Missing Words
There was war with the Philistines again at Gob, and Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed [b]Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. 2 Samuel 21:19 NASB
Killed Goliath – Read it carefully. Okay, now answer the question, “Who killed Goliath?” Translators of the NASB provide a footnote to this verse (you see it in the small letter b). The footnote reads: In 1 Chr 20:5, Lahmi, the brother of Goliath. In other words, Chronicles corrects Samuel in order to make it consistent with the more famous story of David killing Goliath. Chronicles acts as if Samuel just left out a couple of important words, namely, “the brother of.” Problem solved. Right?
Or maybe there’s another solution. “Targum Jonathan, a translation of the later books of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Aramaic . . . doesn’t mention ‘Elhanan’ in 2 Samuel 21:19, but rather ‘David, the weaver.’ And Rashi . . . explains that ‘Elhanan’ in 2 Samuel 21:19 means ‘David’ and explains that ‘son of Jaare-oregim’ means ‘the people from the family of weavers.’”[1] Problem solved. Right?
Unfortunately not.
“But this traditional explanation leaves other discrepancies unexplained. For instance, according to 2 Samuel, the battle occurs at a place called Gob, while in 1 Samuel it takes place in the Valley of Elah.”[2]
We’re left with the sarcastic comment of Mark Twain: “Herodotus says, ‘Very few things happen at the right time and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.’”[3] Even in the Bible, historians from one period attempt to reconcile events from another period, not always successfully.
Why does this matter? Take note of Hoffman’s remark about religious tradition. “ . . . people who read the Bible primarily in translation and guided by established religious trends get great insight into those religious trends and the role the Bible plays in them, but the focus on one particular view of the Bible necessarily presents a warped view of the original Bible.”[4] In other words, the necessity of altering the original text helps us understand the Bible from the perspective of institutionalized religion, whether Christian or Jewish, but it does not help us understand what the original author wrote to the original audience. The Bible in translation is necessarily religious, that is, it fits into a particular religious paradigm. If that’s what you want your Bible to do—to support your religious views—then translations are sufficient. But if you want to know what the authors really said to their audiences, then you’ll have to peel away the religious layers (which might be quite uncomfortable) and read the Bible in its patchwork of genres with commitment to the cultures of its audience, not ours.
This isn’t very comforting for religion. Too often the Bible is treated as sacrosanct. Do you know that word? It means “regarded as too important or valuable to be interfered with.” For believers, a sacrosanct Bible means that we ignore or explain away the discrepancies, we overlay everything with theological glasses, and we shun those who raise questions. The Bible almost becomes more important than God, or at least it is viewed as the equivalent (and Judaism’s view of Torah is no different). But the Bible is a book, or rather, a collection of ancient scrolls. It isn’t God. It’s the human record of our interaction with God and His view of us. That’s all. And, fortunately, that’s enough.
Right?
Topical Index: Bible, Goliath, history, sacrosanct, 2 Samuel 21:19, 1 Chronicles 20:5
[1] Joel Hoffman, The Bible Doesn’t Say That (St. Martin’s Press, 2016), p. 46.
[2] Ibid.
[3] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/52753-herodotus-says-very-few-things-happen-at-the-right-time
[4] Joel Hoffman, The Bible Doesn’t Say That (St. Martin’s Press, 2016), pp. 4-5.
