By Walid Shoebat
Archaeologists at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University announced last week the discovery of a massive gate and other fortifications in the ruins of Gath, the hometown of the Bible’s Goliath. The ancient gate is one of the largest ever discovered in Israel and evidence of the Philistine city’s power in the 10th and ninth centuries B.C.E. Gath even made a brief appearance in the Bible when David, Goliath’s slayer and future king of Israel, “acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard.” While such a discovery adds much credibility to the Bible, but what about discovering Goliath? Are we awaiting to discover a skeletal remains of a man so huge who will baffle scientists? Fact is, they have discovered several Goliaths in Israel and elsewhere that match biblical description. And just as the Bible described giants or what evolutionists call “Neanderthals,” these Goliath bones were buried side by side with humans as found on Mount Carmel and other locations in Israel and elsewhere in the world.
For example, Mugharet el-Zuttiyeh (“Cave of the Robbers”), and Es Skhul (meaning kids), paleo-anthropologists tell us, is a “prehistoric” archaeological site in Upper Galilee, Israel which also included both the alleged “moderns” and the so-called “Neanderthals” of the region.
Es Skhul (meaning kids) (Arabic: السخول) is a cave site situated c. 20 kilometers south of the city of Haifa, Israel, and c. 3 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. The prehistoric site, was first excavated by Dorothy Garrod in the summer of 1928. The excavations revealed the first evidence of the late Epipalaeolithic Natufian culture, characterised by the presence of abundant microliths, human burials and ground stone tools. Skhul also represents one area where Neanderthals. The cave also has Middle Palaeolithic layers. The remains found at Es Skhul, together with those found at the Wadi el-Mughara Caves and Mugharet el-Zuttiyeh, were classified in 1939 by Arthur Keith and Theodore D. McCown as Palaeoanthropus palestinensis, a descendent of Homo heidelbergensis.
In 1961, a Japanese team digging in a cave in the Wadi Amud about 31 miles from Mt. Carmel near the Sea of Galilee, discovered a shattered Neandertal adult skeleton so high up in the stratigraphy that it had Upper Paleolithic artifacts and even pottery associated with it. The youngest were radiocarbon dates of 5710 years. He was a robust man with a cranial capacity (brain size) of 1740 ml in volume. A huge skull by modern standards. Consider that modern men and women are between 1200 and 1500 ml.
When it comes to the giant Goliath, he causes lots of controversy, especially between creationists and evolutionists, but the fact that the Bible mentions them before paleo-anthropologists discovered them makes a clear case that the Bible was right.
It is when it comes to giants that exaggerations are found everywhere. There are the conspiracy theorists who post exaggerated photoshopped images. Then we have the Nephilim mania claiming that fallen angels married into humans. The biblical “Nephilim” were giants, but not the ridiculous images. Giants were huge in the sense of their body mass and capabilities. Goliath in the Bible was “six cubits and a span” in height (First Samuel 17:4) – over nine feet tall. Goliath wasn’t the tallest. The tallest Neanderthal was discovered by the anthropologist Georges Vacher de Lapouge at the Bronze Age cemetery of Castelnau-le-Lez, France. The height of this giant was estimated at about 11 ft 6 dated to the Neolithic period.
Then we have the evolutionists, another exaggeration who initially separated what they termed “Neanderthals” from regular human beings: Goliaths. These had thick heavy bones with markings of powerful muscles and were at least 30% larger than an average man and of great muscular strength capable of enormous exertion and endurance. They had low foreheads, protruding brows, and large noses with broad nostrils and were generally meat eaters.
facial reconstruction of Neanderthal (Goliaths)
One of the things that convinced me about Scriptures was that prior to my conversion from Islam to Christianity, I regularly visited the Rockefeller Museum were I was glued to watch two fascinating skeletons displayed side by side. One was of an ancient Canaanite woman next to one of these magnificent robust huge skeletons dug from Mount Carmel. The size of this skeleton was quite amazing but was rarely if ever discussed in major publications.
This skeleton can easily measure over seven feet tall. Giants are not what is seen in fiction. When it comes to the Bible and it’s ancient writers, a mountain from their sense would be a hill in modern western sense. Mount Moriah, Mount Gerezim and Mount Ebal, for example, are simply hills, yet they are called mountains in the Bible. Rivers are the same. The Jordan River by western standards is a creek. And so are the giant Goliaths, I hate to call them Neanderthals, they are simply seven to twelve feet tall human beings, just as the Bible said and just as we dig out from ancient burial sites.
Mount Ebal and Mt. Gerizim looking west.
The Jordan River
Goliaths (Neanderthals) actually proves how accurate the Bible is. When science tries to dismiss the Bible, in the end the Bible, like an anvil, crushes all hammers, especially when the Bible makes strange claims that the modern evolutionist dispute. To provide an example, lets assume that the Bible said that cows originally had wings. This should be a fair comparison since evolutionists claim that whales (mammals) came from cows (also mammals). It is this type of scenario that baffles scientists who scoffed at the idea that a snake originally had legs. Then came the world’s first four legged known snake when paleo-anthropologists discovered Tetrapodophis amplectus in Brazil. The discovery proved that snakes walked on foot, instead of crawling on their bellies which is exactly what the Bible declared in Genesis 3:14.
This is a close up of Tetrapodophis amplectus (four legged snake)
To say that snakes had legs was like saying that cows had wings, except such an amazing unusual claim was made by the Bible and not paleo-anthropologists. The test of time proved no fossil records for the evolutionist to prove that a whale comes from a cow, yet the same test proved by fossil records that believing in the Bible was simple common sense, the snake had legs.
The question that begs an answer is how did Moses and Joshua (who are believed to have written Genesis) knew that snakes had legs and that we had seven to twelve foot tall giants? Remember, the paleoanthropologist say that the legged-snake fossil was millions of years old, and so was the “Neanderthal”. Moses was not even around during these times. There are only few answers: a) Moses was a paleoanthropologist, or b) he was simply a perfect guesser, or c) giants where there at the time of Moses or d) both, “c” plus Moses had good connections with the one who authored everything: God.
The Bible busts Evolutionists myth who at one-point-in-time said that Neanderthals were half monkey and half human. So when the first Nephilim (Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon) was discovered, the popular evolutionist imagination said that these were prehistoric brutes who walked like apes and became outsmarted by a more advanced species, the humans who emerged from Africa. Anatomical studies have shown Neanderthals used tools, wore jewelery, buried their dead, cared for their sick, and possibly sang or even spoke in much the same way that we do. Even more humbling, perhaps, their brains were slightly larger than ours. And as it turned out, Cro-Magnons were Caucasoid and not Negroid. Evolution was a racist theory which assumed that Africans were less intelligent beings.
The Bible, even though it was mocked at the time of such discoveries, was right, again and again, the Goliaths, as the Bible described spoke and were quite intelligent heathens whose genomes and ours (as scientists discovered) are more than 99.5 percent identical. They even tell us that people in China, Japan and other East Asian countries have about 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA than do Europeans, but they still make the mistake that they were here 150,000 years ago even though orientals only existed a few thousands of years ago. How they conclude this is questionable. Shouldn’t skeletons that are dated from 150,000 year old seen side by side with modern human boggle the minds of the Evolutionists? The question simply debunks the dating methodologies used.
To impose evolutionary pre-supposition was debunked after World War II were Neanderthals were reexamined to have been found to be simply humans. Now they say that modern humans interbred with Neanderthals. The “two species” paleoanthropologist say “existed alongside each other to between 2,600 and 5,400 years. This treatment of the two as “separate species” with new findings showing the two existed and even intermarried should debunk Evolution. Neanderthals (Goliaths) marrying Humans is simply similar to European Australians marrying Indigenous Australian Aborigines. Imagine thousands of years from now if they assumed that the Aborigine was hundreds of thousands years older than the European and here comes someone who excavates remains of a family where the husband was Aborigine and the wife was European, what would that do to these theorists?
It is impossible to provide proof for evolution because evolution depends on a false assumption which stems from its own Genesis claiming that a cow became whale. There is no such thing as a Neanderthal specie, these, as it was scientifically proven, were just as human as anyone else.
The trick used by paleoanthropologist is simple to explain. They always show skeletal samples that are void of other samples from all recent living people. Anatomical definitions are based on the assumption Neandertals were not modern humans so modern samples for the modern human always exclude Neandertal looking type of people. When we apply samples of Holocene and recently living Aboriginal Indigenous Australians or other peoples, it debunks this theory. Aboriginal Indigenous Australians are each and every bit modern, just as we see certain Europeans and Russians who are stalky, robust and enormous. These skeletal samples from modern humans differ little from the so-called Neanderthals.
It is not impossible to see this everywhere, including even the Davids defeating the Goliaths. As we stated, a Giant like Goliath in the Bible was “six cubits and a span” in height – over nine feet tall. We find seven to twelve feet tall skeletons all over the world just as we find these heights in living people today. Og king of Bashan’s bedstead was nine cubits (13.5) feet. He wasn’t 13 some feet tall, but this is simply the size of his bed. His height must have been incredible just as was Goliath’s and the Goliath discovered in France. Giants in the Bible were identified as “men of a great stature” (Num 13:32). They were also called “Anakims; Which also were accounted giants (Rephaim)” (Duet 2:10). So these robust tall guys in Duet 2 were called Nephilim, Rephaim, Horims, Emims, Zamzummims and Avims. The Bible defined a giant’s average height and by this standard, we still have ample numbers of giants today.
Evander Holyfield is huge enough, but comparing him with the Russian Giant Nikolay Valuev who was 7 foot tall?
To claim hundreds of thousands year old bones is virtually impossible with the dating techniques we have. Carbon dating, while accurate, like other radiometric dating methods, requires certain assumptions that cannot be scientifically proved. These include the starting conditions, the constancy of the rate of decay, and that no material has left or entered the sample. Dinosaur bones for example, are rarely carbon dated and when they were, the dates did not show millions, but thousands of years old. In fact, the first evidence of an entirely soft-tissue crest for any dinosaur was found, yet they are dated millions of years old without being tested for carbon-14.
The problem with double-checking fossil discoveries is that they are rarely shared with other scientists for years, if ever, due to concerns over publishing priorities. Typically, to get full credit for a discovery, the finder must hoard the fossil for a decade or more before allowing others to study it so that he can publish first. Most anthropologists must rely only on descriptions and interpretations put forward by the discoverer of the fossils the very person who has a vested interest in proving his own theories.
Therefore, paleoanthropology finds that the field is far less objective than physics, chemistry, or even biology. Furthermore, fraud and fakery have been demonstrated many times. In a field based on little evidence and many assumptions is why we have conflicts which are common among scientists in this area.
For example, the Hamburg skull fragment, which was believed to have come from the world’s oldest German, a Neanderthal known as Hahnhöfersand Man, was actually a mere 7,500 years old, according to Oxford University’s radiocarbon dating unit. The unit established that other skulls had been wrongly dated too.
The paleo-anthropologists all lay their findings on the Evolutionary Tree. But some evolutionists are at times very candid, such as American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson. He is known for discovering the fossil of a female hominid australopithecine known as “Lucy” (which later turned out to be a hoax). His admission says it all, that now “nobody really places a great deal of faith in any human [evolution] tree” (Morell, 1995; p. 546).
Yet, many of the paleoanthropologist arguments are over this tree, which seems to change with each new find. The reason is that construction of these trees is based on evidence that is so flimsy and fragmentary that a wide variety of interpretations is possible which in turn is a major explanation for the many heated conflicts that have characterized paleoanthropology. There are so little hard data that most of the findings can be construed in several different ways.
But one source from way past in time has always turned to be the most reliable regardless to how far we advance into time: it is as it was, The Holy Bible.