"IT AIN'T NECESSARILY SO"

eorge Gershwin wrote the music to the famous English-language opera Porgy and Bess, and his brother Ira Gershwin supplied some of the lyrics, including “It ain't necessarily so,”sung by one of the two villains in the piece, the drug pusher Sportin' Life, as a sort of mock sermon. The words in the song contain some very clever rhymes as well as pointing out a few stories in the Bible that some people have a hard time believing. Selections from the song as well as brief rebuttals to Sportin' Life are given below:

“Li'l David was small but oh my

He fought big Goliath who lay down and dieth.”

There are two basic problems people have with this story, which sounds more like the fairy tale “Jack the Giant Killer” than historical narrative. The first difficulty concerns the enormous, almost supernatural, height of Goliath. The standard Hebrew text of I Samuel 17:4 states that Goliath was 6 cubits and a span high. That translates roughly to 10 ½ ft. tall, depending on the length of a cubit at that time in biblical history. Grogan mentions that ancient bones have been excavated in Palestine with men of that height, and it is not unheard of even in more modern times. Such abnormal growth is almost always due to a medical condition known as acromegaly caused by the body's production of too much growth hormone. Some of the unfortunate side effects of such a disease include weakness, headaches, blurred vision, numbness in the hands, and joint pain. If that is what Goliath was suffering from, then he may have looked impressive to an observer, but he probably would have been a sitting target to someone more nimble and adept at sling throwing such as the young man (not a boy) David.

And there is another possibility. Although the standard Hebrew text says that Goliath was a little over 6 cubits tall, the Dead Sea scroll of I Samuel and the early Greek translation called the Septuagint gives the number as 4+ cubits instead. That would translate to the more common height of about 7 feet. But even if Goliath did not suffer from acromegaly, he would have been heavily weighed down by his armor and present a much slower-moving target than the lions David had killed with the sling while a shepherd.

A final note separating this story from a fairy tale is that David is not so confident that he only takes one stone with him, but brings along four extras in case he misses the first time. That sort of realistic detail would never have been included in a fairy tale.

“Oh Jonah he lived in de whale

For he made his home in dat fish's abdomen.”

The first thing to note here is that even Ira Gershwin hedges his bets in these lyrics by first calling the sea monster a whale and then a fish. A whale is not specified in the biblical text and would have been anatomically unable to swallow a man. By contrast, there have been rare reports of sailors recovered from the stomachs of large fish.

Another possibility that needs to be pointed out is that some Bible scholars believe that Jonah's prayer in Jon. 2 actually depicts his death while in the fish. Thus, it is not necessary to ask how Jonah could have survived for three days under water without any air. The story is miraculous, but the miracle is in Jonah's resuscitation just as Lazarus and others were brought back to life in the NT.

A third possibility that even many evangelical scholars subscribe to is that the story of Jonah was never intended to be taken as an historical narrative at all, but should be read as a satirical parable exposing the attitude of the Jews of the time. As additional evidence of this sort of interpretation are the many miraculous, humorous and ironic touches in the story.

“Li'l Moses was found in a stream

He floated on water 'til ole Pharaoh's daughter

She fished him she says from that stream.”

The innuendo in these lyrics hints that in fact Pharaoh's daughter was treating her father to a “fish story” to cover up the fact that she had just given birth to a child out of wedlock. Of course, there is absolutely no factual evidence for such a supposition. And just consider the improbability of Moses growing up thinking that he was Jewish instead of Egyptian and willing to kill for that belief. And if this was a false belief planted in him by his birth mother and older sister Miriam, why didn't Miriam years later expose Moses as an Egyptian to discredit him? Instead, when she was jealous of his importance, the worst accusation she can bring is that he had married a Cushite.

“Methus'lah lived nine hundred years

But who calls dat livin' when no gal'll give in

To no man what's nine hundred years.”

Although Sportin' Life in these lyrics is not specifically casting doubt on Methuselah's long life, merely on his probable lack of a sex life at that age, it does bring up the sticky question regarding the abnormally long lifetimes of the OT patriarchs.

Some scholars attempt to put things into historical context by pointing to the patriarchs mentioned in pagan sagas from neighboring lands in their writings during the same time period. The numbers there are inflated by several factors of ten compared to the biblical accounts. But that fact alone is usually not that satisfying to a modern audience.

There is a semi-scientific explanation that has great popularity in some apologetic circles. I will offer it here for what it is worth since I am not an expert on the subject so as to judge on its scientific merits. Before the flood, the earth's atmosphere was covered with a thick water vapor layer which shielded the earth from the highly unhealthy effects of cosmic rays that bombard the earth today. Therefore, the pre-flood generations could live much longer lives than we experience at the present time.

Or finally, we must admit that concerning the various ways in which numbers in the Bible are utilized in the Bible, we still have much to learn.

In conclusion, when a skeptic attempts to casts doubt on anything found in the Bible, just remember that “it ain't necessarily so.”