giants

[thatkidakayoungguy]

How big do you think people can get? Lots of Christians think 12 foot men were around before the flood. Og was at the most 14 feet, and Robert Wadlow was 8'11'' when he died of heart attack.

[Philip]

How big do you think people can get? Lots of Christians think 12 foot men were around before the flood. Og was at the most 14 feet, and Robert Wadlow was 8'11'' when he died of heart attack.

My dad actually saw Wadlow once. Said he could lay across the top of a large sedan and grab the door handles on the other side.

[Stu]

How big do you think people can get? Lots of Christians think 12 foot men were around before the flood. Og was at the most 14 feet, and Robert Wadlow was 8'11'' when he died of heart attack.

Also remember there's a difference between giants (Gen 6) and people with genetic defects.

[RickD]

And FYI,

Robert Wadlow died from complications of an infection. Not a heart attack.

Wadlow was the tallest man ever to be verified. No 12 foot tall giants have been verified.

[PaulSacramento]

The measurement for Og was his bed, not him, so he would have been shorter.
Then there is the difference in how cubits were measured at different times.

I recall one scholar that deduced that the giants would have been in the high 6ft ot even 7ft range which, for people in the mid to low 5ft range as was typical then, would be classified as giants.

[thatkidakayoungguy]

And FYI,

Robert Wadlow died from complications of an infection. Not a heart attack.

Wadlow was the tallest man ever to be verified. No 12 foot tall giants have been verified.

Oh.

[thatkidakayoungguy]

The measurement for Og was his bed, not him, so he would have been shorter.
Then there is the difference in how cubits were measured at different times.

I recall one scholar that deduced that the giants would have been in the high 6ft ot even 7ft range which, for people in the mid to low 5ft range as was typical then, would be classified as giants.

That's what I thought too.
The tallest science holds (but not exactly confirmed) is the Giant of Castlenau, which based on leg and arm proportions is thought to be 11 foot, though the person could've just been oversized in there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_of_Castelnau

[crochet1949]

There are big-boned people who are tall -- my husband is 6'2" -- and as another poster commented there is gigantism which is a hormonal problem. Dwarfism is also a hormonal problem.

Excessive height can /does cause medical problems. Heart, joint problems. Society is built for people of moderate height. Houses with doors, counters, ceilings, etc. within certain height for the normal sized person.

But it's interesting that there have been real giants in the world.

[JButler]

Digging around in history I've noticed that taller than average men have been around a while. Not tall from giantism just chest and shoulders above the average guy at the time. Vikings seemed to have more taller ones or so it appears. The famous Viking king Rollo was too tall to comfortably ride a horse so he walked everywhere, getting the nickname Rollo the Walker. Also the Norse horses were more like large ponies.

If you want to listen to some deep scholarship into parts of the Old Testament, check out Dr. Michael Heiser on YouTube. Lots of his lectures and interviews were filmed and now are on YuTube. He's got some interesting thoughts on the nephilim AKA "giants".

[Philip]

The footnotes in my ESV say Goliah of Gath was 9 feet, 9 inches.

Other interesting thing - did Goliath die as a result of the stone hitting him, or did it take him down and then David dispatched him with the sword? The wording in the ESV makes that unclear.

[RickD]

I think the Septuagint records Goliath's height as 4 cubits and 1 span, which is more like 6' 6"-6' 9". If we take into account the average height of Israelite men was around 5' 6", then it puts it into perspective.

For all you modern, average sized people, take it from someone who is short(5' 5 1/2" precisely), a 6' 6"-6' 9" man with full armor, would be intimidating.

[JButler]

Michael Heiser says Goliath was approximately 6'9" and he likely got that from the Septuagint. Also he says archeology in that region shows males were 5'3" - 5'5" and women about 5' for the era.

I'm 6'4" and standing next to a 6'9" guy (usually a fit basketball player) I feel kind of small. I tend to say "Sir" more often when around bigger people.

[Stu]

1 Samuel 17:4 says:

And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.

That's 9 feet 6 inches.

[RickD]

<a class="rtBibleRef" href="http://biblia.com/bible/nasb95/1%20Samuel%2017.4" data-reference="1 Samuel 17.4" data-version="nasb95" data-purpose="bible-reference" target="_blank">1 Samuel 17:4</a> says:

And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.

That's 9 feet 6 inches.

Stu,

This article explains the discrepancy.

First Samuel 17:4 notes that Goliath’s height was measured at “six cubits and one span,” about nine feet, six inches. That measurement comes from one Hebrew manuscript tradition, known as the Masoretic text, a text that was fixed around 100 AD by the Jewish community in Israel. We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that there were other editions of the Hebrew Bible. One of those was the Hebrew text from which the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament,1 was translated. The Septuagint at times disagrees with the Masoretic text. The Septuagint has the height of Goliath at four cubits and one span, or about six feet, six inches. The only Hebrew text of 1 Sam 17:4 found among the Dead Sea Scrolls also reads “four,” and the Jewish historian Josephus describes Goliath as, “a man of vast bulk, for he was of four cubits and a span in tallness.2” - See more at: http://www.biblestudymagazine.com/extra ... vLbSV.dpuf

[Philip]

Whatever, he was one big ugly sucker! Must have made an impressive head mount, next to David's lions and bears on the wall of his den.