Editing Goliath (section)

===Goliath's height===
[[File: Andrea Vaccaro - David with the Head of Goliath.jpg|thumb|'' David with the Head of Goliath'', {{circa|1635}}, by [[Andrea Vaccaro]]]]

The oldest manuscripts, namely the [[Dead Sea Scrolls]] text of Samuel from the late 1st century BCE, the 1st-century CE historian [[Josephus]], and the major [[Septuagint]] manuscripts, all give Goliath's height as "four [[cubit]]s and a [[Span (unit)|span]]" ({{convert|6|ft|9|in|disp=or}}), whereas the [[Masoretic Text]] has "six cubits and a span" ({{convert|9|ft|9|in|disp=or}}).<ref>Ehrlich, C. S. (1992). "Goliath (Person)". In D. N. Freedman (ed.), ''The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary'' (Vol. 2, p. 1073). New York: Doubleday</ref><ref name="autogenerated2005">{{cite journal |first=J. Daniel |last=Hays |title=Reconsidering the Height of Goliath |journal=[[Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society]] |volume=48 |issue=4 |date=December 2005 |pages=701–2 |url=http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/48/48-4/JETS_48-4_701-714.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101230225659/http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/48/48-4/JETS_48-4_701-714.pdf |archive-date=2010-12-30 |url-status=live}}</ref> Many scholars have suggested that the smaller number grew in the course of transmission (only a few have suggested the reverse, that an original larger number was reduced), possibly when a scribe's eye was drawn to the number six in line 17:7.{{sfn|Driesbach|2016|p=73}}