They try to disguise it with mistranslations as being "head and shoulders taller", but in earlier translations and tracing back to the original Hebrew we find in 1 Sam 9:
From his shoulders upward, he was taller than all the people.
Unless he had a real long neck, he must have had a real long head.
One can further infer that longheads were not exceptional at the time, since the Bible doesn't specifically note that. By analogy, one might note that a woman has real big boobs, but would not specifically note that she is a person with boobs since that is taken as literally unremarkable.
I hope I didn't offend anyone by talking about the Bible and boobs in the same comment.
You know, I've thought along those lines but I've never been able to make a rigorous connection between the longheads and the Nephilim. Consider their typical characteristics:
Longheads: long skulls (obv) and tall but otherwise normal human bodies. Infrequently, the skulls have hair and it appears reddish. Apparently lived freely in community with humans.
Nephilim: giants, six fingers, six toes, double rows of teeth, red hair, often violent and cannibalistic, sometimes lived with humans but more often in separate and often hostile communities.
Not much overlap except for the red hair, which is very intriguing but far from conclusive. In years I've never stumbled across evidence as to what their real relationship might have been.
Also, there's the issue of beauty and it's standards. The Nephilim may have been big and powerful, but I don't think I've ever heard them described as beautiful.
Saul is described as "tov" and "bachur". Translations vary, but in any case I think he is being described as attractive. Well, today as in all times, beauty standards are set by the elites in society. Longheads burials have often indicated they were the elites of the day, so you see how it ties together that Saul had "movie star good looks".
It has to be properly decoded, carefully reverse engineering various corruptions, misunderstanding, rewritings, misperceptions, etc. Virtually no one is up to that task.
Those that aren't, though, are completely unaware of that fact and talk loud and with certainty about the Bible anyway.
Doesn't that at the very least demonstrate that it's not inspired word of a divine being? Or if it is, then that divine being clearly doesn't give a shit about preserving his message through the ages.
Which obviously doesn't mean that everything in the bible is false. I'm sure it contains a wealth of priceless historical knowledge.
But when it starts talking about the supernatural, or when people start citing it as a default authority on truth, that's where you lose me.
Oh, I don't at all think it's the inspired word of a divine being.
Nor is it what we might consider the opposite: pure fiction. It's filled with details and holes and bizarre oddities that no one writing a fairy story would ever include. Open it up to a random place, read a few sentences, and ask yourself why the proposed "fiction author" would have put those there.
The Bible--and many other such ancient works--are what they appear to be on the surface: collections of writings considered important enough to be passed down over centuries and millennia.
However, it all comes with the world's biggest asterisk. The narratives were subjected to all manner of forces which would distort them, and it is incredibly difficult to undo that distortion and reveal the information contained and transmitted down to us.
But when you do, I think of this analogy: On one side of town you find a complicated key, and on the other side of town you find a fancy box with an elaborate lock. You find that the key opens the lock. What kind of person says, "Well, this is mere happenstance," and throws away the key and the box without examining it's contents?
King Saul was one of these "longheads".
They try to disguise it with mistranslations as being "head and shoulders taller", but in earlier translations and tracing back to the original Hebrew we find in 1 Sam 9:
Unless he had a real long neck, he must have had a real long head.
One can further infer that longheads were not exceptional at the time, since the Bible doesn't specifically note that. By analogy, one might note that a woman has real big boobs, but would not specifically note that she is a person with boobs since that is taken as literally unremarkable.
I hope I didn't offend anyone by talking about the Bible and boobs in the same comment.
That suggests that Saul was a Nephilim descendant. It would explain why he went against God so easily and why his bloodline was extinguished. Hmmmmmm
You know, I've thought along those lines but I've never been able to make a rigorous connection between the longheads and the Nephilim. Consider their typical characteristics:
Longheads: long skulls (obv) and tall but otherwise normal human bodies. Infrequently, the skulls have hair and it appears reddish. Apparently lived freely in community with humans.
Nephilim: giants, six fingers, six toes, double rows of teeth, red hair, often violent and cannibalistic, sometimes lived with humans but more often in separate and often hostile communities.
Not much overlap except for the red hair, which is very intriguing but far from conclusive. In years I've never stumbled across evidence as to what their real relationship might have been.
Also, there's the issue of beauty and it's standards. The Nephilim may have been big and powerful, but I don't think I've ever heard them described as beautiful.
Saul is described as "tov" and "bachur". Translations vary, but in any case I think he is being described as attractive. Well, today as in all times, beauty standards are set by the elites in society. Longheads burials have often indicated they were the elites of the day, so you see how it ties together that Saul had "movie star good looks".
In my view, we still have a mystery on our hands.
Mysteries will soon be revealed.
I'm not convinced.
That statement sounds like it could mean different things.
Then there was Pericles, who Plutarch recorded as having an unusually long head.
Have you considered the possibility of ancient scripture simply being inaccurate?
It has to be properly decoded, carefully reverse engineering various corruptions, misunderstanding, rewritings, misperceptions, etc. Virtually no one is up to that task.
Those that aren't, though, are completely unaware of that fact and talk loud and with certainty about the Bible anyway.
Doesn't that at the very least demonstrate that it's not inspired word of a divine being? Or if it is, then that divine being clearly doesn't give a shit about preserving his message through the ages.
Which obviously doesn't mean that everything in the bible is false. I'm sure it contains a wealth of priceless historical knowledge.
But when it starts talking about the supernatural, or when people start citing it as a default authority on truth, that's where you lose me.
Oh, I don't at all think it's the inspired word of a divine being.
Nor is it what we might consider the opposite: pure fiction. It's filled with details and holes and bizarre oddities that no one writing a fairy story would ever include. Open it up to a random place, read a few sentences, and ask yourself why the proposed "fiction author" would have put those there.
The Bible--and many other such ancient works--are what they appear to be on the surface: collections of writings considered important enough to be passed down over centuries and millennia.
However, it all comes with the world's biggest asterisk. The narratives were subjected to all manner of forces which would distort them, and it is incredibly difficult to undo that distortion and reveal the information contained and transmitted down to us.
But when you do, I think of this analogy: On one side of town you find a complicated key, and on the other side of town you find a fancy box with an elaborate lock. You find that the key opens the lock. What kind of person says, "Well, this is mere happenstance," and throws away the key and the box without examining it's contents?