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Dan Howard
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 Posted: Mon 10 Dec, 2007 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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That is a cop out if you ask me. It boils down to "Goliath was supernatural so there is no point discussing his height since the natural laws of physics don't apply." On top of this we have "the bible is a supernaturally inspired source so there is no point questioning the accuracy of the text."
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Dan P
Location: Massachusetts, USA Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Posts: 208
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| Posted: Mon 10 Dec, 2007 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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The Bibilical source may be correct- given that the people writing it, and the folk legends, earlier texts, and oral traditions they might have used, may have honestly believed that Goliath was in fact superhuman. Given that he was exceptionally strong and tall for his time, and that part of his job was basically to scare the crap out of opposing armies and leaders, its not surprising that many tall tales about him started getting passed around the area. Heck, he may have even encouraged them! And the people he scared off just by standing there probably remembered him as a heck of a lot taller than he really was!
Same thing with the measurements given for him in the Bible- it is almost certainly out of the question that the writers of the Bible actually measured him, his body, and his weapons firsthand (or all the other measurements of other stuff in there), and these things tend to get inflated over time. Like that fish I almost caught last year, it was as big as a car.
Goliath is kind of like an older version of Paul Bunyan. If either of them really existed, its unlikely that they are everything that the legend makes them out to be, but definitely characters memorable enough to become legends.
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M. Eversberg II
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| Posted: Mon 10 Dec, 2007 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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I figured they meant he was just larger than life.
Wonder what they did with the body? David must have had a fortune in bronze at his feet, assuming they have right of kill.
M.
This space for rent or lease.
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Jared Smith
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| Posted: Mon 10 Dec, 2007 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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| Dan P wrote: | | The Bibilical source may be correct- given that the people writing it, and the folk legends, earlier texts, and oral traditions they might have used, may have honestly believed that Goliath was in fact superhuman. |
Technically, if you translate the ancient Hebrew great flood story correctly (not a modern politically correct version of the Bible), Noah was the last non-superhuman male left at the time of the "great floods." Even his son's were partly corrupted (interbred with Nephilim), which makes their survival very puzzling and contradictory to the logic behind God causing a flood (cleansing non-human genes per this line of thought.) Today the Biblical descriptions tend to be glossed over with terms like "great ones", avoiding all traditions such as "giants", long lived, exceptionally strong, etc. that were attributed to cross breeds in ancient legend. Hiding women from Nephilim is one of the folktales explaining the middle Eastern practice of women wearing the veil (references surviving into New Testament, although I would have to work to show that.) The tales are intermingled (and shared by several cultures, Titans, etc.).
Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence!
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Carl Goff
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| Posted: Fri 14 Dec, 2007 6:19 am Post subject: Re: Goliath |
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| Jared Smith wrote: | | Dan Howard wrote: |
Even a brief discussion with any doctor will tell you that 11'3" is ridiculous. The tallest man in existence was 8'11" and at these heights a man would not be an effective warrior due to medical complications. |
I am mostly in agreement. It should be considered that 8' 11" is the tallest man on record in a relatively short period of record keeping. I am guessing, but this is roughly 100 years of records (a sampling of only 3% of man's ability to record his own history, less than 5% of the time elapsed since numerous Roman authors characterized Gauls as towering over opponents.) Robert Wadlow (8' 11" as a young adult) did have some medical problems, but was known to have carried his father up the household stairs at age 9. If one allows for 3000 years of history, and some of the proportions of skeletal remains (linked previously), very large proportions might be credible. |
I've heard (from a somewhat unreliable source) a claim of a 9-10 foot Parthian living during the Imperial period of Rome. Can't recall if he was actually a warrior or not, though. (Given Parthian tactics, I should think not. King's bodyguard while not in battle might be a distinctly different case...)
Oh, East of sands and sunlit gulf, your blood is thin, your gods are few;
You could not break the Northern wolf and now the wolf has turned on you.
The fires that light the coasts of Spain fling shadows on the Eastern strand.
Master, your slave has come again with torch and axe in his right hand!
-Robert E. Howard
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Lafayette C Curtis
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| Posted: Fri 21 Dec, 2007 12:10 am Post subject: |
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That'd be from Robert Graves's historical fiction novel, I, Claudius. I don't remember where he got it from but he must have had a historical source for that--however reliable (or unreliable) that source ight be in the judgement of other scholars.
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