Slaying A Biblical Archetype

This chapter discusses how Tom Gauld’sGoliath places the reader in the position of a hapless Philistine in a visually and textually poetic rendering of 1 Samuel that ultimately challenges the mythic portentousness of all messianic/nationalist narratives. Goliath’s two-color panels counter the traditional ways that the story has been construed in Gauld’s appealing portrait of a gentle giant who is entirely content to spend his days poring over official paperwork. Gauld’s disruptive text may be usefully considered alongside new scholarly interventions that assess the inconvenient material and historical realities that may be lurking just beneath the biblical text. Goliath reveals how ancient scripts of violence are encoded in the mythic conflicts of a tiny homeland, and expresses a growing artistic movement impatient with the dominance of conventional alliances between political hegemony and the sacred.