Is There Archeological Evidence for Giants in the Bible?

The Bible talks about giants, but has any archaeological evidence for giants been found? Genesis refers to the Nephilim and their descendants. The books of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles mention other giants, like Goliath, describing their height and the size and weight of their weapons. Does archaeology correlate with these accounts?

Find out in this fascinating 12-minute dive from Expedition Bible.

Editor’s Note: The transcript that follows was automatically generated and lightly edited, so please be aware there could be typos or other small errors. The Stream is working toward a transcription service that does fast, accurate, and reliable work; thank you in advance for your patience!

(00:00) Hello everybody, welcome to Expedition Bible I’m Joel Kramer um today I want to cover a very interesting subject the Bible talks about Giants and the descendants of giants having lived in the Biblical land in ancient times and so is there anything that’s been found in the archaeological record that provides evidence for these historical Giants in this video we’re going to look at a discovery that was made in Israel of a horde of giant metal weapons this huge spearhead that is 66 cm long was found right here where I’m

(00:51) standing so in this aerial footage you see in the background the Mediterranean Sea you see the town of Kfar Monash and then you see the agricultural field where in 1962 this horde of giant metal weapons was discovered okay I am in the field near the Monsha, Kfar Monash and right here is where the um report that came out in 1963 says that um the the hoard of metal objects including tools and weapons and including these four massive spearheads heads according to that report they give a map there and this

(01:35) is the exact location of where that horde was found all the way back in 1962 um a local farmer was expanding his F field he was plowing new ground and exposed all these metal objects Scholars debate about when these four spearheads date to um you’ll see dates for them anywhere from about 4,300 years ago to 5,000 years ago or even older several of the tools and weapons from this discovery are currently on display in the Israel Museum so I’m here in the Israel Museum and just up here is the horde of tools and weapons made of

(02:20) copper that were found at Monash and here we have the most impressive part of this collection which are these four giant spearheads the largest one there upside down this is the largest spearhead ever found in the land of the Bible of course it’s back behind me in the display so it doesn’t look so impressive so what I’ll do is cut the size of it out of cardboard just to give you an understanding of how huge it actually is in 1963 after the study of this hoard of weapons that were found in Monash the official Journal

(02:58) article came out um describing this and so in this journal article they give the drawings of the four spearheads that were found and then they give their Dimensions so what I did is I just took those dimensions and a piece of cardboard and cut out those Dimensions because um when they’re back in a case and back behind me when I’m talking in the Israel Museum you you they look very small and so this will give you a better perspective of just how big they are this is the small of the four spearheads found at Monash.

(03:34) it’s 13 in long and so it it is considered in the journal article as a huge spearhead and so I went around the Israel Museum comparing the size of the smallest spearhead to the other spearheads that were displayed elsewhere and many of the other spearheads were about this much smaller than this one quite a bit smaller here is on display um more spearheads from the Bronze Age these are typical spearheads you know they look maybe 6 in Long 7 8 in Long at the most and so this already is considered a huge spearhead two more

(04:16) spearheads that are are within a half inch of each other were also found and you can see the difference in size however the largest spearhead that was found in The Monash Hoard is this one now again I just took the length of it from the drawing 66 cm that’s 26 in and you just see how massive this spearhead is there is another spearhead that’s only six cm smaller than this one that was found at Tel Megiddo so these aren’t the only giant spearheads that have been found but this is the largest one that’s been found in the

(04:55) land of the Bible and it’s just absolutely massive so when you’re looking at this horde of spearheads then you start to realize what they’re writing  in this article and how true it is like for example um the authors of the article say of these spearheads that they’re the most remarkable group among the monash fines and they describe them as massive because that’s what they are, we have a parallel of these spearheads in the biblical text if we go to 2 Samuel 21: 16 we’re introduced to this Warrior

(05:39) and we’re given his name his name is Ish Bob and then he’s described specifically as one of the descendants of the Giants whose spear weighed 300 shekels of bronze isn’t that interesting we’re not given his size and his weight but we’re given the weight of his Spear and it’s talking about his entire spear now if we take this the largest of the spear heads at monash this spearhead alone just the head is 5 pound but when it says 7 pound in the Bible it’s talking about also the entire spear so you got to put the shaft on this imagine how big

(06:22) that shaft that pole must have been on a spear this big it would have been much taller than a man it would have weighed at least 2 pounds it would have weighed probably much more than that this is probably a bigger spear a heavier spear than the one that’s described in 2 Samuel 21:16 in this article is the authors write this the spearheads bear signs of use especially the heaviest which is bent in one spot and worn in several places along the edges okay so they’re saying that that these Spears bear the evidence that they were

(07:03) used as Spears despite them writing this a little later in the article they say they write this Spears were used in war and fighting in the case of the Monash spears however their unusual size and weight would appear to be an obstacle rather than an aid to anyone carrying them we would like to suggest that these heavy Spears may have been used in yet another way way and so they go on to suggest that these were decorative in nature they were used as decorations now why because well because they’re too big

(07:41) to have been used by a normal-sized warrior okay now you have to keep in mind that um most Scholars are secular including the authors of this article they don’t believe in Giants they don’t believe that giants existed and that they’re historical and therefore they have to give another explanation for why these massive spearheads were found and so they must be decorative keep in mind that earlier they had said and especially the biggest one had evidence for being used as a spearhead this interpretation has to do with worldview

(08:21) if you believe Giants are fairy tale beings then you’re not going to interpret this as evidence of giant because you don’t believe in them um however for those of us who do believe in the Bible and its historicity then we know that giants existed in the ancient past and when we find giant weapons then we using the Bible we would interpret them certainly I would to be evidence for what the Bible is describing in these descendants of giants now also in the article that’s very interesting

(08:57) is this the authors wrote a remarkable feature of the Monash hoard were the small thin ridged copper plates of which about 800 were found we suggest that these plates are scales of armor this also has a parallel in the Bible if we just flip back from 2 Samuel to 1 Samuel chapter 17 then we have the account of Goliath the most famous of all the biblical Giants in verse four of 1st Samuel 17 we are introduced to Goliath of Gath in verse five it says what that Goliath of Gath was armed with a coat of male and that the weight of

(09:45) the coat was 5,000 shekels of bronze this is about 125 pounds so we have archaeologically found at Monash this pile of 800 scales of body armor and then we have body armor of a giant described in the biblical text now very interestingly the authors go on in the article to say this the only parallel for the Monash scales was found at Tel Gath where identical copper scales also forming a package were uncovered in the area of the city wall isn’t that amazing the only other place that body armor like the body armor found at Monash has

(10:25) been found is tell Gath the home town of Goliath who is the giant in the Bible whose body armor is described for us and we’re given its weight. The interpretation of the authors of the article are very similar with the body armor as with the spearheads they say this they say the great number of scales found would point to several coats of male being hidden in The Monash Horde what they’re saying is it looks like this is one coat of armor but it’s way too many scales to be just one coat of armor

(11:03) therefore there must be several different coats hidden within this pile of 800 scales now that’s one interpretation if you don’t believe in Giants however if you do believe in historical Giants  because they’re described in the Bible then this could be the coat of armor for a single individual who of course would be a giant or a descendant of the Giants so in conclusion here are the facts we have archaeological Discovery at Monash of these massive metal spearheads and body armor we have

(11:42) a parallel of the huge spearhead found also at Tel Megiddo we also have a parallel of the body armor found at Monash found at Tel Gath we have a match. That’s why I interpret this as evidence for biblical Giants because what’s been found in the ground is comparable to what’s described in the Bible as the weapons of these descendants of giants of course  a secular archaeologist a secular interpretation is going to not consider this evidence for Giants and so in their case they interpreted as must there must be several coats of armor

(12:25) amongst these 800 scales and these giant spearheads must be decorative you can make up your own mind you can weigh the evidence yourself as for me I see this as a correlation between the biblical text and what was found in the ground and I believe that this is evidence to support the existence of these biblical Giants [Music]