Old bones cast new light on Goliath's people

[Roymond]

On 2/4/2023 at 6:21 PM, teddyv said:

Not sure if there was a really standardized cubit back in the day. People were also generally shorter than today, so I'd lean toward the shorter cubit.

Some kingdoms' cubit lengths changed every time they got a new king and the official cubit became the distance on the new king's arm!

I vaguely recall that there was one kingdom where each new king's arm was measured; if it was shorter than the existing cubit, nothing changed,but if it was longer then the official cubit was lengthened to match the arm of the new king -- so their cubits changed sometimes, but only when a new king had longer arms than any of his predecessors.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Roymond

[Roymond]

On 2/5/2023 at 5:09 AM, Reynolds357 said:

I believe The Bible 100%.

With that said, was Goliath a Philistine. He "went out from the camp of the Philistine army." David called him a Philistine, but that does not necessarily mean any more than he was a member of the Philistine army. Was Goliath a Philistine or a Philistine mercenary. Both are possible. The answer does not contradict Scripture either way. 

There were skeletons of people about eight feet tall in one part of Turkey.  Given that the coast where the Philistines lived was a travel route between Asia Minor and Egypt, it's not at all unreasonable to think that some 'giants' from that northerly region ended up in Philistine territory.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Roymond

[Roymond]

On 2/6/2023 at 12:39 PM, Daniel Marsh said:

I think the 24" thing came from someone trying to make Noah's Ark bigger. 

 

 

It wasn't invented by them, just chosen.  The Egyptian royal cubit was a bit over 24", and was as I recall the biggest around.  Someone had a 22" cubit, but for the most part they ran from 16" to 19", depending on whose arm was chosen.

[Roymond]

On 2/7/2023 at 5:26 PM, coheir said:

I was doing some checking and I think 18" is the most used measurement for a cubit like you said.

I am watching a move on you tube called "On the traces of an ancient civilization" It explains the famous cubit which is 52 " long. you can see it at 1 hour and 2minites the explanation is

only 10 minutes long. Very interesting. let me know what you think.

I'd forgotten about that one; we called it the "pharaohnic cubit" and always wondered why it wasn't just twice the royal cubit, which would have been much more useful -- what it is, is twice the royal cubit plus a palm!

The bit about the Golden Mean was interesting; it turns out that there are several ways to reach the Golden Mean without knowing that's what you're doing, and they plainly stumbled on one of them.

 

[Roymond]

On 2/13/2023 at 5:45 AM, coheir said:

I just watched a documentary and it covered the cubit and the royal cubit which turn out to be one meter long over 300 yrs before the meter was in existence.

Now I'm wondering:  the length of a cubit varies by the height of a person -- but what about the palm?  Do taller people have wider palms?  Because if palms don't vary (much) then ending up with a measure that broke into five palms wouldn't be surprising.

[Fallen into Grace]

Looks like link is now broken or Yahoo deleted it. But yeah Goliath was a giant. The Nephilim also known as giants are real. Lots of giant bones in America discovered but Smithsonian covered a lot of it up. Aliens and UFOs are really fallen angels. Notice a lot of liberal movies wants people to embrace ''gods'' ir fallen angels but not the REAL God. When Jesus said it would be like the days of Noah before He returns, He wasn't kidding. Genesis 6 is a pretty clear indicator. Also I haven't read the Book of Enoch fully but I have it and read a little of it. Hope to read it fully but it goes into full detail the whole giant mess talked about briefly in Genesis 6. Satan is really busy. But we don't need to be afraid but we need to be on guard against deception. Jesus warned against the elect being deceived so we need to be really and be pursuing God and spreading His Word to others, telling myself that as well as everybody else. Time is running out and we need to quit playing games and get very serious with God. It's so close that Jesus really can come again in our lifetime. No one knows the time of Jesus coming again but like He said we can see the signs of Him coming again like a fig tree blossoming in season. God loves us.

[Roymond]

On 7/21/2017 at 2:00 PM, Lucian Hodoboc said:

Those images have nothing to do with the article...

They've also been demonstrated to be fraudulent.

That's sad, especially since actual discoveries have found skeletons as tall as 6'9" and possibly 7', which may not seem giant to us (think NBA players) but given that someone 5'5" back then was tall and 5'2" was normal would have been towering!

I'm 5'10" and I've met someone who was 7'2", and he seemed like a giant; to someone only 5'2" 7'2" would be terrifying.

[Roymond]

On 7/21/2017 at 2:39 PM, Lucian Hodoboc said:

Did you read the article? It states that they have found no giant skeletons in the Philistines' graves so far. Goliath was a Philistine, but there's no trace of His skeleton.

Not at that dig, anyway, which is at Ashkelon, the wrong town for Goliath.  I'd have to dig to find the location where the 7' skeletons were found, but I think it was at what archaeologists think was Gath -- Goliath's town.

Edited June 4, 2023 by Roymond

[Roymond]

On 7/21/2017 at 3:24 PM, HAZARD said:

Nothing personal, but I did read the article don't care what the article states or what US archaeologist and Harvard University professor Lawrence E. Stager writes.

That's a silly attitude; it prevents learning.  Ashkelon had maybe 15,000 people, so what has been found is just a scratch and thus probably doesn't tell us anything about how truly important people were buried.

On 7/21/2017 at 3:24 PM, HAZARD said:

 

I believe God's Word and it states that there were giants in the land.

I can't remember if Ahekelon was recorded as having any; I know Gath was.  If it wasn't recorded that Ashkelon had giants, then the archaeology won't tell us anything about giants anyway.

On 7/21/2017 at 3:24 PM, HAZARD said:

Genesis 6:4, There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

Numbers 13:33, And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

Assuming the Anakim were 9' tall, which is physiologically possible if they weren't ordinary humans, then by the time of Numbers their DNA would likely have dropped them down to about 7' tall since they would have had to marry ordinary women.  And 7' tall warriors when the typical Hebrew warrior at the time was probably about 5'2" would be giants -- easily tall enough to frighten the scouts into regarding themselves as "grasshoppers".

What's fascinating is that the peoples in the land whom the Israelites were ordered to exterminate all are recorded as having at least partly descended from the Anakim, and if you read between the lines plus look at some of the literature from outside the Bible (especially the Book of Enoch, that several biblical writers quote on occasion) they descended from the "Watchers", mighty angels God appointed to guide and "watch" the nations of the ancient near east who weren't supposed to get involved in mundane human affairs but did so anyway, and for the sake of humanity all their descendants needed to be eliminated.

On 7/21/2017 at 3:24 PM, HAZARD said:

That's good enough for me. And the bones they have found world wide also proves this.

The really big bones are hoaxes.  If you separate out those there are skeletons 7' tall from about the time of Joshua, which would point to people 9' tall centuries earlier -- who would have been nearly twice as tall as most ordinary people back then, especially if they wore gear to increase their height.  It would be like someone today who was 5' 8" tall encountering someone a full 10' 6" in height -- more than a little intimidating.

[Roymond]

On 9/9/2017 at 9:45 PM, other one said:

The masoretic text puts his height at about 9 1/2 feet. There is a 3 foot difference in the two texts.

The weapons discussed doesn't sound like some 6 foot person.  The hard to know.

 

IIRC there's another Hebrew text that puts Goliath at 6' 9".

Given that a typical ANE warrior of the time would have been 5' 2" or so, 6' 9" would have been more than a little scary since the spear someone wielded tended to be 20% longer than their height, making for a deadly difference in reach of weapon.