Dan McClellan's "Unanswerable Contradictions" - Part 1.5 Who Killed Goliath?

Well, we've made it to the fifth and final installment, which means one last quick  check before we dive into the text. If you haven't checked out Dan McClellan and the Epistemology of Biblical Criticism yet, it’s a must read just to see the hidden philosophical playbook running in the background of his channel. He loves his catchphrase "Data over Dogma," but for the fifth and final time: nobody works in an assumption-free bubble - especially not Dan. We all bring baggage to an ancient text, and we all view the raw data through our own lenses.

You might also want to jump back to Dan McClellan's "Unanswerable Contradictions" - Part 1- Intro. He brushes aside the law of non-contradiction - one of the absolute basic cornerstones of logic. It’s still wild to watch, but it’s the exact reason we’ve had to reset the ground rules every step of the way.

With that final reminder out of the way, let’s wrap this series up and tackle his fifth alleged "unanswerable contradiction."

Who Killed Goliath? - 1 Samuel 17 vs. 2 Samuel 21:19 and 1 Chronicles 20:5

In Part 5 of his "Unanswerable Contradictions" series, Dan McClellan frames the question of who killed Goliath as an open-and-shut case of legendary accretion and scribal damage control. Under his reconstruction, historical criticism reveals raw, unvarnished data: an obscure warrior named Elhanan originally killed Goliath (2 Sam 21:19), David’s court scribes later co-opted the heroic legend to glorify their monarch (1 Sam 17), and the post-exilic Chronicler engaged in tendentious damage control by inventing a fictitious brother named "Lahmi" (1 Chron 20:5).

McClellan articulates the standard historical-critical challenge across two primary hubs:

• The Narrative and Historical Clash: 1 Samuel 17 provides an expansive, iconic narrative detailing David’s triumph over Goliath the Gittite in the Valley of Elah. Conversely, an obscure military appendix in 2 Samuel 21:19 flatly attributes the slaying of Goliath to a completely different warrior: "Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite struck down Goliath the Gittite, whose spear shaft was like a weaver’s beam."

• The Chronicler’s Alleged Harmonization: Confronted with an overt contradiction between Samuel's traditions, 1 Chronicles 20:5 alters the text to read that Elhanan killed "Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite." Under McClellan’s framework, the Chronicler engaged in an apologetic fabrication to preserve David’s legendary stature, inventing an unhistorical Philistine brother out of whole cloth.

McClellan frames this divergence under his trademark banner of "Data over Dogma" as an objective historical fact: the texts are mutually exclusive, demonstrating that canonical univocality is untenable and that biblical scribes actively altered traditions to sanitize embarrassing theological or historical discrepancies.

However, evaluated through the epistemology of biblical criticism, this verdict is not raw, presuppositionless data. It represents the inevitable output of historical criticism’s own foundational axioms: Troeltschian historicism, atomizing text-critical skepticism, and an uncritical weaponization of text-critical maxims (lectio difficilior potior).

1. Scribal Corruption and the Transmission of Samuel

McClellan’s treatment of 2 Samuel 21:19 relies on an unexamined methodological default: treating the Masoretic text (MT) of Samuel as an unassailable baseline while placing the testimony of Chronicles under an immediate, asymmetric suspicion of tendentious tampering.

However, when examined across Hebrew manuscript evidence and comparative textual criticism, this critical consensus exposes profound epistemological vulnerabilities.

The Epistemic Asymmetry of Defaulting to 2 Samuel

Treating 2 Samuel 21:19 as a pristine, uncorrupted historical witness while treating 1 Chronicles 20:5 as a theological fabrication is a methodological choice rooted in historical skepticism, not an objective evidentiary demand. While the Books of Samuel are foundational historical narratives, Old Testament textual critics have long documented that the textual transmission of the Books of Samuel—and the concluding appendices of 2 Samuel 21–24 in particular—is among the most visibly disrupted and demonstrably damaged in the entire Hebrew canon (Frank Moore Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran, 1995; Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Fortress Press, 2011).

The corruption in 2 Samuel 21:19 is evident directly on the surface of the Hebrew text:

• The Gross Dittography of "Oregim" (’ōrĕgîm*):* In 2 Samuel 21:19, Elhanan's father is recorded as "Jaare-oregim" (ya‘rê ’ōrĕgîm). The element ’ōrĕgîm is not a Semitic personal name; it is the plural noun for "weavers." It appears verbatim at the exact conclusion of the very same verse to describe the giant’s weapon (kimsôr ’ōrĕgîm, "like a weaver’s beam"). As S.R. Driver pointed out in Notes on the Hebrew Text and the Topography of the Books of Samuel (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1913), the presence of ’ōrĕgîm inside the patronymic is an undisputed case of accidental scribal duplication (dittography), in which an ancient copyist's eye leaped forward to the end of the line.

• Chronicles Preserves the Intact Vorlage: In 1 Chronicles 20:5, the patronymic appears without the accidental duplication: Elhanan is simply the son of "Jair" (yā‘îr). A verse that demonstrably preserves visual transcription blunders inside its own immediate clause cannot serve as an infallible chronological or historical benchmark against Chronicles.

2. The Textual and Philological Mechanics: How Samuel Lost the Text

McClellan insists that the Chronicler synthetically confected "Lahmi, the brother of" (’et-laḥmî ’ăḥî) out of "the Bethlehemite" (bêt hallaḥmî). Yet detailed comparative philology demonstrates that the exact reverse occurred: 2 Samuel 21:19 represents a classic mechanical scribal conflation and haplography.

As Old Testament linguist Kaspars Ozoliņš demonstrates in "Killing Goliath? Elhanan the Bethlehemite and the Text of 2 Sam 21:19" (Vetus Testamentum 72, no. 4–5 [2022]), a systematic reconstruction of the ancient script accounts for every single letter across both passages:

1. The Parallel Clauses:

   • 1 Chron 20:5: wayyak ’elḥānān ben-yā‘îr ’et-laḥmî ’ăḥî golyāt haggittî ("and Elhanan son of Jair struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite").

   • 2 Sam 21:19: wayyak ’elḥānān ben-ya‘rê ’ōrĕgîm bêt hallaḥmî ’ēt golyāt haggittî ("and Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite struck down Goliath the Gittite").

2. Visual Graphic Confusion: In early West-Semitic and square scripts, the sequence ’ăḥî (אחי, "brother of") and the direct object marker ’ēt (את) are virtually indistinguishable if a ligature or parchment defect is present (P. Kyle McCarter Jr., II Samuel, Anchor Bible 9, Doubleday, 1984).

3. Accidental Telescoping and Haplography: The ancient scribe copying Samuel looked from ben-yā‘îr to bêt hallaḥmî (naturally conditioned by Elhanan’s regional identity as a Bethlehemite, cf. 2 Sam 23:24), misread ’ăḥî ("brother of") as the direct object marker ’ēt, and inadvertently displaced the personal name laḥmî into the gentilic bêt-hallaḥmî.

McClellan’s assertion that the syntax of nākhāh (נכה, "to strike") strictly requires the direct object particle ’et overlooks standard Biblical Hebrew syntax. As documented in Bruce K. Waltke and M. O'Connor’s An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Eisenbrauns, 1990) and Gesenius's Hebrew Grammar (§117b–c), definite direct objects frequently occur without the accusative marker in archaic narrative and unvocalized Vorlagen. The Chronicler did not engineer a theological deception; 2 Samuel suffered an ordinary, well-understood textual telescoping.

3. Philological Viability: The Authenticity of "Lahmi"

McClellan seeks to invalidate 1 Chronicles 20:5 by arguing that "Lahmi" (laḥmî) is Northwest Semitic ("my bread") and therefore historically and culturally impossible for an Aegean-descended Philistine warrior. This objection depends upon anachronistic assumptions regarding early Iron Age Levantine onomastics:

• Pervasive Semitization of the Philistines: By the 10th century BC, the Philistine urban pentapolis had undergone thorough linguistic assimilation with the surrounding Northwest Semitic cultures. As archaeological discoveries - such as the 7th-century BC Tel Miqne/Ekron Inscription documented by Seymour Gitin, Trude Dothan, and Joseph Naveh ("A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron," Israel Exploration Journal 47 [1997])—routinely prove, Philistine dynasties and military figures routinely bore Semitic names (e.g., Padi, Baal) alongside residual Aegean forms.

• The Gath-Judean Borderland: Goliath and his lineage operated out of Gath, situated immediately adjacent to the Shephelah and the Judean hill country (Aren M. Maeir, "The Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project," Near Eastern Archaeology 80, no. 4 [2017]). A family of borderland champions bearing Semitic names or West-Semitic military epithets is precisely what comparative archaeological data expects. Dismissing "Lahmi" as a post-exilic fiction is an arbitrary presupposition rather than a philological conclusion.

4. The Misapplication of Lectio Difficilior Potior

Historical-critical polemics frequently treat the text-critical maxim lectio difficilior potior ("the more difficult reading is to be preferred") as an inflexible empirical law. Because 2 Samuel 21:19 clashes directly with 1 Samuel 17, critical theorists automatically pronounce it "the more difficult reading," and therefore the original historical memory.

However, classic textual critics have repeatedly cautioned against using this rule to canonize transparent copyist errors. As Bruce M. Metzger emphasizes in The Text of the New Testament (4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2005) and Emanuel Tov reiterates in Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Fortress Press, 2011):

"The rule lectio difficilior praeferenda cannot be applied to readings that originated in scribal errors... scribal blunders often produce readings that are exceedingly difficult, but nonsense cannot be original."

To elevate an obvious transcriptional accident into historical dogma simply because it produces a canonical contradiction is a fundamental distortion of textual criticism.

5. Double Agency vs. The "Legend Accretion" Model

Critical methodology operates under Peter Berger’s socioreligious premise of methodological atheism (The Sacred Canopy, 1967), evaluating biblical narratives strictly as competing political fictions. Under this lens, David’s court is assumed to have expropriated an obscure warrior’s deed to manufacture royal propaganda.

In contrast, classical theological hermeneutics and narrative analysis demonstrate that these texts serve unified, non-competitive literary functions within ancient historiographical collections:

Narrative Dimension	1 Samuel 17 (The Valley of Elah)	2 Samuel 21:15–22 / 1 Chron 20:4–8 (The Wars at Gob)
Literary Genre & Setting	Central royal epic: the youthful rise of Yahweh's anointed king in national crisis.	Archival military appendix: cataloging the heroic feats of David’s veteran elite guard.
Thematic Purpose	Demonstrating that Yahweh delivers through faith, not conventional armor or size.	Demonstrating how David's loyal mighty men extinguished the remaining giant lineage of Philistia when David was aged.
Heroic Combatants	David vs. Goliath of Gath.	Abishai, Sibbecai, Elhanan, and Jonathan vs. the four kin of the giant in Gath.

The Literary Structure of 2 Samuel 21

McClellan’s hypothesis of "legend theft" entirely ignores the internal literary structure of 2 Samuel 21 itself:

1. The Setting: In 2 Samuel 21:15–17, an aging David grows faint in battle, and his warriors swear an oath: "You shall no longer go out with us to battle, lest you quench the lamp of Israel."

2. The Succession of Giant-Killers: The narrative sequence immediately documents David's elite warriors eliminating the four remaining giant kin of Gath who carried weapons of identical, family-inherited scale (V. Philips Long, 1 and 2 Samuel, Tyndale OT Commentaries, IVP Academic, 2020).

3. The Summary Climax: The chapter concludes in 2 Samuel 21:22: "These four were born to the giant in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants."

If the author of Samuel had intended 2 Samuel 21:19 to record the killing of David's primary antagonist by an unknown soldier, he would have placed a blatant, irreconcilable contradiction inside his own unitary work. The catalog does not record the theft of David’s historic duel; it records David's veteran soldiers finishing off Goliath's remaining family.

Conclusion

Dan McClellan’s claim of an "unanswerable contradiction" regarding who killed Goliath ultimately rests on unexamined methodological presuppositions rather than neutral textual data.

By 1) treating a demonstrably damaged passage in 2 Samuel as an infallible historical anchor, 2) misapplying lectio difficilior to protect a mechanical scribal error, and 3) dismissing legitimate ancient Near Eastern onomastics, historical-critical orthodoxy constructs the very impasse it claims to discover.

When evaluated with philological precision, scribal mechanics, and literary coherence, 1 Chronicles 20:5 preserves the original historical reading: David struck down Goliath in the Valley of Elah; Elhanan struck down Lahmi, the brother of Goliath, at Gob. McClellan's verdict does not expose a fatal flaw in the biblical text; it exposes the interpretive limitations of a methodological framework engineered to guarantee fracture.