Shard of pottery supports Bible account of David and Goliath

Shard of pottery supports Bible account of David and Goliath
By Rachel Hoag in Jerusalem
Published: 12 November 2005

Archaeologists digging at the biblical home of Goliath have unearthed a shard of pottery bearing an inscription of the Philistine's name, lending historical credence to the Bible's tale of David's battle.

While the discovery does not prove Goliath's existence, it does support the Bible's depiction of life at the time of the supposed battle, said Dr Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, excavation director.

"What this means is that at the time there were people there named Goliath," he said. "It shows us that David and Goliath's story reflects the cultural reality of the time."

Some scholars believe that the story of David slaying the giant Goliath is a myth written down hundreds of years later, but Dr Maeir said finding the scraps gave credence to the biblical story.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article326574.ece

some person had that name. That's all.

remnants from the first convenience store?

I mean, finding a shard of pottery with a name that happens to be one of a thousand names that happens to be in a book, doesn't seem to prove anything..

...name "Goliath".

Tesha

it is interesting that a fragment of pottery is found at the 'biblical' home of Goliath and it just happens to be inscribed with the name Goliath. How convenient.

have they carbon dated the fragment to test for authenticity.

yep, that proves the entire biblical account of the history of the world, alright! :eyes:

People will grasp at ANYTHING trying to support their beliefs. This would be like finding a torn piece of paper with "bush" written on it 2,000 years from now and someone would say. "see, I TOLD YOU he was the best president that country ever had"!

Yet millions will now believe more strongly because of a shard of pottery that has the word Goliath on it. What if the entire sentence said, "Goliath Fish Company"? :shrug:

The faithful have such a will to believe in something, anything.

of the people who find a few old rotted planks of wood on the top of Mt Ararat and say that it proves that the story of Noah's ark is factual.

I kind of figure that names that occur in the Bible were around during biblical times. I've read plenty of novels where the characters had names that are or were in common usage at the time the novel was written.

Would probably all support the idea that the names in the bible were probably actual names at the time the Bible was written. After all I see movies and read novels, and, surprise, surprise, they are about people with (gulp) ACTUAL NAMES THAT PEOPLE USE. How wondrous is that?

Having said that, it is kind of cool to find something that old with a name on it--particularly Goliath. Now if they find a flyer on a coming event-- David vs. Goliath, with a date and Ticketmaster logo on it I will REALLY be impressed.

and a good addition.

But a broad cultural/historical reality to the depicted conflict was already quite certain.

Artifacts of the invading eastern Aegean 'sea peoples' that the Egyptian pharaoh defeated/captured in the Nile Delta and settled in southwestern Canaan at the time have been known for quite a while. Goliath is depicted in a contemporary Aegean-style armor and war outfit in the Biblical account, much resembling those described by Homer and found archaeologically around the Aegean, which was distinctively unlike the regional Egyptian and Canaanite/Israelite kind.

The name 'Philistines' is probably an Egyptian/Semitic rendition of a word that in Greek is retained as 'pela(s)gos', i.e. the coast-proximal part of the sea (which was less dangerous to travel than the open sea).

the rock that hit that big-ass guy in the eye?

has some basis in fact.

I don't believe that the story of Adam and Eve is literally true.

I do believe in the theory of evolution.

But the misleading headline invites biblical literalists to claim, erroneously, that this is archeological evidence for the truth of the legend.

...many myths may be derived from things that actally happened. For example, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden may be a mythologization of the desertification of the Sahara and Arabia (which used to be tropical steppe during the early part of the current interglacial) around 6000BC, the "flaming sword" keeping them out of Eden being the drought and heat of the encraching sands. Also, the flood myths found in many cultures may be a result of rapid increases in sea level when large glacial lakes drained rapidly when the tounges of glacial ice damming the lakes melted away.

Would the discovery of a letter signed "Paul" therefore prove the existence of Paul Bunyan?

I saw nothing in the article which connected the presumed spelling of Goliath with the legendary Philistine warrior. Why this fantastic and baseless leap to a conclusion?

The word "support" isn't the same as the word "prove". The headline is a little misleading, maybe, but I suspect it is factually true. The archeological find shows that "Goliath" was a name that was in use in that time and place, so it supports the bible story to this extent only:



The archeologists didn't really claim anything more than that, and the article didn't really claim anything more than that either. In fact they went out of their way to state:



ie, the Goliath of the David & Goliath story. But even if these pottery pieces were proof of some kind, then so what?

I'm an atheist myself, but I don't have any problem with the possibility that there really was a historical guy named David, who had a poetic gift and played the harp and sang in a lovely sweet clear tenor voice the songs of praise that he had composed himself; who loved a young man named Jonathan "beyond the love of women"; who had a great single-combat duel with a big philistine named Goliath, and kicked his butt; and who later went on to become King of Israel.

Just because something is in the bible doesn't mean that it isn't true.

is that many scholars look Samuel and Kings as having been completely made up hundreds of years after the fact. At which point the name themselves may not even have been appropriate.

While much of the OT is certaily invented, the political books (1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles) have the ring of authenticity, at least to me. Especially the life of Davd.

Finding writing from the 10th Century is not all that extensive. It's a good find.