Posted on 07/08/2011 5:19:43 AM PDT by SJackson
TEL EL-SAFI, Israel At the remains of an ancient metropolis in southern Israel, archaeologists are piecing together the history of a people remembered chiefly as the bad guys of the Hebrew Bible.
The city of Gath, where the annual digging season began this week, is helping scholars paint a more nuanced portrait of the Philistines, who appear in the biblical story as the perennial enemies of the Israelites.
Close to three millennia ago, Gath was on the frontier between the Philistines, who occupied the Mediterranean coastal plain, and the Israelites, who controlled the inland hills. The city's most famous resident, according to the Book of Samuel, was Goliath - the giant warrior improbably felled by the young shepherd David and his sling.
The Philistines "are the ultimate other, almost, in the biblical story," said Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, the archaeologist in charge of the excavation.
(Excerpt) Read more at charlotteobserver.com ...
None of the sorry attempts you used convey the idea that the author was trying to convey, which is that the felling of a giant by a boy with a sling and a stone is something extraordinary.
That is why the story made it into the Bible in the first place. It is used to illustrate, that with Gods help, extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people.
You may wish to deny the extraordinary power of God by trying to change the meaning, but that’s what still taught in Sunday Schools all over the world. And the story of David and Goliath is used to illustrate the same.
later read
> You may wish to deny the extraordinary power of God by
> trying to change the meaning, but that’s what still
> taught in Sunday Schools all over the world. And the
> story of David and Goliath is used to illustrate the same.
We must not be speaking the same language.
Agreed. We need wholesale replacements in journalism as well as lawmaking.
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