A major biblical mystery has been solved by scientists who have revealed Goliath’s real height.
The Philistine warrior, whose name became a catchword for immense size, towered above fellow soldiers in a battle wit the future King David.
His height varies somewhere between six feet to an incredible height of nine feet and nine inches, according to the Bible.
But now scientists have discovered Goliath was not a giant in reality after archaeologists have found the remains of other ‘giants’ dating back as far as 2700 BC – around the time of the biblical battle.
If Goliath truly existed, it’s likely that these towering figures were affected by a rare genetic condition that caused them to grow to extraordinary sizes.
Sadly for the Philistines, this condition could also explain why Goliath was ultimately so vulnerable and easy to defeat.
It comes as human remains from an ancient cemetery in southern Israel have yielded precious bits of DNA that a new study says help prove the European origin of the Philistines – the enigmatic nemeses of the biblical Israelites.
The Philistines mostly resided in five cities along the southern coast of what is today Israel and the Gaza Strip during the early Iron Age, around 3,000 years ago.
Many archaeologists have proposed they migrated to the coast of the ancient Near East during a period of upheaval at the end of the Late Bronze Age, around 1200 B.C.
The Philistines emerged as other societies around the eastern Mediterranean collapsed, possibly because of a cataclysmic intersection of climate change and man-made disasters. Philistine ceramics bear similarities to styles found in the Aegean, but concrete evidence of their geographic origins has remained elusive.
Now, a study of genetic material extracted from skeletons unearthed in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon in 2013 has found a DNA link. It connects the Philistines to populations in southern Europe during the Bronze Age.
The study, spearheaded by researchers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute and Wheaton College in Illinois, was published Wednesday in the research journal Science Advances.
The biblical account relates that the Philistines originally hailed from a distant isle. An Egyptian temple built by Rameses III bears reliefs of battles with “Sea Peoples” who appeared on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean.
One group listed in the Egyptian text is strikingly similar to the Hebrew name for Philistines. Excavations of Philistine sites have found ceramics and architecture that differed from those of their neighbors in ancient Canaan.
Original Article – Huge biblical mystery solved as Goliath’s height finally revealed
