Some time ago I took the liberty of leaving a comment on
Cross Examined, a Christian apologetic blog that I sometimes peruse during
lunch. This site seems to attract an
abnormally persistent brand of alleged atheists who seem to have far more spare
time than I can dream of, and they use that time to attack everything posted
there.
In the course of a little back and forth in the comments
section, I pointed out to a fellow commenter named David that he was named
after a man who is known as “a man after God’s own heart.” That seemed to set
David (who, for clarity, I will refer to as Dave for the remainder of this
post) off into a tirade. Anyone who has
spent time listening to debates between Christians and the “apostles of
atheism” (as I like to call them) will be familiar with the common plan of
attack: a verbal barrage of every Old Testament action which violates their
personal morality. This form of attack
can best be translated as: “God is just a figment of your imagination and I
HATE him!” In fact, this scatter gun
approach to argumentation is one that serves them well, both in formal debate
settings and comment sections, in that it becomes impossible to answer every
charge in the time available (even the self-employed need to limit their
lunch break).
However, Dave ended one of his tirades with this:
“… One additional bit
of data Lee, the story of David and Goliath (1 Sam. 17) was not in the original
text. It’s just one more piece of propaganda in favor of David and his line. It
is demonstrably a later interpolation in the text and contradicts 2 Sam. 21:19.
Thankfully, 500 years after the fact, similar to how Fox News shills for Trump,
the chronicler shows up to spin David into Goliath’s killer and Elhanan into
the killer of Goliath’s brother Lahmi. That’s right, Goliath the Philistine
giant with a good Philistine name just like the other Philistine giants had a
giant brother with a Jewish name that means “my bread”. LOL!” - from a comment on the blog post What Christian Parents Should Learn from theNormalize Atheism Movement
Everything else contained in Dave’s comments were standard,
run of the mill arguments about the immorality of the Bible which have been
answered over and over by better men than me and easily found if one really
wants an answer. But I don’t believe that I had ever seen this particular
argument before, so wanted to look into it and give an answer (1Peter
3:15). So, it’s been a long time
coming, but I finally took the time to reply to this accusation.
The texts in question, along with 1 Samuel 17, are 2 Samuel
21:15-22 and 1 Chronicles 20:4-8. The claim that 1 Samuel 17 was not in the original text of
the Hebrew Tanakh (what we as Christians call the Old Testament), is at best a
spurious one, and at worst libelous.
Since the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel were very
likely penned by at least several authors (“holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”
- 2 Peter 1:21) at the very least one would need to verify at what point the
words were gathered into one book before claiming any one part of it to be a
later addition. Nowhere does the Bible
make the claim that Samuel himself was the author of the two books which bear
his name. A reading of 1 Chronicles 29:29 suggests that the books of 1st
& 2nd Samuel were compiled using documents written by Samuel,
Nathan, and Gad, which in no way makes it any less inspired sacred scripture.
But of course, the
claims of later additions, redactions, or changes nearly always are the opining
of self -styled experts who have one thing in common: unbelief. All of their
“scholarship” is built upon the presupposition that there is no God, and that
the Bible is a collection of fables.
Keywords that reflect the pedigree of their findings include “generally agreed”,
“the consensus is”, “scholars agree”, and my personal favorite “according to
modern scholarship”. In fact, Dave’s
statement that the description of the battle between David and Goliath as
recorded in 1 Samuel 17 “is demonstrably a later interpolation in the text and
contradicts 2 Samuel 21:19” is, in itself, a fine example of an interpolation based
on a presupposition (if we follow the definition of interpolate as being “to
alter or corrupt by inserting new or foreign matter”). Namely the presupposition that the Bible is not
true. For those of us who side with
Jesus Christ in affirming the Old Testament narrative as truth, there is
nothing here to suggest a real contradiction, let alone a 2500 year old
conspiracy to beef up David’s “street cred.”
To drill down a little deeper into Dave’s claims, let’s
look at the verses which do appear to contain a contradiction. Keep in mind that I am no scholar and have no
training in the original languages, so I am open to honest correction.
Samuel 21:19
And there was again war with the Philistines at Gob, and Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, struck down Goliath
the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.
1Chronicles 20:5
And there was again war with the Philistines, and Elhanan the son of Jair struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the
Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.
It is very possible that two simple and understandable transcription
errors explain any confusion. One is
that since the Hebrew word for Bethlehem actually contain the word Lahmi, it is
easy to see how part of the word Bethlehem could have either been inadvertently
left off while being transcribed or not even an error at all but only a
shortened version of the word for the town. For example, if a biker tells you they
are riding to Daytona in March would you need them to clarify that they mean
Daytona Beach Florida or would the context give you enough information to know
where he meant?
The Hebrew words in consideration are:
לַחְמִי
בֵּית הַלַּחְמִי
And are written in English like this:
lachmiy or Lahmi
beyth hallachmiy or Bethlehem (bold added)
I believe a close look at the first characters of the
Hebrew, even when transferred into English letters sheds a lot of light. Remember, Hebrew reads from right to left
unlike English text.
Note that “Bethlehemite”
is included in the description of Elhanon in 2 Samuel, but missing from 1
Chronicles. The description “brother of” is included in 1
Chronicles, but missing from 2 Samuel. It would seem (to me at least) that the best explanation is that 1 Chronicles
20:5 is correct that is was the unnamed brother
of Goliath who was slain by Elhanan, but a part of the word Bethlehem was lost
in transcription, causing Lahmi to be assumed to be a name rather than a short
version of Bethlehem which should have been applied to the description of
Elhanon who was from Bethlehem.
As for the missing “brother of” in 2 Samuel 21:19, in Hebrew
characters it would look like this: אָח
A modern example might go something like this; suppose I copied a letter from my great grandfather written to my
mother which contained this sentence: “I decided to pay to have my dog
bred.” But, in copying it, I
inadvertently copied it as “I decided to pay to have my dog red.” Oops.
Small mistake, but it changes the meaning. In
fact, the way I actually copied it might
lead anyone reading it to assume my great grandfather was going to buy a
dog
was named Red. How important was the copying mistake? Not very. In
fact my copying mistake would have had about the same impact on the
Gospel of Jesus Christ as does the possible mistake in copying that might
have been made in these two Old Testament texts.
Now, unless your standard of accuracy for the copying
of texts which were first written down over 3000 years ago is that of a
photocopy, these minor discrepancies occurring at some time during the long ages of copying
and re-copying are pretty insignificant.
After all, what would you have had God do: strike a scribe dead just
before he made a mistake? That may have decreased the number of textual
variants, but it would have also greatly decreased the number of scribes
willing to reproduce scripture. In short, I find myself
in agreement with the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which says in
part:
“Article X. WE AFFIRM that inspiration,
strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in
the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great
accuracy.”
and
“Article XI WE
AFFIRM that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is
infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the
matters it addresses. WE DENY that it is possible for the Bible to be
at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions. Infallibility and
inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.”
One thing is quite sure, when a person stands before God
Almighty and says he could not be sure whether or not Goliath had a brother
named Lahmi, it will probably not be accepted as a good excuse for rejecting
the entirety of His word.