Have you ever wondered why Goliath was so tall? So have I. But before I learned Goliath had two different heights , I conducted research on what the Bible has to say about Giants. (Buckle your seat belts. This is going to be a wild ride.) When the Israelites were getting ready to conquer Canaan, ten of their twelve spies reported about Giants. According to Numbers 13:31-33, “But the men who had gone up with [Caleb] said, ‘We are not able to go up against these people, because they are stronger than we are!’ Then they presented the Israelites with a discouraging report of the land they had investigated, saying, ‘The land that we passed through to investigate is a land that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw there are of great stature. We even saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak came from the Nephilim), and we seemed liked grasshoppers both to ourselves and to them.’” Where did their concept of the Nephilim originate? The Nephilim are first mentioned in the pr...
Did you know there are two different heights for Goliath? Depending on which version of the story you read, Goliath could either be extremely tall (over nine feet) or fairly tall (under seven feet). Obviously, the ancient Hebrews did not use feet and inches but, instead, used cubits and spans. Hebraically speaking, was Goliath either "six cubits and a span" or "four cubits and a span"? The version of the Bible which says "six cubits and a span" was scribed by a sect of Jews, called the Masoretes, between 600 and 1000 A.D. But, did you know there are as many as three ancient sources, pre-dating the Masoretic manuscripts, which describe Goliath as "four cubits and a span"? These three older sources are: Josephus , the Septuagint , and the Dead Sea Scrolls . Regarding Josephus, he was a Jewish historian who witnessed the Romans destroying Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Regarding the Septuagint, this was the 132 B.C. Greek version of the Hebrew Old Testame...