Do you missed the first part this news, if yes read it here.
Christians are confronted with
the following contradictions about David in the bible. David is “a young boy,
untrained for war:” David is a “skilled warrior.” David is living at home:
David is living with Saul. David enters Saul’s service as a harp player: David
enters Saul’s service as a Goliath-fighting warrior. Saul knows David and his
father: Saul does not know David and his father.
Nevertheless, these turn out to
be minor contradictions. There are more major ones in the bible that
effectively lead to the conclusion that the whole story of David killing
Goliath is fabricated.
Choice of David
The terms of the combat between
the Israelites and the Philistines were ostensibly laid down by Goliath.
Instead of having the two armies battle it out, he said: “Choose a man for
yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and
kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill
him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.” (1 Samuel 17:8-9).
When David offers to meet this
challenge, Saul is said to have told him: “You are not able to go against this
Philistine to fight with him; for you are a youth, and he a man of war from his
youth.” (1 Samuel 17:33). It therefore beggars belief that Saul would then
agree to put the fate of the whole nation of Israel on the shoulders of
inexperienced young David. While fully acknowledging that there is nothing God
cannot do, it is not credible that Saul would agree that Israel should be
represented by David’s incompetence, after all no directive about this came
from God.
The idea that Saul may have been
persuaded by David’s tale of having killed a lion with his bare hands just
won’t cut it. Such tall tales are not believed without proof. Even more
ludicrous is Saul’s agreement that little David should fight mighty Goliath
without armour and with nothing but a catapult. Rather than provoke a revolt by
his regular soldiers, Saul would have selected one of his trained and
experienced military officers to do the job.
Two different killings
And then there is the problem of
the actual killing of Goliath. Did David kill Goliath with a catapult or did he
kill him with a sword? The bible is double-minded, recording two contradictory
oral traditions side-by-side. As a result, David killed Goliath twice. The
first time, he killed him with a catapult: “So David prevailed over the
Philistine with a sling and a stone, and struck the Philistine and KILLED HIM.
But there was no sword in the hand of David.” (1 Samuel 17:50-51). The second
time, David killed him with a sword: “Therefore David ran and stood over the
Philistine, took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and KILLED HIM, and
cut off his head with it. (1 Samuel 17:51).
We are then told what David did
with Goliath’s head: “David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to
Jerusalem, but he put his armor in his tent. (1 Samuel 17:54). This is nothing
but pure fiction. David could not have taken Goliath’s head to Jerusalem at
this time because the Israelites had not yet captured Jerusalem from the
Jebusites.
According to 2 Samuel, Jerusalem
was not captured from the Jebusites until after David became King: “The time
came when King David and his men set out to attack Jerusalem. The Jebusites,
who lived there, thought that David would not be able to conquer the city, and
so they said to him, ‘You will never get in here; even the blind and the
crippled could keep you out.’ (But David did capture their fortress of Zion,
and it became known as ‘David’s City.’)” (2 Samuel 5:6-7).
This suggests then that, in the
original story, David was already king when Goliath was killed. Indeed, in the
version crediting Elhanan with killing Goliath, David is already king and
Elhanan is a member of his elite fighting squad. (2 Samuel 21:19).
More anomalies
The confusion in the bible
account is compounded by the fact that while we are told in 1 Samuel 17:54 that
after killing Goliath, David carried his head to Jerusalem; three verses later
we are told he carried it elsewhere: “Then, as David returned from the
slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul with
the head of the Philistine in his hand.” (1 Samuel 17:57).
David was then made a General in
the Israeli army, and we are told this promotion of a young upstart over older
more-experienced soldiers pleased everyone including Saul’s officials. (1
Samuel 18:5). This is nothing short of political propaganda.
City of refuge
But the clincher is as follows.
After ostensibly killing Goliath, David became so popular that Saul soon saw
him as a threat to his throne. He was determined to kill him and David had to
run for his life. Of all the places that David could find to seek refuge, he
ended up in Philistine territory: “That day David fled from Saul and went to
Achish king of GATH.” (1 Samuel 21:10). This is absolutely incredible. How
could the arch-enemy of the Philistines seek refuge in Philistine territory? Of
all the cities that David could choose for safety, he chose Gath, the very
hometown of Goliath: “So David dwelt with Achish at GATH, he and his men, each
man with his household.” (1 Samuel 27:3).
This is conclusive proof that
David did not kill Goliath. If he did, the last place he would seek refuge
would be in Goliath’s hometown. That is a sure way to get him killed. But
according to the bible record, David not only lived for years among the
Gittites, the people of Gath, he was even prepared to go to war on their side
against Israel. However, the Philistine commanders objected on the grounds that
he could not be trusted: “He must not go with us into battle, or he will turn
against us during the fighting. How better could he regain his master’s favor
than by taking the heads of our own men? Isn’t this the David they sang about
in their dances: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of
thousands’?” (1 Samuel 29:4-5).
This is another giveaway. It
shows that whatever tens of thousands David killed; they could not have been
Philistines and certainly could not have included Goliath the Gittite. As a
matter of fact, when David became king, his bodyguards were 600 Philistines
headed by Ittai the Gittite. (2 Samuel 15:18-22). If after all this you still
think David killed Goliath the Gittite, then you are entitled to your
gullibility.
Let me try and draw some more
plausible conclusions than the classical David killed Goliath fable. David was
a soldier in Saul’s army. He performed such great exploits that the people sang
about him killing tens of thousands to Saul’s thousands. Saul felt threatened
by David and decided to kill him. David sought refuge in Philistine territory.
After David became king, Elhanan killed the Philistine champion called Goliath.
His head was then brought to Jerusalem. (Continued).
Culled from Vanguard
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