Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us, folks.
Speaker 2: Tonight is February tenth, Monday, and we have some breaking
Speaker 2: news here on the nonprofits. This justin we may have
Speaker 2: Goliath's actual height and a medical diagnosis for the giant.
Speaker 1: Taking us through this story is Rob. He's on the scene, Rob.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Scientists have new archaeological surveys giving us evidence that may
Speaker 3: give a new and frankly more reasonable height for the
Speaker 3: biblical giant Goliath. Look, measuring things is really hard. I
Speaker 3: used to do woodworking, so I can't imagine what measuring
Speaker 3: things from a thousand years ago is like and trying
Speaker 3: to come up with the same measurement one thousand or
Speaker 3: thousands of years later. Ultimately, though, I have to ask,
Speaker 3: does this even matter? This story is from The Daily
Speaker 3: Mail Online by William Hunter on January twenty six, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five.
Speaker 1: Well let's just start there, Rob, Does this matter?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Oh? That was that was quick? Why not? Because?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: Though?
Speaker 3: So like in some ways I can if I were
Speaker 3: a person who believed deeply in the Bible, then especially
Speaker 3: if it were inerrant and perfect in every way, then
Speaker 3: like I don't need anything to tell me about this anyway.
Speaker 3: But that's not a good reason to believe anything. But
Speaker 3: like Noah's arc, people say that they have found that
Speaker 3: on like the mountains and stuff like that, and you
Speaker 3: can find much more easy archaeological evidence for that sort
Speaker 3: of thing, like we have we found the burial grounds
Speaker 3: the tombs of various pharaohs through archaeological research, Like we
Speaker 3: can find those things, but those are more more significant
Speaker 3: discoveries as opposed to like, there was a dude who
Speaker 3: was big and then he died somewhere. He may not
Speaker 3: have been like preserved or given a sacred burial site,
Speaker 3: So can we even find it in the first place, So,
Speaker 3: like it's gonna be hard to find, if it's even
Speaker 3: possible to find, And if we do find it, what
Speaker 3: are we gonna find out? He's big?
Speaker 1: Like whatever? Well, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2: So I think the author of this article did present
Speaker 2: some reasons why this story was designed theoretically the way
Speaker 2: it was, if it was kind of a made up
Speaker 2: literary device, if you will. But before we move on
Speaker 2: to that, I do want to talk about the gigantism.
Speaker 2: The author calls it giantism. I think the correct term
Speaker 2: is gigantism. In any case, I want to ask Helen,
Speaker 2: what does the research on gigantism or the diagnosis do
Speaker 2: for the case of the Goliath if anything?
Speaker 4: Well, I think what I found interest about this like
Speaker 4: the biblical story fine, like whatever, but I can understand,
Speaker 4: like with this particular thing about giganticism, that it existed,
Speaker 4: and we have mentions of giants in the Bible.
Speaker 5: I'm sure that the ancient Israelites that didn't understand like
Speaker 5: you know, an overactor diroy that causes excessive growth, didn't
Speaker 5: understand that it causes a lot of other additional medical
Speaker 5: problems for being as big as the these people were.
Speaker 5: So the fact that this article kind of went into
Speaker 5: those issues I found very interesting, Like even how they measured.
Speaker 6: Because again, as Rob said in his intro.
Speaker 5: About going, how do we know what the what the
Speaker 5: process was, you know, twenty over two thousand years ago
Speaker 5: versus you know how I mean, like we have different
Speaker 5: measuring systems now. So I thought that was really interesting,
Speaker 5: not so much like I like the you know, the
Speaker 5: faith should find, but I thought that also if you know,
Speaker 5: to these ancient Israelites, like just let's just say, okay
Speaker 5: that David killed Gli with a sling shot, and you know,
Speaker 5: you have this average height man, like let's say he's
Speaker 5: like five foot eight versus someone that might be, you know,
Speaker 5: as like seven feet tall or whatever. That to an
Speaker 5: ancient Israelite that didn't understand, like how you know, this
Speaker 5: particular medical condition and merged with seem.
Speaker 6: You know, extraordinary.
Speaker 5: And even though we understand the medical condition, like this
Speaker 5: medical addition is very rare, so even to us that
Speaker 5: you know, when I see something that's like really, really
Speaker 5: fucking tall, you know, I'm kind of like wow.
Speaker 2: So the author, the author alludes to the fact that
Speaker 2: back back in these times in the Middle East, the
Speaker 2: average sized person was about five to three, which is
Speaker 2: consistent with Egypt and other areas. So seeing somebody that's
Speaker 2: even like six foot five, which is still big by
Speaker 2: standards today, probably was even.
Speaker 1: Bigger back then.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot going on in this article where
Speaker 2: we're not just talking about we're not just talking about
Speaker 2: his height and his size, which I think by the
Speaker 2: standard account is like nine feet right, And everybody was
Speaker 2: scared shitless of Goliath.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just out there one day.
Speaker 2: There was like forty days straight that he was coming
Speaker 2: out every morning and terrorizing the Israelite to being Okay,
Speaker 2: who's going to come fight me? But I want to
Speaker 2: ask aj you know, given the conditions, So the author
Speaker 2: lays out some conditions consistent with gigantism that would have
Speaker 2: afflicted Goliath.
Speaker 1: Does it make sense that Goliath would have been chosen
Speaker 1: to fight at all?
Speaker 7: Well, here's the thing. Goliath was supposed to be a Philistine,
Speaker 7: which is like the sons of the Nephilins and the humans.
Speaker 7: The Nephelins were supposed to be these giants that came
Speaker 7: from heaven according to the Bible, and so the Philistines
Speaker 7: were their sons, their children, and they were supposed to
Speaker 7: be very large. So according to the story, Goliath wasn't
Speaker 7: necessarily much bigger than all of his family or other
Speaker 7: people of the City of God where they lived, where
Speaker 7: they resided, but they were big to the people that
Speaker 7: did not live there. So, as Helene mentioned, when people
Speaker 7: have gigantism, it can be due to issues with the
Speaker 7: pituitary grant. It can be a tumor, or it can
Speaker 7: be just like an overproduction of growth hormone, and these giants,
Speaker 7: because of that, because the growth hormone doesn't stop producing,
Speaker 7: they can develop so they can develop. Their body can
Speaker 7: become so big that they can develop all these severe
Speaker 7: hope issues, like you know, it can affect their vision,
Speaker 7: it can affect their blood flow because humans are not
Speaker 7: meant to be that size, and we're talking about gigantism,
Speaker 7: we're talking about medical condition that exists even today, so
Speaker 7: these are fact. Another thing it can cause is their
Speaker 7: heart to pump blood so hard that it causes heart disease.
Speaker 7: And most people with gigantism die like their twenties or
Speaker 7: thirties due to heart conditions. And in the case of Goliad,
Speaker 7: like you ask, would he have been chosen? Maybe maybe
Speaker 7: he's a little bit larger than his siblings or you know,
Speaker 7: other people in the city, so maybe that's why he
Speaker 7: was chosen. But I found interesting that one of the
Speaker 7: descriptions of the Bible says that he came out to
Speaker 7: meet David with someone in front of him in a shield,
Speaker 7: like a shield barror, And it makes you wonder, like,
Speaker 7: did they know that he has some type of health issue?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a good segue because now we're starting
Speaker 2: to get into without any proof of what's happening, without
Speaker 2: a body, right, maybe we can come up with a motive.
Speaker 1: You know why, why.
Speaker 2: All of these details in the story, and we start
Speaker 2: picking them apart and trying to create a story when really, Rob,
Speaker 2: I think to your point when you say it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter right who cares or something along those lines, it's
Speaker 2: not important. I want to try and look at a
Speaker 2: different side of things. So let's forget about the characteristics
Speaker 2: of Goliath and let's talk about maybe the underlying story
Speaker 2: that we're not talking about. What are some of the
Speaker 2: literary devices at play?
Speaker 1: Maybe?
Speaker 2: What are some of the agendas that are being represented?
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on some of the alternative theories
Speaker 2: that the author lays out.
Speaker 3: So his giant gigantism, the stature of him, the size
Speaker 3: of him in the article, they say, it's probably a
Speaker 3: literary device, and I think that's just obviously true, or
Speaker 3: at least yeah, obviously true there. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you ever remember Shiloh the Reading Dog TV show, but
Speaker 3: they covered David and the Goliath in one of their episodes,
Speaker 3: and at the end of each episode they would always
Speaker 3: be like doul little bloopers, and in this one was like,
Speaker 3: sound effects are really important for TV shows. Watch what
Speaker 3: happens when Goliath comes out stomping out, but there's no
Speaker 3: sound effects. So they show him and he comes out,
Speaker 3: there's no sound effects. It's like, oh, he doesn't like
Speaker 3: make the groundshake. So how a story is told very
Speaker 3: much informs how the story is received. It also very
Speaker 3: much informs the message of the story. So of course
Speaker 3: little old David has God's grace on his side, and
Speaker 3: he beats the biggest guy in town. That's the effect
Speaker 3: of the story. So his size in many ways is
Speaker 3: not relevant except for he's big.
Speaker 2: So you know, there are so many other characteristics though,
Speaker 2: or conditions in this region that I think need to
Speaker 2: be talked about as well. So the Israelites we see,
Speaker 2: unfortunately today the Jewish people and the descendants of the
Speaker 2: Canaanites in general still fighting over land.
Speaker 1: Back then it was no different, they were fighting over land.
Speaker 2: I think that, if I understand it correctly, the Canaanites
Speaker 2: were enemies with the Philistines, but actually were dominated by
Speaker 2: the Philistines earlier in their past right.
Speaker 1: And then this battle takes place now.
Speaker 2: The author points out that the measurement of Goliath is
Speaker 2: actually consistent with the walls the city of Gath, where
Speaker 2: Goliath was from right, So is there is there not
Speaker 2: another kind of metaphor happening where David beating Goliath is
Speaker 2: really the Israelites sacking the Philistines on their home territory
Speaker 2: and taking their their land. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 2: that's a more plausible argument given what we know about
Speaker 2: the Bible and just the way things are taken out
Speaker 2: of context. I don't know, Helen, what's a more plausible
Speaker 2: argument or what is what is your take on these
Speaker 2: arguments being presented.
Speaker 5: So, because we know that the Bible's writing a lot
Speaker 5: of metaphor, that's.
Speaker 6: The realm that it exists in.
Speaker 5: You know, there's a lot of conjecture that we can
Speaker 5: make when we're reading this text regardless are not of
Speaker 5: if Goliath was knifeing tall or you know, or was
Speaker 5: the same height as the fucking laws, Like, we can
Speaker 5: make that conjecture he might have, like if we can,
Speaker 5: like let's just say, okay that you know, David's five
Speaker 5: ' three ang lithe is seven feet tall. If he
Speaker 5: is that tall or even like six foot five, you know,
Speaker 5: that is such a.
Speaker 6: High difference that it seems extraordinary.
Speaker 5: And also if he's from an opposing city and you know,
Speaker 5: and we're they're kind of combining all these sort of
Speaker 5: like conjectures and ideas together. We can you know, the
Speaker 5: inference would be like, you know, through the metaphor that
Speaker 5: they're talking about, you know, I'm actually taking the walls
Speaker 5: down and invading the city. Rather than talking about a
Speaker 5: man or, they're talking about a literal man that came
Speaker 5: from the city and you know, combining the two together
Speaker 5: because religion does that as well. So you know, but
Speaker 5: without actual evidence of you know, someone from this city
Speaker 5: that was nine feet tall, it is just conjecture.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: It can be a metaphor, it could be a man or,
Speaker 5: it can be a little bit of both, but there's
Speaker 5: no way to actually test for it. So a lot
Speaker 5: and the article kind of alludes to that. So you know,
Speaker 5: I'm not like, I think it's interesting, Like I love
Speaker 5: learning about like you know, biblical pass like through like
Speaker 5: a historical and scientific lens, Like I love that shit.
Speaker 5: But as far as like the way the story is told,
Speaker 5: like I'm not putting all my eggs and eat either.
Speaker 1: Bass.
Speaker 6: It's kind of distribution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rob's point.
Speaker 2: You know, you probably don't get much from this. It's
Speaker 2: pretty insignificant, but you know, Aj, I thought that you
Speaker 2: had go ahead, Rob, go ahead.
Speaker 1: I'm going to kick it to AJ. But I did
Speaker 1: mention you go ahead real quick.
Speaker 3: That's that's why I said to me the biblical parts
Speaker 3: sound of interesting, because, like I said earlier, and I
Speaker 3: think Helen mentioned that, there's just they measured things in
Speaker 3: different ways. I'm going to put a pin in that
Speaker 3: new thing. Most people, for most of history are illiterate,
Speaker 3: and most people when they engage with a book has
Speaker 3: been an autumn, even the people when could read. There's
Speaker 3: a reason why Shakespeare is in iambic pentameter because it's
Speaker 3: easier to memorize if it's structured, and that's how epic
Speaker 3: poems work as well, like the Iliod in the Odyssey.
Speaker 1: So like I.
Speaker 3: Actually I didn't think about like, oh, it's a metaphor.
Speaker 3: If he is the size of the city's wall and
Speaker 3: he has destroyed him, therefore he's destroyed the city wall.
Speaker 3: Like that's cute, but it's also just a really good
Speaker 3: memory tool of orally passing this tradition of do you
Speaker 3: see that wall he was that big?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: Yeah that's that's good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, that's a really good analysis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good analysis.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean this is the time, this is
Speaker 2: the time before the Bible was really being written down.
Speaker 1: You know, everything's in oral history.
Speaker 4: Aj.
Speaker 2: I know you have a point, but I want to
Speaker 2: ask you a question and then you just feel free
Speaker 2: to take it. So you brought up a good point
Speaker 2: leading up to this talking about David was asking the
Speaker 2: man standing near the side of the battle, what happens
Speaker 2: to the person that kills Goliath? And basically the response was, oh,
Speaker 2: they get all these rewards, and you kind of pointed
Speaker 2: towards selfishness. So maybe there's something else going on that
Speaker 2: we haven't covered yet in this story, and go ahead,
Speaker 2: the floor is you will.
Speaker 7: Yeah, No, that was exactly my point that I was
Speaker 7: that was about to cover, okay, like because I was thinking, like, uh,
Speaker 7: the story is supposed to be to lead to David
Speaker 7: becoming king and all of that. Like King David is
Speaker 7: like a main cue part of the Bible, right, so
Speaker 7: they want to make they have to make him look good.
Speaker 7: They have to make him look like the winner, like
Speaker 7: he beat up this gigantic, massive, you know, opponent, but
Speaker 7: they make him look like he was this selfless servant
Speaker 7: of God.
Speaker 6: But what's here?
Speaker 7: Or was he just selfish? Because David asks the men
Speaker 7: that are near him, and he's like, well, what is
Speaker 7: going to happen if you as you asked? Like, what
Speaker 7: is going to happen to whoever kills this philistine and
Speaker 7: removes him from Isuel? Like funny enough, he calls Goliath
Speaker 7: circumcis philistine. I don't know why he goes there, but
Speaker 7: he goes there. So then he asked several other people
Speaker 7: like what is the world going to be? What am
Speaker 7: I going to get?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 6: If I beat him up?
Speaker 7: Like I don't, I don't want not, I don't want
Speaker 7: to do this if I'm not gonna get anything. And
Speaker 7: apparently the price was getting worked from King Saul. He
Speaker 7: was not going to pay taxes, and he was going
Speaker 7: to get one of Saul's daughter's hands in marriage, so
Speaker 7: he was also.
Speaker 1: Going to totally okay with that.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: He probably probably like, hey, just pick whichever you want,
Speaker 7: you know, like and then apparently know, how do you
Speaker 7: even knew.
Speaker 6: The state of glass Penis Like that's what I want
Speaker 6: to know.
Speaker 1: I don't want to know.
Speaker 2: There's so much I'm sorry, but what I want to
Speaker 2: know is why David the shepherd came to bring bread
Speaker 2: into the village and automatically got an audience with the king,
Speaker 2: Like this happens more than once in the Bible, Like
Speaker 2: how many times do people bring bread into a city
Speaker 2: like meet even the mayor.
Speaker 1: You know, this is just crazy, but go ahead, aj please.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Like his brothers were also calling him conceited and wicked
Speaker 7: him and they were like, you're just coming over here
Speaker 7: to watch the fight. Like it's a really, really weird story.
Speaker 7: It makes you also wonder why did King Saul believe
Speaker 7: David literally a child Like David goes and he's like, well,
Speaker 7: you know I can kill him because I killed the
Speaker 7: lion that attacked my father's sheep, and then I killed
Speaker 7: the bear doing the same, Like it was just it
Speaker 7: was just a claim.
Speaker 2: Just to claim, and the loser becomes the subject of
Speaker 2: the other. So let me take this kid that I've
Speaker 2: never met that lives in the woods, that is a
Speaker 2: shepherd that showed up with a rock and a sling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will bet my kingdom on this.
Speaker 2: You know, I think this is probably just a way
Speaker 2: of of aggrandizing the Israelites.
Speaker 1: Right, and it's legend, it's it's myth.
Speaker 2: It's uh and making others look stupid, look weak, even
Speaker 2: if the gigantism diagnosis is correct and Goliath was actually
Speaker 2: like not only just massive, but couldn't see very well
Speaker 2: and was probably weak and had bad blood circulation.
Speaker 3: I don't know, hey, man, I was gonna stay in
Speaker 3: modern America. We have Paul Bunyan and they have Goliath. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's like we got folk.
Speaker 2: Tales Paul Bunyon was Yeah, that's true, but Paul Bunyan,
Speaker 2: but he gets I don't remember the story of Paul Bunyan.
Speaker 1: I don't believe he was defeated by anybody, was he?
Speaker 5: I meant all, he just planted all the trees across America.
Speaker 6: Jimmy, that's how that worked.
Speaker 2: For the For the Israelites, you know, it's like we
Speaker 2: may look weak, we like, we may look insignificant, but
Speaker 2: you know we are great and and this is how
Speaker 2: you know we are. Look at this great nation that collapsed.
Speaker 2: Do the same thing with the Egyptians in the Bible
Speaker 2: as well. You know, Abraham shows up to Egypt and
Speaker 2: they're like, hey, you want to meet the Pharaoh? Like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: because you're so great you could just go meet the Pharaoh.
Speaker 2: So I guess Helen, I want to turn back to you. Uh,
Speaker 2: we cover a lot here, We covered a lot. You know,
Speaker 2: We've got medical diagnoses, we've got literary devices. Any of
Speaker 2: this is does any of this help us in any way?
Speaker 2: Or is this just kind of a fun conversation.
Speaker 5: I well, I think this is just me for people
Speaker 5: that think the Bible's a errant, that this might be
Speaker 5: like it'sot experiment for you like just like, let's just
Speaker 5: because of the things that he brought up about history
Speaker 5: and about like you know what peopless perspectives of certain
Speaker 5: maleclinditions in the past might have been, that it might
Speaker 5: that inflating you know, things out of you know, making
Speaker 5: the ordinary shortinairy that I'm hoping, you know, the people
Speaker 5: that you know take the Bible as an aaron will
Speaker 5: just give him a moment to think, because like to me,
Speaker 5: I'm like, Okay, that's cool, it's an interesting conversation that
Speaker 5: we're having right now. But I'm hoping that you know,
Speaker 5: for you know, the average person that is a believer,
Speaker 5: that it will just give them a moment to go hmmm,
Speaker 5: you know, and just maybe a little bit of skepticism
Speaker 5: will enter their brain.
Speaker 6: Brain.
Speaker 2: Well, we know what that conversation usually looks like. You know,
Speaker 2: you just question God's plan. Rob, I'll go to you,
Speaker 2: and then AJ will close out with you. I'd like
Speaker 2: to know, you know, what's the moral of the story here,
Speaker 2: What are we walking away with now?
Speaker 3: I would honestly just treat it as a folkale, and
Speaker 3: I think that that is the best way to do it.
Speaker 3: In fact, to me, for fun fact, I think the
Speaker 3: most believable part of the story is the is that
Speaker 3: he did kill him with the sling because I don't
Speaker 3: know if you've ever seen expert slingers, but in bronze
Speaker 3: age technology, that stuff is like gnarly and wicked. It
Speaker 3: will destroy you, so like it doesn't matter how big
Speaker 3: you are. The dude got clocked in the head by
Speaker 3: a rock going almost mark one. Yeah, he died, okay.
Speaker 7: But also another fun fact to what Rob just said,
Speaker 7: the fact that he got hit in the head. It
Speaker 7: makes sense if he had gigantism because the pituitary gland
Speaker 7: is like right here, like right behind in between your eyes,
Speaker 7: so he could have got hit there. And you know, yeah,
Speaker 7: it makes sense.
Speaker 1: You know what the thing that makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: The most I think is the fact that if there
Speaker 2: was a real battle, which archaeology seems to suggest just
Speaker 2: by digging up a bunch of arrowheads and bodies, I think.
Speaker 2: But you know, if there was a real battle and
Speaker 2: the Israelites won, they got lucky. They beat you know,
Speaker 2: a pretty formidable army, and they said, we gotta tell
Speaker 2: a tale about this, like as soon as possible. We
Speaker 2: got to push this out to everybody. And you know,
Speaker 2: on another fun note, David didn't only kill him with
Speaker 2: the rock. He went and took Goliath's sword and then
Speaker 2: cut his head off and that was the fatal blow.
Speaker 2: So Goliath may very well still could have been alive.
Speaker 2: In any case, folks, thank you for joining us as
Speaker 2: we dissect one of.
Speaker 1: The many weird and I don't know, messy.
Speaker 2: Hard to understand stories of the inherent Word of God
Speaker 2: the Bible.
Speaker 1: And if you