Shabir Ally's Answering Christianity puts it very simply on the page "101 Contradictions in the Bible:"
94. Who killed Goliath?
• David (I Samuel 17:23, 50)
• Elhanan (2 Samuel 21:19)
The relevant passages are 1 Samuel 17, 2 Samuel 21:15-22, and 1 Chronicles 20:. To understand the problem and the answer, one must read through the whole of each - otherwise important context is lost, and the issue is obscured. Simply put, the events in 1 Samuel 17 and 2 Samuel 21 describe different battles, while that of 1 Chronicles 20 is the same as 2 Samuel 21.
1 Samuel 17 - David Kills Goliath
The passage in 1 Samuel is much more detailed than in 2 Samuel, and so only the relevant portions will be copied here:
First, we are given the location of the battle:
“1 And now the Philistines mustered their army for battle, and raised their standard at Socho, in Juda, encamping between Socho and Azeca, in the region of Dommim. 2 Saul, too, mustered the Israelites, and they marched to the Valley of the Terebinth, where they drew up their array to meet the enemy; 3 the Philistines held the mountain-slope on one side, and Israel on the other, with the valley between them.”
1 Samuel 17:1-3 (Knox Version)
We are then given an account of the killing of Goliath later on:
“48 By now, the Philistine had bestirred himself, and was coming on to attack David at close quarters; so, without more ado, David ran towards the enemy’s lines, to meet him. 49 He felt in his wallet, took out one of the stones, and shot it from his sling, with a whirl so dexterous that it struck Goliath on his forehead; deep in his forehead the stone buried itself, and he fell, face downwards, to the earth. 50Thus David overcame the Philistine with sling and stone, smote and slew him. No sword he bore of his own, 51 but he ran up and took the Philistine’s own sword from its sheath, where he lay, and with this slew him, cutting off his head.And now, seeing their champion dead, the Philistines betook themselves to flight; 52 while the men of Israel and of Juda rose up with a cry, and gave chase till they reached the low ground, and the very gates of Accaron; all the way to Geth and Accaron, along the road to Saraim, Philistines lay dying of their wounds.”
1 Samuel 17:48-52 (Knox Version)
Finally, we are given an account of the aftermath:
"54 As for David, he brought Goliath’s head back with him to Jerusalem, and laid up the armour in his tent. 55 Saul, as he watched him going out to meet the Philistine, had asked the commander of his men, Abner, from what stock this boy came. On thy life, my lord, said Abner, I cannot tell. 56 So the king bade him find out who the boy’s father was; 57 and David fresh from his victory, was taken by Abner into Saul’s presence, still carrying the Philistine’s head with him. 58 And when Saul asked of his lineage, David told him, I am the son of thy servant Jesse, the Bethlehemite."
1 Samuel 17:54-58 (Knox Version)
The key points to remember are the location(described in verses 1-3), the time period (before David took the throne), and who did it (David in verse 49).
Location:
The battle took place at the Valley of Elah (called the Valley of the Terebinth in verse 2, but called the Valley of Elah in 1 Samuel 21:9), which is in Judah. From the Bible Atlas, one can see the approximate location of the battle:
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| Valley of Elah/Valley of the Terebinth |
Time Period:
This battle occurs before David is King because it is when Saul first encounters him (verses 54-58), and it is before they enter into conflict with each other.
2 Samuel 21 - Elhanan Kills Goliath
15 War broke out again between Israel and the Philistines, and David went to battle against them with his men. But David’s strength had left him; 16 and he came near to being struck down by Jesbi-Benob, a man of the Araphite breed, that had a spear-head of ten pounds weight, and a new sword at his side. 17 It was Abisai, Sarvia’s son, that came to the king’s rescue, and gave the Philistine his death-blow. But after that David’s men swore that he should never go into battle with them again; that light must not be lost to Israel. 18 In another battle against the Philistines, at Gob, Saph, of the giant breed of Arapha, was slain by Sobochai, from Husathi; 19 in a third, also at Gob, Elehanan the son of Jaare, an embroiderer from Bethlehem, slew Goliath of Geth, that had a shaft to his spear as big as a weaver’s beam.[2] 20 In a fourth, at Geth, there was a man of huge stature that had twelve fingers and twelve toes, another of the Araphite breed; 21 and he taunted Israel, till Jonathan, son of David’s brother Semma, struck him down. 22 All these four were Araphites from Geth, all slain by David and his men.
2 Samuel 21:15-22 (Knox Version)
Turning to 2 Samuel 21:15-22, we see different chronological and geographical information. This battle does not take place in the Valley of Elah, but in Gob(verse 19), and it well after David became King (verses 1-4 of chapter 21 call David 'King David').
Gob is approximately 10 miles North of the Valley of Elah:
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| Gob/Gezer |
Not only is this battle after David is King, but we can say that it is quite a long time after the battle in 1 Samuel 17. According to George L. Haydock, this is a total of 43 years difference.
So, who killed Goliath?
Simply put, there were two Goliaths. The battles were in different places many years apart from each other, and there is no reason to suppose that they're the same person. There are many people with the same name at a given time, and so two people having the same name across time and space is no surprise. We do to have enough documentation to say how common the name was among Philistines, but that is not a reason for concern.
Other Solutions
In reply, one might ask why there is no disambiguation in 1 and 2 Samuel - ie, why does the author not say they are different Goliaths? For this reason, some people suggest a different solution, namely that the text here was corrupted.
In this article, the author uses the late Gleason Archer's explanation:
"First Samuel 17:50 states that David cut off Goliath's head with the giant's own sword, after he had first felled him with a sling and a stone. Because of this amazing victory over the Philistine, David became the foremost battle-champion among the Israelite troops, even though he was still a mere teenager. But 2 Samuel 21:19 in the Hebrew Masoretic text states that "Elhanan the son of Yaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam." As this verse stands in the Masoretic text, it certainly contradicts 1 Samuel 17. But fortunately we have a parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 20:5, which words the episode this way: "And Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite." It is quite apparent that this was the true reading, not only for the Chronicles passage but also for 2 Samuel 21:19.
The earlier manuscript from which the copyist was reading must have been blurred or damaged at this particular verse, and hence he made two or three mistakes. What apparently happened was the following:
1. The sign of the direct object, which at Chronicles comes just before "Lahmi," was '-t; the copyist mistook it for b-t or b-y-t ("Beth") and thus got Bet hal-Lahmi ("the Bethlehemite) out of it.
2. He misread the word for "brother" ('-h) as the sign of the direct object ('t) right before g-l-y-t ("Goliath"). Thus he made "Goliath" the object of "killed" (wayyak), instead of the "brother" of Goliath (as the Chron. passage does).
3. The copyist misplaced the word for "weavers" ('-r-g-ym) so as to put it right after "Elhanan" as his patronymic (ben Y-'r-y'-r--g-ym, or ben ya'arey 'or'e-gim - "the son of the forest of the weavers" - a most unlikely name for anyone's father!). In Chronicles the 'oregim ("weavers") comes right after ("a beam of") - thus making perfectly good sense.
In other words, the 2 Samuel 21 passage is a perfectly traceable corruption of the original wording, which fortunately has been correctly preserved in 1 Chronicles 20:5."
Now, there is a clear problem from a theological point of view: there is no manuscript as far as I am aware that reads the way Archer says the original went. The Septuagint (Greek Old Testament translated in the 2nd century BC) does not agree with him, nor does the Latin Vulgate (translated in the 4th century AD by St. Jerome). If Archer is right, that would mean that God did not preserve even one manuscript with the proper reading. If God did not preserve His word, why would He have inspired it? While it may solve a small difficulty in the text, it makes God's work of inspiration to be of no effect.
However, what he is supposing happened is not very likely even from a secular point of view:
In point 1, Archer says that the coppyist mistook '-t' for 'b-t.' In Hebrew that would mean mistaking אתfor בית. This is certainly possible, but the two are not so similar that we should rest our case on it. The other mistake in point 2 is more likely - mistakingאחforאת, seeing as they actually are quite similar. However, combining both mistakes is not very likely. Finally, point three requires one to simply misplace a word, which does happen fairly often. To be clear, the problem is not any single one of these errors (because they all do happen), but these three being combined. The copyist must have made three very specific mistakes, and somehow we would have no manuscript evidence that it happened. The Greek Old Testament was translated more than a century before the birth of our Lord, meaning that this mistake must have been made very early, leaving no trace of a correct reading.
Strangely enough, the author of the article finds this solution not only to be satisfying, but a testimony to the integrity of the Hebrew text: "the fact that scribes carefully transmitted the error found in 2 Samuel 21:19 is a testimony to their integrity in trying to accurately transmit the text."Preserving an scribal error without trace of a true reading is nothing reassuring. We would have no certainty, or even confidence that the original text is preserved at all. If scribal errors can go without a paper trail for thousands of years, there is no reason to suppose that any Scripture is original.
In any case, this solution is fairly ad hoc, and it is much simpler to say that there were two people named Goliath.
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