Maybe it was Elhanan that wrongly took the credit that rightly belonged to David?
Who really killed Goliath?
by nvrgnbk 25 Replies latest watchtower bible
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betterdaze
Good point, Q. Bert. Here's the long explanation from http://ggreenberg.tripod.com/ancientne/101david.html
Several clues indicate that later redactors gave David credit for what had originally been attributed to Elhanan.
In the version crediting David, after Goliath is slain, Saul says,
Whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell. And the king said, Inquire thou whose son the stripling is. (1 Sam. 17:55.)
If David were the killer, Saul would have known who he was because David was already a favorite in the royal court.
And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him greatly; and he became his armourbearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me; for he hath found favour in my sight. (1 Sam. 16:21-22.)
If David found favor in Saul’s sight, how could Saul not know whom he had just sent out to fight with Goliath?
After David killed Goliath, the text says that he brought the head to Jerusalem, but during Saul’s reign Jerusalem was in the hands of the Jebusites. It didn’t come into Israelite hands, according to the bible, until after David became king. This suggests that in the original story David was already king when Goliath died.
Coincidentally, in the version crediting Elhanan with killing Goliath, David is already king, and Elhanan is a member of David’ elite fighting group known as “The Thirty.”
The Elhanan version also retains some of the original mythical flavor of the contest. It is one of a sequence of four short stories about individual members of “The Thirty” killing four different giants. Interestingly, in the introductory verse to these four stories about Elhanan and the others, we are told that “David waxed faint,” had grown tired.
Although Elhanan’s father is called Jaareoregim in the verses about Elhanan’s victory over Goliath, the listing of the members of David’s “Thirty” calls the father Dodo. Since the other three giant killers also belong to “The Thirty,” this is the clearly same Elhanan. The connection between Elhanan and Dodo may have been the inspiration for crediting David with Elhanan’s triumph. In Hebrew, the name Dodo is spelled DWDW and David is spelled DWD. The two names are virtually identical and stem from the same root, meaning “beloved.” Dodo and David are also both called Bethlehemites, adding another reason why there may have been confusion over the killer’s identity.
Another indication that the pro-David version of the story borrowed from the Elhanan source comes from the contextual appearance of Goliath’s name. Throughout the David story, the name Goliath only appears twice. The several other references to this warrior simply describe him as “the Philistine” or “the Philistine of Gath.” The manner in which Goliath’s name appears suggests that it was a later insert into the story. For example, in 1 Sam. 17:23, the text reads,
And as he talked with them, behold, there came up the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, out of the armies of the Philistines, and spake according to the same words: and David heard them.
Since the bible had already given Goliath’s name earlier in the story and had already described his great prowess, the phrase “Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name” the addition of the words “by name” sounds artificial.
Originally, the slaying of Goliath was one of a collection of tales in which many heroes slew giants. Elhanan was one of these valiant warriors as were other members of “The Thirty,” many of whom were credited with such victories. “The Thirty” itself may have been a mythical group much like Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. As David became the greatest hero of the Judaean court and Judaeans were eager to believe their founding king capable of great deeds, his substitution for one of the other giant killers took no great suspension of credibility. -
nvrgnbk
I'm very impressed Sue. Well done!
Thankful to be in such good company,
Nvr
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zack
A copyist's error? In the Bible? Surely the Bible is FREE from error of any sort, isn't it?
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AuldSoul
I think there were other slingshot-ists on the nearby grassy knoll.
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nvrgnbk
Zack,
Hey. Wait just a minute there. I think you might be on to something!
Losing my religion(and loving it),
Nvr
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nvrgnbk
Auldsoul,
LOL! Very clever.
Nvr
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Leolaia
I am skeptical of the explanation that the reading in 1 Chronicles 20:5 represents the original of 2 Samuel 21:19 because the general pattern is that the Chronicler revised the Deuteronomistic text in harmonistic and theologically-motivated ways, and the text in 1 Chronicles resolves the apparent conflict between ch. 17 and 21 of 2 Samuel. But there is definitely a copyist error in the accidental duplication of 'rgym "weavers" and placement after y`ry "Jair", and one might be suspicious of the resemblance between bytlchmy 't-glyt "[the] Bethlehemite [killed] Goliath" and 't-lchmy 'chy glyt "[killed] Lahmi the brother of Goliath". Unfortunately, the Qumran text of 2 Samuel 21 (i.e. 1QSam, 4QSam) ends at v. 18, so we lack this potentially early witness to the verse. But the LXX text (which should go back to the third or second century BC) does have an underlying bytlchmy in its Vorlage, as it has the phrase ho Béthleemités "the Bethlehemite" in the text. Interestingly, the LXX does not have the duplicated 'rgym in the name, as it gives the name of Goliath's killer as Iare. So this suggests that there was an earlier form of the Hebrew text that lacked the duplicated 'rgym but which also had bytlchmy in the verse as it is in the MT. The later Hexaplaric text, which assimilated itself to the Hebrew text, interestingly spells the name as Ariórgim, indicating that the copyist error that produced the name y`ry 'rgym occurred at least several centuries before the MT was standardized. The evidence that 't-lchmy 'chy glyt was misread as bytlchmy 't-glyt however is less certain, for it is also as easily possible that the form in 1 Chronicles 20:5 represents an attempt to resolve the discrepency between ch. 17 and 21 of 2 Samuel.
The bigger question however is whether Goliath is really a unique name at all, or whether it was a rather common name in Gath -- such that two separate soldiers with this name could have been killed on separate occasions. All things being equal, the hypothesis that these are variants of the same tale would strongly commend itself, but one must also take into account the recent discovery of following ostracon at Gath in a level dating to the tenth to the ninth century BC:
It is inscribed with the name of Goliath (i.e. 'lyt), and the name itself corresponds to the Lydian Aylattes which may well have been a common name in Anatolia. The appearance of the name on one of the few named inscriptions recovered from Gath suggests that it may not be unusual for two separate people to bear that name, although within nearby Judah traditions of two distinct Goliaths could well have merged and/or mingled in folklore or in the textual tradition. In a similar way, traditions about a single Goliath could well have bifurcated into two different figures in ch. 17 and 21 of 2 Samuel. It is impossible to tell on the weight of the evidence.
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Q. Bert
Interesting how even the most common pieces of "knowledge" have levels of controversy to them. In the Millenium, King David will be resurrected and he can tell us what he remembers. Surely, the others in the drama, or at least many of them will reappear to, perhaps even re-enacting the scene in one of the up-and-coming "new scrolls". The faithful must wait. For everything, there is a season. Turn, turn, turn: the pages will turn in the new scrolls. In the meantime, perhaps more intriguing stones will be unearthed. Even now, the stones are turned: turn, turn, turn.
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Abandoned
I think the person that killed goliath was the very same one who invented him...
