 120, according to rabbi Abba bar Kahana; and his sword, probably the sword of David, had marvellous powers. On his death it was found that his heart carried the image of Dagon, who thereby also came to a shameful downfall.[4]

The confusion arising from the two accounts in Samuel of the slaying of Goliath was resolved by the targum to 2 Samuel 11:19, which makes David, not Elhanan, the slayer of the second Goliath as well as the first; the great medieval scholar Rashi took a slightly different approach, identifying Elhanan with David, and this solution is often quoted in modern conservative circles both Jewish and Christian.

The early Christian church, seeking "types" (fore-runners, prefigurations) for its own beliefs and history throughout the Jewish scriptures, found a rich lode of metaphores in the stories of David: David's marriage of Bathsheba was seen as a model of the church's wooing of the community of believers away from the discredited Jewish faith, his speech to followers during the flight from Absalom was a prefiguring of Jesus's farewell speech to his discples, and the battle with Goliath symbolised the church's eternal but victorious battle with Satan.[5]

Textual considerations

Textual variations

There are significant differences between the Masoretic (Hebrew), Septuagint (Greek), and Dead Sea Scrolls versions of 1 Samuel 17.[6] One of the most interesting of these relates to Goliath's height: "4QSam(a)[the Dead Sea Scrolls text of Samuel] gives the height of Goliath as "four cubits" (equaling about six feet), and this is what the original Septuagint, followed by the [1st century CE] historian Josephus, also records. Later Septuagint manuscripts reads "six cubits" (equaling about nine feet)."[7]

The second major difference lies between the Masoretic text, which forms the basis of modern translations, and early Septuagint manuscripts such as the 3rd century CE Codex Vaticanus. Vaticanus does not contain the verses describing David coming each day with food for his brothers, nor 1 Samuel 17:55-58 in which Saul seems unaware of David's identity, referring to him as "this youth" and asking Abner to find out the name his father. The narrative therefore reads that Goliath is challenging the Israelites to combat, the Israelites are afraid, and David, already with Saul, accepts the challenge.[8] The shorter Septuagint version removes a number of ambiguities which have puzzled commentators: it removes 1 Samuel 17:55-58 in which Saul seems not to know David, despite having taken him as his shield-bearer and harpist; it removes 1 Samuel 17:50, the presence of which makes it seem as if David kills Goliath twice, once with his sling and then again with a sword; and it gives David a clear reason, as Saul's personal shield-bearer, for accepting Goliath's challenge. Scholars drawing on studies of oral transmission and foklore have concluded that the non-Septuagint material "is a folktale grafted onto the initial text of the court history which comprises the bulk of 1 Samuel."[9]

Comparison of 1 Samuel 17, 2 Samuel 21, and 1 Chronicles 20

The verses making up 2 Samuel 21:15-22[10] tell of four Philistine warriors "descended from the giants in Gath" who "fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants." Verses 18-19 tell how one of these giants, "Goliath the Gittite," was killed by "Elhanan the son of Ja'areor'egim, the Bethlehemite." The apparent ambiguity - what was the relationship of this Goliath to the Goliath killed by David? - has given rise to a great deal of commentary. 1 Chronicles 20,[11] written in the 4th century BCE, several centuries after 1 Samuel, resolved the problem by saying that Elhanan "slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath;" the King James Bible then adopted this into it's translation of 2 Samuel 21 18-19, although the Hebrew text makes no mention of the word "brother". It is likely, owever, that 2 Samuel 21 represents the original version of the killing of Goliath - by one of David's companions - and that the Philistine giant in 1 Samuel 17 was originally unnamed, and attracted the name Goliath at a later stage in the creation of the complete text of Samuel. It is also possible that the passage at 1 Samuel 18:6ff, where David is hailed by the Israelite women as having killed "tens of thousands" aggainst Saul's "thousands" - in 1 Samuel 17, which immediately precedes this, he has killed just one Philistine champion, not thousands - preserves a faint memory of an earlier text in which David fought a victory which far outclassed those of Saul, and that this might in some way be connected with the events of 2 Samuel 21.

Origins

File:Inscription scan 600 touched with scale.jpg
Potsherd inscribed with the two names "alwt" and "wlt", etymologically related to the name Goliath

Tell es-Safi, the biblical Gath and traditional home of Goliath, has been the subject of extensive excavations by Israel's Bar-Ilan University. The archaeologists have established that this was one of the largest of the Philistine cities until destroyed in the 9th century BC, an event from which it never recovered. An important find relating to Goliath is the discovery of a potsherd, reliably dated to the 10th-early ninth centuries, inscribed with the two names "alwt" and "wlt". While the names are not directly connected with the biblical Goliath, they are etymologically related, and demonstrate that the name fits with the context of late-10th/early-9th century BC Philistine culture. The name "Goliath" itself is non-Semitic and has been linked with the Lydian name "Alyattes", which also fits the Philistine context of the biblical Goliath story.[12]

The Hebrew word used for Goliath's coat of mail appears to be a derived from a Hittite or Nuzi source, and scaled armour has been found as far back as the middle of the second millenium BC.[13] Nevertheless, the armour described in 1 Samuel 17 is typical of Greek armour of the 7th century BCE rather than of Philistinian armour of the 10th century, and narrative formulae such as the settlement of battle by single combat between champions is characteristic of the Homeric epics (the Iliad) but not of the ancient Near East.[14]

Modern references

  • Today the word 'goliath' is often used to describe any person or entity of enormous size.
  • The lead character in Disney's animated series "Gargoyles" was called Goliath and was named after the Philistine Giant. (Ironically, his chief enemy was a now reformed villain named David--full name David Xanatos.)
  • A toy vehicle set in the 1980s M.A.S.K. toyline was named Goliath; it consisted of a race car which transformed into a jet, and the race car's transport truck with transformed into a missile launcher.
  • Niccolò Machiavelli, in The Prince, states that we should learn this lesson from David and fight with our own weapons, using our own strengths, and not try to borrow or hire those of others.
  • "David and Goliath" is now a proverbial expression of a small force defeating a larger one, or two people or groups with very opposing views.
  • The world's heaviest beetle, and by far the largest member of the scarab family, measuring as much as a sparrow but weighing in at five times a sparrow's weight, is called the goliath beetle.
  • A roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California is named Goliath in honor of the tale. It's maiden ride was led by a person named David Cox as a play on the story of David "defeating" Goliath.
  • In another computer game, Battlefield 2142, in the expansion pack Northern Strike there is a vehicle of the EU team called the Goliath. It is a huge armored APC which is considered the hardest vehicle to destroy as it has regenerating armor, and requires certain panels on it to be destroyed before becoming vulnerable. It is the biggest drivable vehicle in the game (drivable, as in not a Titan).
  • A VLF RADCOM Antenna type. The Goliath will have a mast at each of the six corners and one in the center of each canopy.
  • The Israeli Rock band Kaveret composed and sung a song called "Goliath" telling the tale of the 6 Day War through the tale of David and Goliath.

Filmography

The Italians used Goliath as an action superhero in a series of Biblical adventure films (peplums) in the early 1960s. He was possessed of amazing strength, and the films were similar in theme to their Hercules and Maciste movies. After the classic Hercules (1957) became a blockbuster sensation in the film industry, a 1959 Steve Reeves film, Terror of the Barbarians, was retitled Goliath and the Barbarians in 1960 in the USA. The film was so successful at the box office it inspired Italian filmmakers to do a series of four films featuring a beefcake hero named Goliath. (The 1960 Italian film David and Goliath, starring Orson Welles, was not part of this series, as it was a straightforward adaptation of the original Biblical story).

The titles in the Italian "Goliath" peplum series were as follows:

  • Goliath Against the Giants (1960) starring Brad Harris as Goliath.
  • Goliath and the Rebel Slave (aka The Tyrant of Lydia vs. The Son of Hercules, 1963) starring Gordon Scott as Goliath (Note: this film was sold directly to American TV in a syndication package known as Sons of Hercules, in this case referring to Goliath as a Son of Hercules, simply for marketing reasons).
  • Goliath and the Masked Rider (aka Hercules and the Masked Rider, 1964) starring Alan Steel as Goliath. (This film was marketed on USA television as a Hercules movie)
  • Goliath at the Conquest of Baghdad (aka Goliath at the Conquest of Damascus, 1964) starring Peter Lupus as Goliath.

The name Goliath was also used in the film titles of a few other Italian movies that were retitled for distribution in the USA in an attempt to cash in on the Goliath craze, but these films were not originally Goliath movies in Italy. Both Goliath and the Vampires (1961) and Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (1963) actually featured the famed superhero Maciste in the original Italian versions, but American distributors didn't feel the name Maciste had any meaning to American audiences. Goliath and the Dragon (1960) was originally an Italian Hercules movie called The Revenge of Hercules, and it is a mystery to this day why U.S. distributors didn't market the film under that title, since Hercules films always tended to do much better at the box office than Goliath movies.

In 2005, Lightstone Studios released a direct-to-dvd movie musical titled "One Smooth Stone," which was later changed to "David and Goliath." It is part of the Liken the Scriptures (Now just "Liken") series of movie musicals on DVD based on scripture stories. Find out more at www.LikenIt.com.

References

  1. ^ 1 Samuel 17
  2. ^ English translations give "The LORD" at this point for the Hebrew YHWH, which is not normally written in full.
  3. ^ sic: 1 Samuel 17:50 describes David killing Goliath with a stone from his sling, 1 Samuel 17:51 states that David kills him after taking the sword.
  4. ^ For a brief overview of Talmudic traditions on Goliath, see Jewish Encyclopedia, "Goliath"
  5. ^ The metaphorical interpretations of David and other Jewish scriptures are to be found scattered through the early Christian writers such as Augustine; for an overview of the David story in Western literature going well beyond both Goliath and the early Patrisitic period, see Raymond-Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcik (eds.), "The David Myth in Western Literature (1979). The book is somewhat rare: for an on-line review, see JSTOR (registration required).
  6. ^ Outline of then textual history of Samuel.
  7. ^ Quotation from "The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, Translated With Commentary", by Martin Abegg, jr., Peter Flint & Eugene Ulrich, in Variants of Bible Manuscripts.
  8. ^ Compare texts of short and long versions of 1 Samuel 17.
  9. ^ See end of section, "The Effects of Oral Tradition"
  10. ^ 2 Samuel 21
  11. ^ 1 Chronicles 20
  12. ^ See Tell es-Safi/Gath weblog. and Bar-Ilan University.
  13. ^ On Some Articles of Armor and Their Names E. A. Speiser Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1950), pp. 47-49 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0279%28195001%2F03%2970%3A1%3C47%3AOSAOAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage
  14. ^ Azzen Yadin's "Goliath's Armor and the Israelite Collective Memory" appeared in Vetus Testamentum 54:373-95 (2004). See also Israel Finkelstein, "The Philistines in the Bible: A Late Monarchic Perspective", Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 27:131:67. For a brief online overview, see Higgaion, a blog by an Associate Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University.

See also

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