Are They on Drugs? Here is one of the crazier stories of recent weeks, from Reuters yesterday:

An Israeli researcher said he has made a Goliath of a find — the first archaeological evidence suggesting the biblical story of David slaying the Philistine giant actually took place.

A shard of pottery unearthed in a decade-old dig in southern Israel carried an inscription in early Semitic style spelling "Alwat["] and "Wlt", likely Philistine renderings of the name Goliath, said Aren Maeir, who directed the excavation.

You read right: "Alwat" and "Wlt" are identical to "Goliath". Well of course they are. And "David" and "Sasha" are identical, as are "day" and "nite".
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I can almost understand how some demented archeologist digging in dirt for years in desert heat might lose his mind and think that "Alwat" or "Wlt", or even both "Alwat" and "Wlt", which aren't even the same as each other, are the same as "Goliath", but why on Earth would a reputable news organization, in this case Reuters, report without challenge or comment of any kind the insane assertion that "Alwat" and "Wlt" are "Goliath"?
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Taking that madness a step further, how does the existence of the name Goliath prove any story of any kind about one person who may have had that name? There is a name Solomon, so that proves that King Solomon threatened to cut a baby in half, right? The name Muhammed exists, so that must mean that Muhammed was truly the messenger of God, right? The name Jones exists, so all those people who committed suicide at Jonestown must have ascended to heaven, right? And the name George exists, so President Bush's claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction must be true, right? Wrong.
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The Reuters story is twice preposterous, first in asserting that "Alwat" and "Wlt" are "Goliath" and second in suggesting that the mere fact that a name may have existed proves something — anything — beyond the fact that the name exists. The shard dates back to at earliest 100 years after the time of the story about David vs. Goliath, so even if it had any relation whatsoever to that fable it might simply have been a literary reference, like those we ourselves make all the time to that mythical contest.
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The mere fact that something is written doesn't make it true. There is, Reuters might be surprised to find, an entire category of writing known as "fiction", which deals with things that are just made up. They never really happened. But people write these stories down and then make allusions to them, sometimes for millennia afterward. The mere fact that someone may write about "Archie Bunker" does not create the fictional character Archie Bunker into an actual, flesh-and-blood person. And writing "Alwat", "Wlt", or even "Goliath" on a piece of pottery does not create a fictional Goliath into a real person nor prove the truth of any story about him.
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How do people get so crazy?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,065.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:37 AM