I’m busily grading my students’ term papers just now, and so far two of the six or seven that I’ve graded have referenced Azzan Yadin, “Goliath’s Armor and Israelite Collective Memory,” Vetus Testamentum 54 (2004) 373-395. My students’ summaries of Yadin’s argument struck me as intriguing, but curious (in the “I can’t quite see this as plausible on its face” sense), so I decided to investigate for myself. (By the way, don’t get Azzan Yadin confused with Yigael Yadin, of whom A. Yadin is critical.)

Yadin spends the first several pages of the article (pp. 373-378) arguing cogently that 1 Samuel 17 is not a useful source for historical reconstruction. Some earlier scholars had unwisely tried to mine 1 Samuel 17 for historical information about 11th-century Philistines and especially their warfare practices, but these efforts are untenable. Yadin goes back over familiar ground to establish this, making these pages a convenient digest of scholarship on this issue:

1. Nobody dates the final redaction of the Deuteronomistic History earlier than 560 BCE. To Yadin, it seems unlikely that historically valuable details would have survived such a long period of transmission (nearly half a millennium) intact. Yadin’s skepticism about transmission is not just impressionistic; the LXX version of the story, which is shorter than the MT version of the story, testifies to some fluidity in transmission (with the balance of scholarship being on the side of the LXX text-type’s greater antiquity in this passage).
2. The biblical portrayal of Goliath’s armor (helmet, mail coat, and shield) does not closely resemble the depiction of Philistine armor as portrayed in Egyptian reliefs. Instead, the biblical description of Goliath’s armor seems to be a mishmash of armor styles.
3. 1 Samuel 17 seems to be secondary to other material within the DH, specifically 2 Samuel 21:19.
4. The story of David vs. Goliath does not seem to be well-integrated into the “history of David’s rise”; the skirmish is not referenced in other parts of the DH that celebrate David’s military accomplishments

In all of this, Yadin is not breaking new ground, but is helpfully reviewing previous scholarship.

The next few pages (378–381) Yadin devotes to arguing against the view that 1 Samuel 17 is pure fiction. What Yadin means by this is that there are elements in the story that are not “typically biblical,” but, in Yadin’s view, show some familiarity with a Greek or Aegean culture.

1. Military prowess is an unusual way to legitimate a future king of Israel. (Or so Yadin claims. I am not convinced by this argument at all. The pattern of a private anointing followed by a public demonstration of military prowess occurs for both Saul and David.)
2. David and Goliath “engage in a contest of champions, a μονομαχία, a form of battle known almost exclusively from the Greek epic tradition.” (Yadin shows that Roland de Vaux’s attempts to demonstrate a single-combat tradition in the ancient Near East is seriously flawed; one-on-one combat is present, but not combat in which a single champion represents each side, with the outcome of the entire skirmish resting by convention on the outcome of the duel.)
3. Goliath’s armor does not resemble attested Iron Age Philistine armor, but does resemble Homeric convention.
4. The designation of Goliath as a איש הביניים, “man of the in-between” (a longstanding difficulty in translating 1 Samuel 17) appears to be a borrowing from Greek “man of the μεταίχμιον,” the μεταίχμιον being the space between armies as the camp across from each other.

Yadin takes these elements to demonstrate that the story evidences signs of external contact with a Greek or Aegean culture and is not simply a free invention of an author working within a Judean milieu.

Yadin now moves to a more original contribution: the suggestion that the David-vs.-Goliath story represents an instance of “collective memory.” Yadin thinks the key to resolving the impasse described above—that 1 Samuel 17 is neither a historically accurate report nor a complete fiction—is setting the narrative within “the historical situation at the time the narrative took on its final form, the 6th or 5th century BCE, and in particular the place of Greek culture in the Eastern Mediterranean” (p. 381). Yadin describes the evidence for an increased East-Greek, Cypriot, and Attic presence on the Levantine coast in the sixth century and onward, especially in the environs of biblical Philistia. Moreover, this period witnessed a significant and widespread change and interest in Greek self-understanding, and “the heroic past depicted in Homeric epic was engaged in the formulations of this collective identity” (p. 384). Yadin points to evidence adduced by J. Naveh (1998) that seventh-century BCE Philistia experienced “a national awakening, some search for the non-Semitic roots” (p. 385, quoting Naveh) that “may have included a renewed interest in heroic tales, spurred by, inter alia, the spread of Homeric epic” (p. 385).

From this, Yadin quickly moves to arguing that something of this sort—a conceptual fusion of putative ancient events with contemporary sixth-century realities—is evident in the Deuteronomistic History, and the David-vs.-Goliath material in particular. The storyline is set in the late eleventh century BCE, but the event is presented in terms reminiscent of sixth-century Philistia (Yadin invokes here the analogy of Renaissance painters depicting biblical characters in fifteenth-century garb). In this light, Yadin understands the David-and-Goliath story as an exercise in “collective memory,” “the way in which a society or group represents past events—irrespective of the historical fidelity of this representation, or even the existence of the event” (p. 386). Thus, for Yadin, “collective memory is a dialogue between the past and the present, and the representation of the battle of David and Goliath is an attempt to reconstruct the past so as to better withstand the pressure of emerging Greek cultural hegemony” (p. 386).

Yadin then launches into a long and interesting comparison of the David-and-Goliath story with contest-of-champion scenes in the Iliad—a discussion that I will not attempt to summarize here. Suffice to say that Yadin’s presentation, while perhaps not entirely conclusive, is really very persuasive in its attempt to show that the David-and-Goliath story exhibits a number of elements that are not typical of the biblical narrative tradition, but are instead strikingly “Homeric.” There are, however, significant differences (David is not a typically Homeric hero), which Yadin is careful to note and investigate.

The big question coming off Yadin’s “intertextual reading” of the Iliad and 1 Samuel is why the narrative exhibits this Hellenic flavor. Yadin thinks of the DH as “the national ‘epic’ of ancient Israel … redacted as the eastern Mediterranean experiences a movement—precipitated in part by the spread of Homeric epic—that eventually leads to a (pan-Hellenic) Greek national identity” (p. 393; I was gratified to see my own Dynamics of Diselection referenced in footnote 80, even though my book is about Genesis, not the DH). Thus Yadin interprets the David-and-Goliath story within the context of “a national epic formed in polemic dialogue with a competing national narrative” (p. 394).

I found Yadin’s analysis very interesting—obviously, or I wouldn’t have spent so much time blogging about it! I think that Yadin’s resistance to the simplistic history/fiction dichotomy is very important. Moreover—although this comment must be received in light of the fact that I’m largely ignorant of the Iron Age Aegean and East-Greek cultures—I found the parallels Yadin adduced between the David-and-Goliath story and Homeric conventions persuasive on their face (I really need to think about the whole issue more critically, but it looks convincing on a first reading). These are the main points at which I find Yadin’s proposal attractive.

On the other hand, I am left with some unanswered questions. I am not quite sure about the characterization of the DH as “the national epic of ancient Israel.” What sort of “national epic” is this, which ends in the dissolution of the kingdom (of Judah, not Israel!), its last royal scion a hostage (albeit in some degree of comfort) in a foreign land? More importantly, even granting this genre label, what would motivate a sixth- or fifth-century Judean to compose a “national epic” in “polemic dialogue” with the spreading Hellenic culture? On its face, the DH is preoccupied with defining Judah’s (and earlier Israel’s) position vis-á-vis the Mesopotamian and, to a lesser extent, Egyptian superpowers. Concern about encroaching Hellenes is not evident on the surface of the DH, at any rate. It does seem to me, on a first reading of Yadin’s article, that Yadin makes a pretty good case for the idea that the author of the David-and-Goliath story casts it in terms of “modern” (from Dtr’s point of view—using “Dtr” loosely) Philistines. That’s certainly enough of a payoff to make Yadin’s article a worthwhile read.

Finally, it would be inappropriate to end this post without a couple of personal notes. (1) See, Kevin, I told you I’d comment on some of the good stuff I was reading and not just the “garbage”! (2) Nidya and Nick, thanks for drawing my attention to this article. I learned something new as a spin-off result of reading your term papers—which doesn’t really happen all that often.

Duane commented:

Chris,

Very interesting post. I need to dig up Yadin’s article. My own background makes me (too?) sensitive to common traditions with in the larger Mediterranean cultural environment. I do think that you observations are pertinent, particularly this one.

“On its face, the DH is preoccupied with defining Judah’s (and earlier Israel’s) position vis-á-vis the Mesopotamian and, to a lesser extent, Egyptian superpowers.”

I’m not sure what my own opinion of this is or even if I have one, but Loren Fisher sees a parallel between the David and Goliath story and the Egyptian account of Sinuh’s victory over Retenu.

I commented:

Duane,

Yadin makes a brief reference to Sinuhe vs. Retenu, in the course of his discussion of R. de Vaux’s attempt to show a “tradition of single combat” in the ANE. All Yadin says is: “The Egyptian tale of Sinhue is the only Near Eastern story that approximates the Greek μονομαχία, but even here there are significant differences” (p. 380). He footnotes on this point J. E. Miller, The Western Paradise: Greek and Hebrew Traditions (Bethesda, Md., 1997), p. 71. Yadin doesn’t cite Miller’s publisher, International Scholars Publications—whose other publishing credits include such gems as Jesus in India: A Reexamination of Jesus’ Asian Traditions in the Light of Evidence Supporting Reincarnation , which makes me a bit suspicious of any conclusions drawn from Miller’s work (I can’t seem to find an International Scholars Publications web site, which makes me think it might be a kind of vanity press, a place where books that can’t find publishers elsewhere go).