The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero by Joel S. Baden Page A
Book: The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero by Joel S. Baden
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Authors: Joel S. Baden
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beginning of the David story. We are faced with a combination of unverifiable elements, such as the “spirit of Yahweh” and the secret anointing ceremony, and manifestly polemical passages, in which David is positioned as the positive counterpoint to Saul. So it is not just the traditional attribution of the psalms to David that is in doubt. As we try to get beneath the biblical story, at every stage we find a narrative that has been constructed with the goal of glorifying David, not with the aim of presenting a historical account of what really happened. At the most we can say that David probably entered the military under Saul. And this is the essential result of the David and Goliath story as well.
Slayer of Goliath?
W HEN WE TURN TO the story of David slaying Goliath, we confront a different sort of problem. It is not that the biblical story itself is in any way empirically unbelievable. Admittedly, the height given for Goliath, “six cubits and a span tall” (1 Sam. 17:4), works out to a fairly incredible nine and a half feet—though the Septuagint here says four cubits rather than six, a more likely measurement (around six and a half feet, still unusually tall for that time and place), thus suggesting that the Hebrew version has been altered to make the giant even more mythically imposing. But there is nothing impossible about David facing and defeating Goliath the way the text says—remarkable, even unlikely perhaps, but not impossible. 20
What makes the biblical story of David’s defeat of Goliath impossible to accept as historical fact is that elsewhere in the Bible an entirely different person is said to have killed Goliath. In 2 Samuel 21:19 we read: “Again there was a battle with the Philistines at Gob; and Elhanan son of Yaare-Oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite; the shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s bar.” This can hardly be a different Goliath: both are Philistines, both are from the Philistine city of Gath, and, most remarkably, both have the same impressive spear: the words “the shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s bar” are found verbatim in both 2 Samuel 21:19 and 1 Samuel 17:7. How is it possible that two different people could have slain the same giant at two different times and places? This is not a problem of modern readership, as if we are simply too far removed from the conventions of ancient literature to understand these texts. The ancient author of Chronicles saw precisely this same problem. His rendering of the note about Elhanan reveals a transparent, even desperate, attempt to overcome it. In 1 Chronicles 20:5 we learn that “Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi, the brother of Goliath the Gittite; the shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s bar.” Elhanan has been stripped of his victory over Goliath, which is replaced with a victory over, of all people, Goliath’s brother—though note that the description of the giant’s spear remains the same. The earliest readers of Samuel, biblical authors themselves, grappled with the fact that two different people are said to have killed the same Philistine.
Surely one of the two accounts is a duplicate of the other. The question then becomes: which story is the original and which the duplicate? It hardly seems likely that anyone would think to take a story originally about David and retell it with a different protagonist—especially a protagonist who is otherwise a nonentity in the Hebrew Bible. 21 It is equally unlikely that anyone would take the very full narrative of David’s victory and reduce it to a single verse. This notice about Elhanan’s defeat of Goliath is very similar to other such brief notices about the valor of David’s warriors. It is stuck unremarkably in the midst of one such little collection, in 2 Samuel 22:15–22, in which we hear about the exploits of some of David’s men as they fought a series of Philistine giants; Abishai son of Zeruiah, Sibbecai the Hushathite, and
Slayer of Goliath?
W HEN WE TURN TO the story of David slaying Goliath, we confront a different sort of problem. It is not that the biblical story itself is in any way empirically unbelievable. Admittedly, the height given for Goliath, “six cubits and a span tall” (1 Sam. 17:4), works out to a fairly incredible nine and a half feet—though the Septuagint here says four cubits rather than six, a more likely measurement (around six and a half feet, still unusually tall for that time and place), thus suggesting that the Hebrew version has been altered to make the giant even more mythically imposing. But there is nothing impossible about David facing and defeating Goliath the way the text says—remarkable, even unlikely perhaps, but not impossible. 20
What makes the biblical story of David’s defeat of Goliath impossible to accept as historical fact is that elsewhere in the Bible an entirely different person is said to have killed Goliath. In 2 Samuel 21:19 we read: “Again there was a battle with the Philistines at Gob; and Elhanan son of Yaare-Oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite; the shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s bar.” This can hardly be a different Goliath: both are Philistines, both are from the Philistine city of Gath, and, most remarkably, both have the same impressive spear: the words “the shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s bar” are found verbatim in both 2 Samuel 21:19 and 1 Samuel 17:7. How is it possible that two different people could have slain the same giant at two different times and places? This is not a problem of modern readership, as if we are simply too far removed from the conventions of ancient literature to understand these texts. The ancient author of Chronicles saw precisely this same problem. His rendering of the note about Elhanan reveals a transparent, even desperate, attempt to overcome it. In 1 Chronicles 20:5 we learn that “Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi, the brother of Goliath the Gittite; the shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s bar.” Elhanan has been stripped of his victory over Goliath, which is replaced with a victory over, of all people, Goliath’s brother—though note that the description of the giant’s spear remains the same. The earliest readers of Samuel, biblical authors themselves, grappled with the fact that two different people are said to have killed the same Philistine.
Surely one of the two accounts is a duplicate of the other. The question then becomes: which story is the original and which the duplicate? It hardly seems likely that anyone would think to take a story originally about David and retell it with a different protagonist—especially a protagonist who is otherwise a nonentity in the Hebrew Bible. 21 It is equally unlikely that anyone would take the very full narrative of David’s victory and reduce it to a single verse. This notice about Elhanan’s defeat of Goliath is very similar to other such brief notices about the valor of David’s warriors. It is stuck unremarkably in the midst of one such little collection, in 2 Samuel 22:15–22, in which we hear about the exploits of some of David’s men as they fought a series of Philistine giants; Abishai son of Zeruiah, Sibbecai the Hushathite, and
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