Evangelical Bible Scholarship, Protecting the Text, and Shepherding the Flock

Kaspars Ozolins’s account of “Who killed Goliath?” is highly unlikely—mostly only evangelical Bible scholars will agree—and his approach is also quite unsatisfactory, because it rests on views about the nature of the Bible and its production that run contrary to mainstream scholarship and appear to presuppose biblical inerrancy.

See Synopsis of Misusing Scripture: What Are Evangelicals Doing with the Bible?

By Robert Rezetko
University of Copenhagen & University of Sydney
October 2023

The story of David and Goliath is one of the best-known and most-loved stories in the Old Testament. Probably just about everybody knows, including those who have never actually heard or read the biblical story, that the gist of the story is that against all odds (except for the fact that his God was on his side!) the (Israelite) “underdog” David killed the (Philistine) “giant” Goliath. That central part of the story goes like this in 1 Samuel 17:48–51 (ESV[1]):

“48 When the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. 49 And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground. 50 So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. There was no sword in the hand of David. 51 Then David ran and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.”[2]

It is crystal clear in this passage that David was responsible for Goliath’s death. David struck him in the forehead with a stone and severed his head with a sword. But many are probably unaware that elsewhere in the Old Testament it was actually somebody else who killed Goliath. Another passage in the same book of Samuel, 2 Samuel 21:19 (ESV), says:

“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.”[3]

To further complicate the issue, another Old Testament passage, 1 Chronicles 20:5 (ESV), which is synoptic or parallel to 2 Samuel 21:19, says that Elhanan did not kill Goliath but rather the brother of Goliath:

“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.”[4]

What really happened? Who killed Goliath? David or Elhanan? And who did Elhanan kill? Goliath or Goliath’s brother Lahmi?

The issue in these passages, and very many others like it throughout the Old and New Testaments, have been especially problematic for evangelicals who affirm “the unity and internal consistency of Scripture,” “that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration,” and “being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching...” (The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy).[5] Consequently, evangelicals have gone to great pains to try to resolve “alleged” contradictions, discrepancies, errors, etc. in the biblical text. There is a vast number of encyclopedic books and websites devoted entirely to this topic,[6] in addition to innumerable discussions elsewhere in Bible commentaries, introductions, and so on. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to see why evangelicals devote so much energy to such problematic texts given their views on the nature of the Bible (in addition to their views on how the Bible was produced).

Returning to the specific matter of who killed Goliath, ancient and modern commentators, Jewish and Christian, have proposed a number of solutions for the disagreement between the biblical stories. These revolve around whether the “contradiction” is apparent or authentic.[7]

1. Apparent (“unreal”) contradiction:

a. David and Elhanan were alternative names for the same person; David was his regnal or throne name and Elhanan was his personal name.

b. Goliath was not a unique name; there were two or more giants from Gath who were named Goliath.

c. Goliath was a title or type-name or descriptor for a giant or warrior rather than a personal name.[8]

2. Authentic (“real”) contradiction:

a. The Hebrew text of 2 Samuel 21:19, or the texts of both 2 Samuel 21:19 and 1 Chronicles 20:5, was/were corrupted by a careless scribe(s), resulting in the contradiction with 1 Samuel 17, but the original text that precedes the corrupt text(s) can be ascertained through textual criticism.

b. 2 Samuel 21:19 preserves the truth of Goliath’s death—he was killed by Elhanan—and later either the name of the giant killed (Goliath) or the entire incident of his killing was transferred or transformed into the story of 1 Samuel 17 to magnify David’s achievements and enhance his reputation; David did not really kill Goliath even though 1 Samuel 17 says he did.

c. 1 Chronicles 20:5 reflects the effort by an author, or an editor, to rewrite and thus resolve, at least in his own composition, the contradiction between 2 Samuel 21:19 and 1 Samuel 17; the modification is both harmonization and fabrication.

Scholars and laypersons have put forth their arguments for each of these possibilities. While there is the occasional exception, views 1a, 1b, and 1c have largely fallen out of favor and few today seriously entertain them as viable solutions. Most Bible scholars, and virtually all non-evangelical commentators, hold that 2b and 2c combined are the best explanation for the current situation in the biblical text. They take this view for two reasons. First, they argue that it is the most plausible explanation for the ideological, literary, and textual features of the books. Second, they are not predisposed to harmonize or resolve contradictions in the Bible in order to prove “the unity and internal consistency of Scripture” and that “Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching...”

In contrast to the consensus view, most evangelical commentators take the view expressed by 2a, that the original biblical text can be detected and restored from later manuscripts that have errors in copying or transmission. For some, the text of 2 Samuel 21:19 is corrupt, but that of 1 Chronicles 20:5 is not, thus Samuel is simply corrected to look like Chronicles. For others, the texts of both Samuel and Chronicles are corrupt, so an original text is reconstructed that later became corrupted in both books as we now have them. A prominent reconstructed wording that reflects this view is, “And Elhanan the son of Jair the Bethlehemite killed the brother of Goliath the Gittite,” which subsequently became in Samuel, “And Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite” (cf. ESV translation, above), and in Chronicles, “And Elhanan the son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite” (cf. ESV translation, above). A recent journal article by Kaspars Ozolins presents the most comprehensive and sophisticated argument for the view that the texts of both 2 Samuel 21:19 and 1 Chronicles 20:5 should be corrected on the basis of a hypothesized original text. According to him, that text is: “And Elhanan the son of Jaur the Bethlehemite struck down the brother of Goliath the Gittite.”[9]

At this point one might expect that I would present and review the arguments for and against Ozolins’s view, in addition to the pros and cons of the other proposed solutions listed above. This would be one possible next step. Also, those who know me and my published work, and who consider the title and content of this article to this point, will surmise that I probably reject view 2a and Ozolins’s notable argument for it, and that I probably agree with the consensus view (2b and 2c combined). Both inferences would be true, thus all the more reason to go into the nitty-gritty. But I have begged the reader’s attention with enough details to this point, so instead my detailed discussion of the historical, literary, and textual details are given in a larger work in progress.[10] Rather, here I would like to move in a different direction, because I think it will be more interesting to the readership of this article on The Bible and Interpretation website.

I do not know Ozolins personally, but on the basis of his degrees, affiliations, and other publications, I believe we can reasonably conclude that he holds to the evangelical doctrine of biblical inerrancy.[11] The issue that concerns me, and which I have recently discussed elsewhere in the co-written introduction and in my individual contribution to Misusing Scripture: What Are Evangelicals Doing with the Bible?,[12] is how a fine evangelical scholar like Ozolins, who is able to write a noteworthy academic article on a complex topic like “Who killed Goliath?” in the Bible, will then use his conclusion (even if correct) to foster other evangelical views about the Bible that far exceed the scope of his conclusion and in fact are dubious and/or erroneous, and he seems to do so with the ultimate objective of reassuring his evangelical audience about the validity of those views. Let me elaborate.

In the abstract to Ozolins’s article, we are told:

“Along these lines it is further argued that a text-critical analysis is a viable option for resolving the tension with 1 Sam 17, without the need to resort to additional literary or source-critical solutions.”[13]

And this statement is fleshed out a little more in the very last sentences of the article’s conclusion:

“The evidence presented above consistently points to accidental visual oversight instead of deliberate changes or revisions. Cases in which parallel words exist in complementary distribution with one another and are visually similar are more naturally explained as the product of accidental scribal error instead of deliberate editorial change. As such, the solution presented here should be seriously considered as a proximate reconstruction of the original text of 2 Sam 21:19, and the basis for the parallel in 1 Chr 20:5.”[14]

Fair enough. If Ozolins’s reconstruction of the original text and the process of textual corruption are correct, then in this case at least, the solution to who killed Goliath might be reachable “without the need to resort to additional literary or source-critical solutions” and without asserting “deliberate changes or revisions” or “deliberate editorial change.” As I said already, I do not agree with Ozolins’s solution to the problem at hand, but here I will grant that he is correct for the sake of argument. A problem arises, however, when he moves beyond the case of “Who killed Goliath?” and beyond the context of a peer-reviewed journal article into other contexts, specifically into wider and more popular evangelical contexts, where he enlarges the implications of his conclusion before his evangelical audience.

I am aware of two such contexts, one on the website of The Text & Canon Institute at Phoenix Seminary and another on the website of Tyndale House at Cambridge University.[15] Both of these articles end with two similarly-worded “important lessons” learned (from his text-critical conclusion on “Who killed Goliath?”).

"First, one should always pay attention to text-critical issues (what is sometimes called lower criticism) before resorting to other types of higher criticism (such as the claim that we are dealing here with two different, and contradictory, sources or traditions). Second, only in limited cases did scribes make deliberate changes when copying the text in front of them, so we should be cautious before making such claims unless there is very good evidence."

"Firstly, we needn’t be too alarmed by textual difficulties like this. Many of these issues can be resolved by a careful reading of the text, and one of the tools for this at our disposal is textual criticism. By comparing and examining variant manuscripts and parallel biblical passages, new solutions can be achieved. A related point concerns scribal habits. From what we know about their practices, scribes copying the Hebrew Bible rarely made deliberate changes to their text, and we should therefore be very cautious about claims that we are dealing here with two different, and contradictory, sources or traditions."

As I understand him, the two main lessons Ozolins wishes to draw from his text-critical analysis are these: First, textual criticism is able to resolve many contradictions in the biblical text without having to resort to other conventional methodologies such as source and redaction criticism. Second, most of the changes that happened to the biblical text were accidental changes rather than deliberate changes which in fact were “limited” and “rare.” In addition to these two main lessons, I believe there are several other “lessons” that are probably also in Ozolins’s mind, though I admit that I cannot be completely certain about all of these: (1) Contradictions in the Bible are usually or always “apparent” and rarely or never genuine. (2) Textual criticism can resolve not just “many” contradictions in the biblical text but probably “very many” or “most” of them. (3) Textual criticism, as in The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, deals mainly with “slips that may have crept into the text in the course of its transmission.” (4) Textual criticism is capable of determining “the original text” or “the original wording” in most instances of manuscript variation. (5) Ozolins’s ultimate objective is to reassure his evangelical audience about the recoverability and reliability of the text of the Old Testament.

If I have interpreted Ozolins correctly—and I am reasonably confident that I have—my initial observation is that his “lessons” are characteristically evangelical and particularly for evangelicals who embrace the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Therefore, I hope Ozolins will pardon me for hammering on his publications, because in reality my critique extends much further. But I do have to wonder whether Ozolins would actually be able to evaluate open-mindedly the consensus view on who killed Goliath (views 2b and 2c combined) without defaulting straightaway to the conventional evangelical posture (view 2a, or alternatively to views 1a, 1b, or 1c). I also wonder whether the editorial board of Vetus Testamentum would have approved the publication of his journal article with those “important lessons”—the ones that are stipulated and implied in the two articles on evangelical websites—without serious engagement with the consensus views held by the majority of Old Testament Bible scholars and textual critics. Ozolins’s “lessons” are laden with difficulties, to the extent that I consider them to be dubious and/or erroneous. All the main points are tackled in Misusing Scripture and Misquoting Moses (see nn. 10, 12) and elsewhere. Several major problems are:

• Ozolins’s text-critical-only or -mainly approach is undermined by the complex production history of the Old Testament writings, for example, the book of Samuel including its texts and traditions about David and Goliath.[16]
• Ozolins’s sharp separation between textual criticism and literary criticism is widely rejected in mainstream scholarship on the Old Testament, which recognizes and struggles with the difficulty of distinguishing authors-editors-scribes in the composition-redaction-transmission process. Further to this point:
• Ozolins’s sidelining of deliberate (editorial and) scribal change is undermined by the extensive evidence for intentional (editorial and) scribal intervention in the production of Old Testament writings and manuscripts.[17]

To summarize, my contention here has been that Ozolins’s account of “Who killed Goliath?” is highly unlikely—mostly only evangelical Bible scholars will agree—and his approach is also quite unsatisfactory, because it rests on views about the nature of the Bible and its production that run contrary to mainstream scholarship and appear to presuppose biblical inerrancy. There is much more to be said, but for now I would like to conclude this discussion by wondering, in the spirit of American evangelicals like Carlos Bovell, Peter Enns, Kenton Sparks, and others, whether American conservative evangelicals might better serve the church and engage in scholarship if they finally abandoned their doctrine of biblical inerrancy and studied and taught the Bible without clinging to this fictitious presupposition and its interpretative constraints.[18]