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 ...
> the giant warrior improbably felled by the young shepherd
> David and his sling.
No bias there.
/sarc
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
..................
GGG Ping!............
“Improbably felled” in this context means he was felled in a manner that was improbable, not that the story is improbable.
A little sensitive for a Friday morning, aren’t we?
I'm not so sure. I had to read that part a couple times. They don't say allegedly felled by, they say improbably felled by.
Think about it, if you were in the Philistine camp and some young punk with a sling persists in mocking and calling out your biggest goon, your going to think the chances of that biggest goon getting killed are "improbable".
> “Improbably felled” in this context means he was felled
> in a manner that was improbable, not that the story is
> improbable.
A distinction without a difference.
> A little sensitive for a Friday morning, aren’t we?
So, there is no anti Judeo-Christian bias in the news. I’m just being “sensitive”, right?
If you read the story carefully, it doesn’t look like the stone, actually killed him. Probably stunned him or momwntarily knocked him out, but it took his beheading to kill him.
The sling was a military weapon that could kill most men, because stones the size of a man’s fist were use and they were thrown in high velocities.
The jawbone of an ass.
OK. You could read it either way: that Goliath was dead when he hit the ground, or that he died when David removed his head. Given the nature of oriental narrative, I submit that you are correct in assuming the latter is more likely.
You are correct. No Bias.
I think your spidey senses are off today.
dey vas Greeks! Hellenes!
Is bias the same thing as not believing something is true?
Yes, you are. Depending on what news one chooses to read, there is lots, little, or none.
bi·as /ˈbaɪəs/
noun, adjective, adverb, verb, bi·ased, bi·as·ing or (especially British) bi·assed, bi·as·sing.
–noun
1. an oblique or diagonal line of direction, especially across a woven fabric.
2. a particular tendency or inclination, especially one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice.
3. Statistics . a systematic as opposed to a random distortion of a statistic as a result of sampling procedure
When I studied journalism, our reports would be marked-down for even the slightest hint of bias.
"Biased reporting" was regarded as a contradiction in terms.
Bias was limited to the editorial page.
That was almost 50 years ago.
Nowadays, "biased reporting" has been transformed from an oxymoron to a redundancy.
You’ll shoot your eye out.
I point that out to my (6th grade) CCD classes when we get to the story of David and Goliath. I’ve never had a kid who has heard it before.
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