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underscore Goliath's height nor his armor, but only his extensive military training--a
strange response if Goliath is really 9'9" tall.
THE ARGUMENT FROM NARRATIVE CRITICISM
The Story is about David and Saul, not David and Goliath
Saul's response introduces us to what is perhaps the most powerful element of internal
evidence--the broader literary context. First of all, if Goliath is 6'9" instead of 9'9" then
it will affect the way we read and interpret the story, so there are theological implications
in following the 4QSam
a
variant. But in reinterpreting 1 Samuel 17 along these lines, we
will discover that this revised understanding actually fits much better into the overall
literary and theological context of 1-2 Samuel,
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thus providing a strong argument from
the internal evidence.
As the book of Judges ends and as 1 Samuel begins, the theological and political
situation in Israel is a total disaster. The question emerging out of the story is "Who will
deliver Israel from this disaster?" The book of Ruth, of course, introduces the future
deliverer, David. Ruth is located appropriately between Judges and 1 Samuel (in the
Septuagint canonical order, which our English Bibles follow) because the books of 1-2
Samuel are primarily about David, the one who will deliver Israel from the political and
theological disaster of Judges.
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In my opinion it is an exegetical mistake to pull 1 Samuel 17 out of its literary context and, using the
outdated source critical and form critical tools of the early and mid twentieth century, analyze the story as a
"hero epic" in the context of other "hero epics" of ancient literature, especially classical Greek literature.
Most recent commentators recognize this and rely much more heavily on a narrative or canonical approach,
placing he story in the broader context of the David vs. Saul contrast that dominates most of 1 Samuel.