Biblical Hebrew Forum

[schmuel <schmuel AT nyc.rr.com>]

Hi Folks,

2 Samuel 21:19 - 
And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the 
son of Jaareoregim, a Bethlehemite, slew (the brother of -italics KJB) 
Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. 

     Here are a few more thoughts on this.  Please bear with my thinkings, 
many of you have a very different sense of the text than I am presenting, and 
I want to place my questions within context.

     Again, I am not particularly interested in rehashing the various 
competing theories of how either 1 Chronicles 20 or 2 Samuel could have been 
corrupted.  They are all theoretically textually possible, they are all 
rather strained and difficult, and they all conclude that the Masoretic Text 
is a corrupted text, since the true original would have been maintained in 
zero manuscripts in any languages (not even translation languages, Targum, 
Peshitta, Vulgate, Greek).  And they generally have to assume multiple 
independent corruptions from one original to the present text.

     Such theories also have to assume that at one time the text was allowed 
(by God or man) to corrupt, and then an artificial perfection and super-high 
standard of textual maintenance was later applied to a corrupt text. From 
that point on, which would have had to be at least 1700 years ago in this 
verse, a time that was pre-Masoretic, the text was keep at a super-high 
consistency, and no attempt was made to "smooth" the verse for harmony 
purposes in any known manuscripts. Yet this  strong textual protection would 
have been applied to a severely corrupted text.  It would be like letting the 
horses out and the viruses and spam in, and then doing a top-level 
barn-security firewall.

    So again, I find all the various textual corruption theories difficult, 
and of little relevance to analysis.  They also do not fit my view of the 
Bible text.

    Occasionally some (not all) King James Bible proponents have taken the 
"corruption" view, that the true original vanished from the line, and that 
the King James Bible essentially is restoring the true sense, now lacking in 
the extant Masoretic Text, with the italics.  That the Masoretic Text was 
corrupted, not simply needing clear exposition in translation.  This theory 
has always been interesting, however it has an element that I have been 
uncomfortable with, as the verse in Samuel becomes the only one claimed 
demonstrable MT error from this viewpoint.  In other difficult cases, the 
Masoretic text is translated verbatim, and harmonized in exegesis, although 
on occasion the minority MT reading is used (as in the famous Psalm 22:16). 
   
    Or there is another view, that the original text was simple error-laden.  
The writer of 2 Samuel (or perhaps Chronicles or both) simply did not know 
what they were doing, or know the facts, and wrote an errant text. That the 
text was not God-inspired.  The theories of how this happened are similar to 
the theories mentioned above, and again not my realm of particular interest.

    And sometimes either of these two views is maintained by appealing to 
other supposed corruptions in the Masoretic text, especially the mathematical 
questions, as between certain accounts given in two books.  Yet these other 
verses always have a number of their own fascinating elements, and often just 
as great a difficulty in the proposed corruption theories, and can in fact be 
viewed quite easily through a lens of textual perfection and harmonization.  
Ergo I am not interested in appeals involving other verses' supposed errors 
when viewing "(the brother of) Goliath" verse .  To a large extent, been 
there done that.

     Ok, that being said, what are the issues and questions ?

     One, there is one line of thought that views the usage in 2 Samuel 21:19 
as an ellipsis.  Not so much an overt grammatical ellipsis, but more on the 
level of a contextual ellipsis, one that is understandable grammatically.  
You might say that author was allowing for the understanding that this was 
"the brother of Goliath", without the necessity of so stating.
 
     Yet this view really has a very important adjunct for consideration.  
That the 2 Samuel author could well have been writing Goliath in the "giant" 
sense, one of the multiple (apparently five) Goliath with which the 
Israelites had combat in those years.   Elhanan slew a "Goliath the Gittite", 
one who is the brother of the most-known Goliath, the one previously slain by 
David.

     (And for these views, in the previous post, I give some references of 
similar types of usages and questions in other verses in the Tanach and NT.  
Also availble are a number of the references that discuss all the Goliath 
verses and the five Goliaths.). 

     Now in either case the English translator would face an interesting 
decision.  The 2 Samuel 'Goliath as one of the five giants' understanding 
would be very easy to miss in the English translation.  And if the English 
translator understood exactly which Goliath was being referred to in 2 
Samuel, ie. "Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite", then it would surely 
make sense to place "the brother of" in italics (or small print in the 1611 
King James Bible) as words of consistency and clarity for the English reader. 
 

    That being done, for consistency and accuracy in translation, the common 
accusation against the King James Bible here of "adding words" would simply 
show a lack of understanding of proper translation.  

    And similarly the accusation against the Masoretic Text of being errant 
would also show a non-comprehension of the Hebrew usage involved.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic