How Tall was Goliath? (feat. Toasters)

[Music] the story of david and goliath is one of the most iconic scenes in the bible armed with nothing but a sling the young shepherd boy takes down the fearsome philistine giant although it's a beloved and popular tale there's one big problem with it goliath's height you see no can quite agree on the giant's size where the bible sees goliath at approximately 10 feet tall there are other arguably more plausible sources that have him a bit shorter at the more realistic height of about seven feet in this video let's explore the debates surrounding the height of the biblical giant goliath delving into everything from ancient forms of measurement growth conditions like gigantism and even a few biblical typos for good measure as we ask the question how tall was goliath for those unfamiliar with the story of david and goliath or need a refresher here's a quick recap the story takes place during the reign of king saul who ruled the kingdom of israel in 11th century bce now things are not looking good for the nation they were losing a war against the philistines a group of people that lived to the south in modern day gaza the israelite and philistine armies were gathering in the valley of ellar preparing for battle out of the philistine camp emerge is a huge figure goliath of gath every morning and evening he calls out to the israelite camp demanding a champion to face him in single combat the israelites desperately looked amongst each other then looked towards their king but he was too afraid to step forward each day the giant repeated his demand and each day no one agreed to fight him that is until one day when a shepherd boy david overhears goliath and plans to step forward despite having no military experience he approaches the israelite army and king saul hurriedly accepts his request to fight the giant the king offers the boy his armor but is too heavy and david rejects it instead he grabs his sling and selects five smooth stones from a nearby stream putting them in his pouch david passes to the israelite ranks to meet goliath the giant laughs and says quote am i a dog that you come to me with sticks come to me i will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the field the philistines start laughing and curse the god of israel unfazed dave responds with this famous line this very day the lord will deliver you into my hand and i will strike you down and cut off your head for the battle is the lord's and he will give you into our hand with that david loads a small stone in his sling and launches it at goliath the stone strikes him square between the eyes killing him instantly david approaches the body and removes the head displaying it to the horrified philistine army dismayed the philistines retreat and their camp is plundered by the israelites david returns to king saul proudly holding up the head of the conquered philistine champion the story marks the beginning of david's rise to power and highlights just how unfit king saul is to rule soon david will replace saul as the rightful king of israel if you open a copy of the bible you'll find the story in the first book of samuel chapter 17 scroll down to verse 4 and it will describe the giant goliath as six cubits and a span qubits and spans are units of length pioneered by the egyptians who use them when building the pyramids one cubit is the distance from your elbow to your middle finger a span is about half that measuring from the tip of the little finger to the tip of the thumb when the hand is fully stretched out confusing i know but for most of human history the human body was used for all kinds of measurements you still get remnants of this today especially in the old english imperial system where things are still measured in feet legend has it that king henry viii shoe size 12 inches was the basis for today's foot and an inch was apparently defined by king david the first of scotland who used the width of his thumb as the standardized measurement it's all terribly complicated and you can see where the french designed the beautifully logical metric system that divided everything into neat multiples of 100 back to our qubits and spans one of the big problems about measuring things this way is that everyone's arms and hand sizes are a bit different a qubit of a tool person is different to that of a small person for the sake of argument many biblical scholars have standardized one cubit into 18 inches a span is about half of that so that's 9 inches doing the maths now we are told that goliath was six cubits and a span he would therefore measure out to a monstrous nine foot nine inches that is very big far bigger than the tallest human ever recorded robert wadlow of the us who reached an altitude of 8 foot 11 inches as with many of the tallest people who have lived is often the result of certain growth disorders gigantism is a condition when the human body over produces a certain hormone required for growth conveniently known as growth hormone this hormone is produced in the pituitary gland which can be found at the base of the brain for a typical person it will secrete throughout childhood increase during puberty and then cease into early adulthood gigantism however is often caused when this gland is obstructed by a brain tumor causing rapid and extreme growth throughout one's life when humans get to that kind of height a number of problematic health conditions emerge maintaining such a large body puts massive strain on the bones and the heart people with gigantism often require specialized crutches and also suffer from intense headaches fatigue and lack of vision from the decreased circulation it's the reason why robert wadlow the tallest man to have lived only reached the age of 22 returning to goliath measuring at nine foot nine inches would have put extreme pressure on his body due to the structure and density of human bones he simply would not have been able to stand upright with such mobility issues it's doubtful that he would have made such a good warrior as depicted in the bible story now goliath isn't the only giant in the bible in fact there's a whole slew of them some of whom may even be his ancestors to explore this issue i've roped in a fellow creator toasters who's also been helping me edit this video in the book of genesis we are introduced to the nephilim who are the cursed offspring of humans and angels the nephilim appear again in the book of numbers where they are described as being so tall that normal humans look like grasshoppers in comparison if we take that literally and scale it up that would mean they'd be about the size of the statue of liberty there are actually plenty of other giants in the old testament like the refame the zamsumin and the anakim in the book of joshua we are told this last group of giants the anakim settled in gaza in the philistine city of goth and you know who else came from goth goliath it may explain his great height as the size of a person is greatly influenced by one's genetics at the same time height-related disorders like gigantism are also known to pass down through families elsewhere in the bible we learn that goliath has a brother lami who is also a giant some have seen this as proof of gigantism in the goliath's family but who knows it's all little speculative but an interesting detail nonetheless if we assume goliath existed and that he really was nine foot nine inches we are dealing with the tallest person in history but if we consider the health realities facing goliath it is highly unlikely that he would ever have been able to be a warrior perhaps then the story is not meant to be taken literally or scientifically accurate instead it could just be artistic license exaggerating the height of this mythical warrior there's another alternative though his massive height may have been an error in the transmission of the text you may already be aware that the bible was not written in one go instead it developed over a period of a thousand years and was written by numerous people all from different walks of life even a single book would have been authored by many hands developing organically over time as bits were added and other bits were taken away in the ancient world early drafts copies and manuscript fragments were passed around from scribe to scribe so you'd even get different versions of the bible depending on where you'd go the version of the old testament that we've got today is called the masoretic text which belonged to a jewish sect called the mazarites who lived from the 7th to 10th centuries ce that's ce not bce so pretty late in the great scheme of things well into the medieval era there are way older versions of the bible out there the most famous of which is a greek translation of the old testament called the septuagint this version was written in egypt somewhere around the 3rd to the 2nd centuries bce which places it much more in our time frame if you turn to the story of david and goliath in this older greek version it offers a different height instead of six qubits and a span he's now four cubits and a span doing the maths again that puts him at the height of six foot nine inches six foot nine is nothing to be laughed at that's tool by anyone's standards especially as the average height of an israelite man living in this period was probably about five foot people were smaller back then at six foot nine goliath would have been the same height as the icelandic strongman hathor bjornsson who rose to international fame by playing the mountain in game of thrones while six foot nine is very tall it's not gigantism tall it's a height attainable without the various hormone imbalances that can lead to gigantism the advantage being is that there are no associated health risks at this height and so the giant goliath may very well have been a great fighter as the bible suggests just ask the two-time world heavyweight champion tyson fury who also stands at six foot nine this greek version of the text seems promising measuring at six foot nine and not at nine foot nine goliath's height would have been not only more realistic but would have meant that he'd been a better warrior free from the various health complications that faced some of the tallest people to have ever lived all this begs the question why does our version of the bible have such a big goliath how did he grow from the original height of four qubits in a span all the way to six qubits and a span there are a bunch of theories here some say it's embellishment others say it's the original version but there's one that stands out as being the most plausible what is believed to have happened with goliath is that a scribe may have accidentally changed his height this likely could have happened when their eye drifted across the page whilst copying the text and writing a part of it out wrong this was an easy mistake to make the hebrew word for qubit looks like this it appears in verse 4 where it talks about goliath's height now a few lines later in verse 7 when it discusses the weight of glass spear it has the number 600 as in the spear weighed 600 shekels the hebrew word for qubit looks remarkably similar to the hebrew number 100 just the letters are in a different order the scribe could have been looking at the number 6 whilst writing out the amount of qubits originally 4 it wouldn't take much to slip and whoops four qubits becomes six cubits and goliath grows two cubits this new height is in the version of the bible that we've inherited today most likely through the latin translation although all this sounds a bit silly this is actually a very well documented phenomenon in biblical studies and it happens more than you'd think this wandering eye has a fancy academic name parablepsis a greek word literally meaning looking by the side i've even done a video on this kind of thing examining the many often amusing scribal errors found in the bible to recap it all many believe that goliath was not the absurdly tall 9 foot 9 but the more realistic height of six foot nine this shorter height is preserved in the oldest versions of the biblical texts somewhere down the line gillard's height may have been changed by accident this could have occurred when the story was copied out by hand remember this was way before the printing press so everything had to be painstakingly written out imagine for a moment copying out the bible yourself you're bound to make some mistakes whatever his actual height may have really been if he even existed goliath is synonymous with big things particularly animals from the largest tarantula the goliath bird eater to the namesake of the world's largest species of frog his confrontation and fall to the future king david is the stuff of legend and is one of the most iconic scenes in biblical mythology like david we've taken goliath down to size but in this case quite literally hey thanks for watching i really hope you enjoyed this one if you'd like to see more why not subscribe a like and a comment also go a really long way and also many thanks to toasters for helping me out with this video and doing that little segment earlier on i recommend you check out his channel he covers a number of topics you might like anyway i look forward to seeing you next time goodbye [Music]

Channel: hochelaga

Views: 489,119

Keywords: Goliath

Id: FtcyaWVo0C8

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021