What is an example of a legend in the Old Testament?

Answer 1

A legend is a traditional story popularly regarded as historical but unauthenticated. It is different to a myth, in that myths are unauthenticated stories largely aboutthe supernatural. It can also be different to a literary creation, where the author of a book wrote a narrative for political or other reasons of his time.

There are many legends in The Bible. An example could be the story of David and Goliath. Millions of young children have been taught the famous story of David slaying the Philistine giant, Goliath, to guide them to understand the greatness of David and, perhaps, his God. David had already had intimate acquaintance with Saul, when he became the king's armour bearer and then his personal musician (1 Samuel 16:21,23). A little later, David told Saul that he would fight Goliath, so Saul offered him his own personal armour, but did not appear to recognise David (1 Samuel 17:30-39). Finally, after David had slain Goliath, Saul had the young warrior brought to him, but once again did not recognise David (1 Samuel 17:58). These inconsistencies are typical of ahistorical, or legendary material.

Another episode, at 2 Samuel 21:19 casts further light on the legend of Goliath. The Hebrew Bible in English (JPS 1917 Edition)1 says: "And there was again war with the Philistines at Gob; and Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim the Beth-lehemite slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam." In other words, there seems to be another tradition that Elhanan killed Goliath.

1 Chronicles, written later and apparently based on the Deuteronomist history, attempted to resolve this in two ways. First, there is no mention of David killing Goliath, even though the Book of Kings presents this at the most important single feat leading to David being accepted as a potential king. Second, at 20:5, the book says that Lahmi2 killed the brother of Goliath.

Further evidence of the legendary nature of this story is that no remains have ever been found of giants like Goliath, his brothers, ancestors or descendants. No remains have been found of residences built for giant people, nor any suitable pottery and other artefacts. Scholars point out that Greek myths are replete with stories of giants. The Philistines, being descendants of sea peoples from the Greek islands, would no doubt have inherited these stories and passed them on to the early Hebrews, who could have believed that giants really existed among the Philistines.

Footnotes

1 The King James (KJV) translation also adopted the Chronicler solution for 2 Samuel 21:19, adding 'the brother of' [in italics to indicate that this was not an exact translation], but most other English translations of the Book of Samuel seem to have continued with the Hebrew Bible version in 2 Samuel.

2 Chronicles seems to have used Lahmi to avoid giving credit for this to the god El-hanan, or Baal-hanan. Chronicles was written during the monotheistic period following the Babylonian Exile.