Goliath Archives - Biblical Archaeology Society

Who Were the Philistines, and Where Did They Come From?

BAS Staff — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:00:04 +0000

Philistine Pottery. These pottery pieces from Ashkelon bear early Philistine decorations. Photo: © The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon.

The Philistines are best known from the Bible as the Israelites’ enemies, but they were much more than that. Recent archaeological discoveries help inform our understanding of their culture, economy, and even origins. In the Spring 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Daniel M. Master of Wheaton College looks at the biblical and archaeological evidence for the Philistines’ roots in “Piece by Piece: Exploring the Origins of the Philistines.”

Who Were the Philistines?

In the Bible, the Philistines are remembered as an uncircumcised people with advanced technology and a formidable military (Judges 14:3; 1 Samuel 13:19–20; Exodus 13:17). The Philistines frequently encroached on Israelite territory, which led to some battles, including the famous clash between David, the Israelite, and Goliath, the Philistine (1 Samuel 17). They were condemned for being idol worshipers (1 Samuel 5:1–5) and soothsayers (Isaiah 2:6). In short, the Philistines are portrayed quite negatively in the Bible.

They lived in the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza—the heartland of ancient Philistia on the Mediterranean Sea’s southeastern shore. Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, and Gath have been excavated in recent decades. The findings from these cities show that the Philistines had distinct pottery, weapons, tools, and houses. They also ate pork and had vast trade networks.

Philistine culture flourished during the Iron Age (12th through sixth centuries B.C.E.). Similar to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Philistines lost their autonomy toward the end of the Iron Age. They became subservient and paid tribute to the Assyrians, Egyptians, and then Babylonians, the great superpowers of the region who severely punished rebellion. For example, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed disloyal Ashkelon and Ekron and carried off many Philistines into exile.

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Where Did the Philistines Come From?

In his article, Daniel Master looks at archaeological and biblical evidence for the Philistines’ origins. He considers the accounts at Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu. In the 12th century B.C.E., during the reign of Ramesses III, a confederation of tribes from the “islands” of the “northern countries” attacked Egypt—several times, both on sea and land. The Peleset, whom scholars connect with the Philistines, was named as one of these tribes.

Battle Ships. This drawing of a relief at Medinet Habu shows a sea battle between the Egyptians and people from the “islands,” who had invaded Egypt in the 12th century B.C.E. Photo: Public Domain.

On the way to Egypt, the confederation had traveled through the eastern Mediterranean and destroyed numerous cities, including Ugarit on the Syrian coast. Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit, had written to surrounding kingdoms for help, when the “seven ships of the enemy” had arrived to ransack his kingdom. By the time help had come, though, it was too late: Ugarit lay in ruins.

Egypt defeated the confederation, as recorded on one of the temple walls at Medinet Habu. A relief from that temple also depicts a sea battle between the island tribes and the Egyptians. In it, the islanders wear distinct headdresses, which clearly set them apart from the Egyptians. After being defeated, some of these tribes settled on the southern coast of Canaan—in what would become the land of the Philistines. Egyptian sources, thus, seem to record a migration of people from the “islands” to Philistia.

Philistine Portrait? A confederation of island tribes, including the Peleset (Philistines), attacked Egypt in the 12th century B.C.E. This relief from Medinet Habu records a sea battle between the two forces. Photo: Olaf Tausch, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Master also examines the evidence for Philistine origins in the Bible. The biblical authors remembered the Philistines as coming from a foreign land, from “Caphtor” (Genesis 10:14; Deuteronomy 2:23; 1 Chronicles 1:12; Amos 9:7; Jeremiah 47:4). Scholars have long drawn a connection between Caphtor and Crete. This is largely based on Egyptian inscriptions and paintings of “Keftiu” from the 15th and 14th centuries B.C.E., wherein the Keftiu are linked to the Minoan civilization, which was centered on Crete.

Migration Map. Who were the Philistines, and where did they come from? New archaeological evidence suggests that many of the Philistines originally came from Crete, called “Caphtor” in the Bible. Map: © Biblical Archaeology Society.

Excavations have shown that the Philistines had a distinct assemblage of artifacts. Master notes parallels between some early Philistine objects, especially from the 12th and 11th centuries B.C.E., and Aegean and Cypriot artifacts. Elements of Philistine material culture, then, also hint at an Aegean or Mediterranean origin for the Philistines.

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New evidence from Ashkelon further supports this connection. The Leon Levy Expedition excavated at Ashkelon from 1985–2016 under the direction of the late Lawrence Stager at Harvard University; for the last decade, Daniel Master co-directed excavations. They found some infant burials from the 12th century B.C.E., as well as a Philistine cemetery with burials from the 11th through eighth centuries B.C.E. Teaming up with scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, they were able to analyze DNA from seven of these individuals. When they looked at the 12th-century infants’ DNA, they discovered that the infants had some European ancestry. Crete proved to be one of the best matches for the infants’ heritage—when considering all of their genetic material. Yet other places in the western Mediterranean, such as Iberia, also provided a good match.

Interestingly, in the later individuals from Ashkelon’s cemetery, this European ancestry had been so diluted to barely register. Master explains that, by the tenth century B.C.E., enough intermarriage had taken place between the Philistines and the local Levantine population that the Philistines looked a lot like their neighbors:

While there was some evidence of the same Western European Hunter-Gatherer genetic input, for all statistical purposes, it could not be identified for certain. The best models showed that these people [the tenth- and ninth-century individuals buried in Ashkelon’s cemetery] were descendants of both the 12th-century inhabitants and the earlier Bronze Age inhabitants. It appears from these results that so much intermarriage had taken place between the original immigrants and the people around them that the genetic makeup of Ashkelon’s inhabitants had lost its immigrant distinctiveness.

Yet Master clarifies that, at this point in history, the Philistines still thought of themselves as distinct, as evident in a seventh-century inscription from the Philistine city of Ekron. The inscription names Ekron’s king as Ikausu, which means “Achaean” or “Greek.” The name Ikausu (or Achish) also appears in 1 Samuel 21:10 as Gath’s king.

The Philistines remembered their foreign origins

Master concludes that the new DNA evidence, coupled with the biblical and archaeological testimonies, suggests that the Philistines originated in Crete. That is not to say that the Philistines were a homogenous group, all coming from the Aegean world, but it seems that many Philistines did indeed migrate from there, bringing with them vestiges of Minoan culture. Learn more about this ancient people in Daniel M. Master’s article “Piece by Piece: Exploring the Origins of the Philistines,” published in the Spring 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read the full article “Piece by Piece: Exploring the Origins of the Philistines” by Daniel M. Master in the Spring 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This article first appeared in Bible History Daily on March 23, 2022.

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The Philistines

Piece by Piece: Exploring the Origins of the Philistines

What We Know About the Philistines

The Other “Philistines”

Exploring Philistine Origins on the Island of Cyprus

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The post Who Were the Philistines, and Where Did They Come From? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

More Queries & Comments Spring 2023

Michele Barasso — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 14:00:11 +0000

Taking a Sling

AS A RETIRED NEUROSURGEON, I read with enthusiasm the article by Boyd Seevers and Victoria Parrott on biblical-era slings (“Taking a Sling: How David Defeated Goliath,” Fall 2022), which includes important comments on the story of David and Goliath. The authors wrote a wonderful description of biblical-era sling construction, ammunition, and sling ballistics. I would like to add that it has been speculated that the medical cause of Goliath’s death may have been an episode of pituitary gland apoplexy, which is a serious internal hemorrhage of the body’s master endocrine gland. Pituitary apoplexy has been described after bodily or serious head trauma, as Goliath experienced.

Goliath may have had a growth hormone-secreting tumor of the pituitary gland that produced acromegaly, which would explain his excessive height of six and half feet, his loud, strong voice that boomed over the valley to invite a challenger, robust body size that readily supported body armor, and seemingly poor visual acuity. The pituitary gland is uniquely seated within the skull in a deep, centrally placed region below the visual nerves and in front of the brainstem. The latter is a most important structure, as it funnels and integrates vital bodily functions, in particular the level of consciousness and respiration. Pressure on the visual nerves by the tumor may have sufficiently impaired Goliath’s vision such that the young David may have appeared as a blurry, small image from a distance, until they both advanced closer. This proximity would have facilitated David to take an accurate aim and shot.

In addition, the tumor’s unique location and size may have resulted in Goliath having tunnel vision, or full bilateral temporal visual field blindness. The stone struck Goliath in the forehead with a mortal blow, embedding itself in his brow and causing Goliath to fall.

David holds aloft the head of his slain enemy, Goliath, in this drawing by Gustave Doré. According to 1 Samuel 17, David defeats Goliath with a slingshot, then beheads him. Public Domain.

Thus, Goliath may have sustained two serious head injuries from this single hit. First, the vector of energy of the stone’s impact would have translated horizontally in a direct line to the pituitary gland to cause a large internal hemorrhage with subsequent gland destruction, and possibly a blood dissection into the brainstem resulting in a fatal stroke. Second, the blunt head trauma resultant from the fall would have created a secondary impact injury to compound the first injury.

Walter J. Faillace
Rockville, Maryland

IN MY YOUTH, I learned to use a sling. I was not much good at it, but it was a learning experience. Being a shepherd, David probably used the over-head rotation, since he was usually in open country, where there was room for the sling to rotate. A mass of slingers would have used the vertical rotation to avoid the conflict of slings in the air over their heads. In either case, the sling was a useful weapon.

Henry Depew
Tallahassee, Florida

Yahweh’s Desert Origins

“YAHWEH’S DESERT ORIGINS,” by Juan Manuel Tebes (Fall 2022) may be one of the worst articles that BAR has ever printed. It is full of unscriptural assumptions and near blasphemy. The errors begin in the second sentence when, speaking of Israel’s God, the author writes, “we know very little about his origins.” That is a demonstrably false statement. God is transcendent. He has always been present.

Tebes also writes that little is known about how God “came to be worshiped by the peoples of Israel and Judah.” The book of Genesis clearly relates how the Israelites came to worship God. God called out Abraham to father a great nation. Abraham, along with his descendants, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, worshiped God. Within three generations, his descendants moved to Egypt for 400 years. Then God led them to Canaan in the Exodus. He had been the national God of Israel for over 500 years. Doesn’t Tebes read the Bible?

Then he says that many scholars, including himself, “used available biblical and archaeological evidence to argue that Yahweh originated in the desert lands south of ancient Judah.” That statement is best explained by one word, “baloney.” No one has ever dug up a piece of pottery saying God came from the desert. Worse, there is no biblical evidence to say God came from the desert in Midian. God was already Israel’s God when He came to Moses in Midian. The burning bush event was God sending Moses back to Egypt to lead the nation to the Promised Land. Doesn’t Tebes read the Bible?

In that same paragraph, the author writes that he believes “the Israelites only encountered this desert deity centuries later,” during the tenth century BC. Yet, in the 19th century BC, God initially called Abraham to leave Ur. Genesis 13–24 recounts event after event where Abraham worshipped God. That claim is revisionist Bible history. Doesn’t Tebes read the Bible?

These errors are just on the first page of the article. In the remaining nine pages, there are at least 20 additional inaccuracies and assumptions. A common theme found on several pages is that biblical references to southern geographical sites mean that is where Yahweh originated. I’ll address the two he mentioned in Habakkuk 3:3. He cites Teman, which means south, and Mt. Paran, a mountainous wilderness area north of the desert that forms the southern boundary of Israel. Habakkuk mentioned God coming from the south because it was the area transited during the Exodus. Habakkuk and several other Bible writers use southern geographical illustrations to show Israel is truly God’s people because He led them through that area as He was forming them into a nation on the way to Canaan.

What Tebes appears to have done is adjust and distort history, biblical truth, and the archaeological record to fit a preconceived notion.

Lester L. Stephenson
Wellford, South Carolina

THE ARTICLE ON YAHWEH presents some interesting archaeological discoveries, but also engages in a great deal of speculation. That alone is not a problem, if the speculation is carefully presented and balanced with alternate explanations. But after presenting his speculations, the author refers to them later in the article as factual. This is not a scholarly approach but represents either sensationalism or strong bias.

Richard Brown
Durham, North Carolina

Origins of the Gospels

ONE OF THE NEATEST ARTICLES I’ve read of late was “The Origins of the Gospels,” by Robyn Faith Walsh (Fall 2022).” What great insights.

To quote Walsh, “The gospel writers use references to common literary trends to convey Jesus’s special stand, but they do so through familiar literary allusions. The empty tomb, for instance, is found throughout Greek and Roman literature to indicate someone had risen to divine status…”

Well, of course. Whether done from an oral tradition or as a literary device, what better way to show that the leader of a nation or movement was of great power than to show an empty tomb after they’ve died. But in the Gospels, was this a literary device? It seems that even “the authorities” recognized that the tomb of Jesus was empty.

And then there’s the matter of “Jesus’s sightings.” There are at least ten reported in Scripture. Now if only one person had “seen” Jesus after his crucifixion, it could be written off as an illusion. But there are reports of multiple people seeing Jesus, touching Jesus, and eating with Jesus. How do we account for that?

Walsh is correct in stating that the idea of an empty tomb is a great literary device, however, without the resurrected person being seen (by many), it seems that is what it remains, a literary device.

Robert Arnold
Lockport, New York

I APPRECIATE Robyn Faith Walsh’s effort to position the Gospels among the noteworthy literature of the first and second centuries. However, the arguments offered for situating the Gospels in that company deprive them of their uniqueness as the “good news.” John tells us that he wrote his gospel so that people may believe that Jesus is the Christ and so have life because of him (20:31; 3:15). This declaration must count for something in determining the “gospel genre” in relation to its intended audience. Unlike ancient Greco-Roman biographies, the written Gospels proclaim the same unique, existential good news as the first Christian evangelists: The Gospel medium is the Gospel message.

Jim Barron
St. Petersburg, Florida

ROBYN FAITH WALSH RESPONDS: My book demonstrates that no author exists in a vacuum. All writers are shaped by their social position, education, experience, and training. Independent of an author’s stated motives for writing something, there are always tell-tale signs of what informs their work. For example, there are probably certain things you could tell about me from even just reading my article for (e.g., that I learned English at some point, went through formal schooling, likely have an advanced degree, was trained in the citation practices and style of scholarly writing… you might have even picked up that I like The Beatles!). This is also the case for the gospel authors who write in Greek, cite Jewish scriptures, use Stoic terminology and concepts, and engage common literary tropes.

As a historian, I can analyze and describe this kind of evidence encoded in the text far more securely than I can confirm or deny anything we might hypothesize about the early Christian communities we assume were associated with these authors. And if we assume Christian uniqueness as a matter of method, we can miss all kinds of exciting connections and allusions that help us better understand the world from which Christianity emerges.

To be clear, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the gospel writers weren’t part of Christian communities of some kind. But their being part of a religious group doesn’t preclude us from noticing when they seem to be referencing Homer or the Septuagint, when they deploy well-known imagery (e.g., the empty tomb), or when they are engaging with the popular philosophy, biographies, novels, and histories of their time.

The Gospel of Luke, for instance, gives a formulaic preamble that is found elsewhere among other ancient biographers; he positions his work within a genre that ancient readers would have immediately recognized. Something similar is going on in John 20:31; John states that he hasn’t even told the entire story, but just enough to encourage or affirm the reader’s belief that Jesus was the predicted Jewish Messiah. Authors stating the rhetorical aim of their undertaking is nothing terribly new, particularly when the subject matter of their writing is a hallowed figure or the son of a god (of which there are many in this world)—Philo of Alexandria’s Life of Moses or Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana both come to mind. (By the way, we know that Apollonius was still being worshiped as a savior god—alongside Jesus!—in the time of Eusebius). And John 3:1–15 is not so much a creed, but a didactic strategy that both informs the reader (via Nicodemus) about the Son of Man, while also establishing Jesus’s authority within the story.

With all of this in mind, the declaration of the “good news” of Jesus may ultimately tell us more about how these writers are inserting Jesus into an already-established literary mold—not to mention more about the writers themselves!—than anything about the historical Jesus.

Biblical Geography

AS A LONGTIME BAR reader, I often find myself wondering about geographic labels and terms. For instance, what do you mean when you say the Levant, the Near East, or the Middle East? Which countries comprise them?

Stephen M. Flatow
Jerusalem, Israel

I AM A RECENT SUBSCRIBER and am continually fascinated with your coverage of archaeology in Israel and other parts of the Middle East. But being a novice, I am often challenged by some of the terms used in your articles. For example, words like “tel” and “Levant” regularly appear in BAR but are not familiar to many non-specialists. These and other words require me to do some research to understand the details of an article.

Jack Sega
Oxnard, California

It is admittedly challenging to find consistent and widely understood terminology that accurately represents the geography of the biblical world. We use Near East to talk about ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, and the other lands that neighbored Israel and Judah in biblical times, while Middle East refers to the same region’s modern political geography. Levant refers specifically to the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Finally, a tell is the ruin mound of an ancient city, but spelled tel in Hebrew and tell (or tall) in Arabic, while in Turkey and parts of Iraq and Syria, the term is hüyük or tepe.—ED.

Dig List

Since there are many archaeological digs going on in the Holy Land, would you consider publishing a list of current, active digs, indicating the work, sponsor (university or museum), leading archaeologist, and general location? It’s great to see the extensive work being done and (if the dig has been completed) also the results of the project.

Bud Warren
Greene, Maine

Certainly a great idea. You may find useful our Digs page, updated annually with many of the active and most prominent archaeological digs in Israel, Jordan, and elsewhere.—ED.

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Bringing a Slingshot to a Swordfight

Michele Barasso — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 14:50:19 +0000

Michelangelo’s David (1504) carrying a sling over his shoulder.
Photo: George M. Groutas, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead; the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground” (1 Samuel 17:49). The biblical story of a lowly shepherd with no military training or experience and yet capable of defeating and killing a mighty warrior serves as a metaphor for facing and overcoming seemingly impossible odds.

In European art, David is often portrayed as carrying a sling, even when it is the only thing he has, as demonstrated by Michelangelo’s masterpiece—the nude statue of David outside the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. The larger-than-life marble hero carries a sling over his left shoulder while holding a stone in his right hand.

How realistic is the biblical narrative? How were slings made in antiquity? What ammunition did they use? And what do we know about the real-life capabilities of slings and their usefulness in combat?

Boyd Seevers and Victoria Parrott answer these questions in their article “Taking a Sling: How David Defeated Goliath,” published in the Fall 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. They provide a technical description of the weapon and discuss the different techniques. Although slings were very common across the ancient world, hardly any examples have survived in the archaeological record. Luckily, ancient artistic representations offer some clues.

Egyptian slingers attacking the Sea Peoples from the crow’s nests of their ships, around 1200 BCE.
Photo: Alexander Schick/Bibelausstellung.de

Possibly the oldest depiction of slings comes from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu (across the Nile from Luxor), where large wall reliefs celebrate the pharaoh’s deeds, including the battles against the coalition of the so-called Sea Peoples, who invaded Egypt’s Mediterranean coast in about 1190 BCE. A section of the northern outer wall of the temple shows the Egyptian navy engaged with the invaders, who are identified by their characteristic feathered headdresses. Atop every Egyptian ship’s mast, in the crow’s nest, is an Egyptian slinger launching projectiles at the enemy.

Assyrian slingers and archers during the siege of Lachish in 701 BCE.
Photo: Zunkir, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

As for slinging techniques, “some pictures appear to show slingers whirling the sling horizontally over their heads, as depicted in an early 12th-century BCE relief from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. By contrast, other pictures seem to show slingers whirling their slings vertically at their sides,” write Seevers and Parrott. The latter technique is well illustrated in the gypsum reliefs from the Southwest Palace of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. Celebrating Sennacherib’s military exploits, some of the reliefs show Assyrian slingers among the Assyrian infantry during Sennacherib’s 701 BCE siege of the fortified Judahite city of Lachish. It seems that at least six different techniques can be used to launch stones from a sling.

Lead pellets from Cyprus.
Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76

Like in the biblical story of David and Goliath, the most common and most readily available type of projectile was a simple fieldstone or a pebble collected from a riverbed. But because fieldstones tend to be irregular in shape, which causes the projectile to curve during flight, people often shaped sling ammunition. “Shaped, spherical sling stones first appear in the Early Bronze Age (c. 3300–2000 BCE). In Israel, these were typically fashioned from locally available flint or limestone, usually to a size of 2–3 inches in diameter (about the size of a plum or baseball). During the later Hellenistic and Roman periods, sling pellets were also molded from lead.” This ammunition was usually shaped like an almond, as demonstrated by the examples from Cyprus shown here. These projectiles often featured symbols or inscriptions that mocked or taunted the enemy with phrases like “Take that!” or “for Pompey’s backside.” The advantage of such ammunition was its regular size, shape, and weight.

We don’t need to go any further than the story of David and Goliath to appreciate the effectiveness of the ancient sling. Although concise, the biblical account accurately reports that the throw’s force was such that “the stone sank into [Goliath’s] forehead.” The impact did not kill Goliath immediately (David actually finished off the Philistine giant with his own sword) but it did incapacitate him, and the internal damage caused by the blow would have caused the giant’s death eventually.

The biblical story of David and Goliath depicted on a Byzantine silver plate.
Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917

The famous silver plate discovered in 1902 at Karavas, Cyprus, illustrates the biblical story, starting with the initial encounter between David and Goliath in the Valley of Elah (top register), where the sitting figure in the middle represents the river from which David collected his stones. In the center, both combatants engage using their respective weapons, followed by their respective armies. The bottom register shows David decapitating Goliath, while his sling and remaining three stones lay on the ground behind him. Manufactured sometime around 620 CE, the plate is now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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Greek and Roman authors attest to the capabilities of slingers as part of ancient armies. From their witnesses and modern testing, it appears that “practiced slingers could have had military effectiveness as far away as 200–400 yards,” conclude Seevers and Parrott. Slings could be highly accurate and potentially lethal at shorter distances (up to 70 yards) and also allowed slingers the advantage of maintaining a safe distance from infantrymen armed with shorter-range weapons like the javelin. And that is how the lowly, untrained shepherd was able to defeat the seasoned and more heavily armed Philistine warrior.

To further explore the capabilities of ancient slingers and how their humble weapons compared to other ancient weaponry, read Boyd Seevers and Victoria Parrott’s article “Taking a Sling: How David Defeated Goliath,” published in the Fall 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

——————Subscribers: Read the full article “Taking a Sling: How David Defeated Goliath,” by Boyd Seevers and Victoria Parrott, in the Fall 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

All-Access subscribers, read more in the BAS Library:

Excavating Philistine Gath: Have We Found Goliath’s Hometown?

The Saga of the Goliath Family—As Revealed in Their Newly Discovered 2,000-Year-Old Tomb

The David and Goliath Saga

The post Bringing a Slingshot to a Swordfight appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

On the Shoulders of Giants

Michele Barasso — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 14:00:50 +0000

Giants have long appeared in the tales and folklore of people throughout the world. Larger than life characters such as the Cyclops from the Odyssey and the Jötunn of Norse mythology are still well known to us today.

The Israelites, too, had their own tales of giants, many of which were already ancient when the biblical stories were written down. The first explicit mention of giants in the Hebrew Bible is in the report of the 12 spies found in Numbers 13. It records that Hebron was home to three monstrous brothers (or tribes) called the children of Anak, whose size made the spies feel like grasshoppers. The text even claims they are descendants of the infamous Nephilim of Genesis 6.

In Deuteronomy 3:11, King Og’s bed is described as 9 cubits long and 4 cubits wide. This serves to illustrate how large Og—the last of the Rephaim—was thought to be. In this engraving, by German engraver and printmaker Johann Balthasar Probst, onlookers marvel at the site of Og’s gigantic bed. Public Domain.

Later, in the Book of Deuteronomy, even more giants are mentioned—the Rephaim and the Zamzummim—who once lived in the land of the Ammonites (Deuteronomy 2:20). In Genesis 14:7, these same giants are said to have lived in the land in the days of Abraham and Lot. The famous King Og of Bashan, who was among those defeated by the Israelites, was considered to be the last of the Rephaim. According to the Bible (Deuteronomy 3:11), Og’s legendary iron bed (which was roughly 14 feet long and 6 feet wide) could still be seen in the town of Rabbah.

The most famous biblical giant, however, was the Philistine warrior Goliath, who was slain by a young David in 1 Samuel 17. But he was not the last of his kind. According to 2 Samuel 21, more giant warriors fought for the Philistines.

David holds aloft the head of his slain enemy, Goliath, in this drawing by Gustave Doré. According to 1 Samuel 17, David defeats Goliath with a slingshot, then beheads him. Public Domain.

In this rich world of stories and folklore, it was only natural for people to look for evidence of giants in the world around them. In their article “Encounters with Fossil Giants” in the Fall 2021 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Steven Fine and Elisha Fine discuss examples from ancient history where individuals found what they thought were the bones of giants. Locals would often discover unusually large fossils and present them to visitors as the remains of famous or mythical giants.

Josephus, the celebrated Jewish historian, had his own encounter with giant remains outside Hebron, which he mentioned in Antiquities:

So they [the Israelite army] moved their camp to Hebron, took capture of that town and massacred all therein. There remained there a race of giants, who, by reason of their huge frames and figures in no way like the rest of mankind, were an amazing spectacle and a tale of terror to the ear. Their bones are shown to this day, bearing no resemblance to any that have come within men’s ken.

Josephus’s experience with giant remains was not unusual. Greeks and Romans discovered huge bones across the Mediterranean world, remains they often associated with giants from their own mythical past.

To discover more about ancient fossil remains and how people viewed them, read “Encounters with Fossil Giants” by Steven Fine and Elisha Fine, published in the Fall 2021 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Subscribers: Read the full piece, “Encounters with Fossil Giants” by Steven Fine and Elisha Fine, published in the Fall 2021 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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