He was tall and maybe he didn’t see so well even WebMD wouldn’t be so bold as to diagnose with no more than that. Moreover, Goliath presents with only two of many symptoms associated with the condition. The hormone tests and magnetic resonance imaging usually used to diagnose the condition are, of course, impossible to perform. No modern doctor would be content to rely on the scraps of information that pass for evidence here.
Dictionaries of ancient Judaism, biblical commentaries and medical handbooks alike use Goliath as an interesting and well-known example of this potent condition.īut even setting aside the problematic assumption that the biblical story preserves a perfect historical record - a problem exemplified by the fact that the earliest version of the story we have actually has Goliath saying “stick,” singular - diagnosing Goliath, and recasting the David and Goliath story, this way is insupportable.
This analysis isn’t original to Gladwell. Gladwell lays out his case in his new book, “David and Goliath.” Acromegaly could account for Goliath’s unusual size, he writes, and the vision problems it can cause could explain a range of details in the Bible: Goliath’s slow movements his request that David come to him rather than the other way around his need for an attendant to walk with him onto the battlefield even the fact that Goliath taunts David by saying, “You come against me with sticks?” in the plural, when, in fact, David is carrying but a single stick. This disorder, identified in the late 19th century, manifests as gigantism, and it may affect vision. But according to Malcolm Gladwell, it was largely because Goliath had a disorder known as acromegaly, a tumor on the pituitary gland. How did David defeat Goliath? According to the Bible, it was because God was on his side.
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