Yes, some translations mention that, but some also simply say he was taller/larger in stature than his countrymen, so I have taken the more conservative description based on him giving David his personal armor. There would be no reason to do that if Saul dwarfed David.

Right on, that's chapter 6, then in the next chapter the flood kills everything not on the ark.

Unless there is an exegetical model that puts 6:4 post flood, which I'd love to hear about.

Yeah, the note in my CSB on 1 Sam 9:2 say: Lit From his shoulder and up higher than any of the people

Nature of the fight?
1 Samuel 17:8-10.  If anyone in the Israeli army fought him and won, the Phillistines would be owned by the Israelis, and if he lost, vice-versa. None of the adult soldiers took up his challenge.

How big was David
1 Samuel 17:33. David's height is not recorded, but he was a youth. 
1 Samuel 17:42. And Goliath was taller than David such that Goliath viewed him as a boy.

The thing that makes this story is that David's faith was in God and he had nothing to fear. He was naive and really could have been easily killed. What if the rock missed, or hit his arm? Or what if Goliath was able to attack and strike David? What makes this story interesting is that Goliath wore a brass helmet, so how could a rock go through the helmet and sink into his forehead,  1 Samuel 17:49? Was he not wearing his helmet that day? And if he wasn't wearing his helmet, a rock would probably have bounced off his forehead even if the rock hit Goliath's forehead directly. It was the supernatural power of God behind the rock that took down Goliath. Is that my opinion? Yes.








There are atheist who do not believe in God or the validity of the Bible. For those who are believers, the Bible self-promotes itself as inspired by God. 2 Timothy 3:16. 
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

Thanks for reading and posting in a thread you don't care about.

Thanks,

Nick

I hear this a lot, and I have to say it sounds very silly to me.

In my personal experience with slings, I was younger than David, though probably not as strong.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to master the sling.

If I had ever hit a man  in the forehead, he would indeed have been stunned or dazed.  (Probably dead, or at least with a fractured skull).

Even with a bronze helmet, I believe this would have been the case.  Those stones can fly with a great deal of authority.  Ancient observers wrote of slingers who could damage or kill through armor, though this was probably done with lead pellets, not stones.

I was 12 years old at that time.  Presumably David was older, and stronger than I was.  Certainly, he was better with a sling.  The sling part of the story requires no divine intervention.  Not saying that it didn't occur, just that it wasn't necessary.

A stone slung by a competent slinger would easily have the effect described.  Goliath could have been perfectly healthy, and the results would have been the same.  Try a sling some time, and you will see how powerful they really are.

Maybe modern people are thinking of a child's slingshot when they hear the word sling.  Slings are not toys, the description of David's use of a sling does not seem unusual to me at all.

Well, I was going to reply to him, but you seem to have taken care of that.

Here's a roughly 4oz river rock vs 1/2" plywood.



I do believe that God prepared David for this particular moment, and guided his aim.

But don't underestimate what a sling can do.

That video is a good demonstration of the power of a sling.

David's sling may have been even more powerful.  Sir Richard Burton, (the Victorian era explorer, not the XX century actor), once theorized that David may have used a staff sling.

I always meant to get around to making and trying one of those, also.  Seems like priorities change with age, however.

Probably just as well, my arm is sore now just from thinking about slinging.

That was a truly stupid response.  Come on,  try again.  This time don't make up things others didn't say.

Back in the day, people were tiny. 

Goliath was your average sized, well built arfcommer. 

Probably 6'4, able to bench 315 for reps, had tons of shmeckles, a nice sword collection and a hot philistine girlfriend. 

There was a show on history channel few years ago, cant remember wich one. They had an athelete familiar with the slingshot david used. They set a fair distance and had him throw at a target with a meter on it. It took him a few tries but he finally hit it square on, and the meter read well enough energy to crush a thick forehead.

I believe O_P and other's got a talking to for pretty much not agreeing that Catholics would go to heaven ("unless they got reborn") (with the olive branch being extended that Catholics would agree that Protestants would go to heaven).

#religion

That's what really got Goliath.  Squatdog is ancient, like a vampire. 

Have you see how modern people act to minor flooding?  People are stupid.

When do we get to discuss talking snakes?

and here we see the first known "dab", which still curses society to this day

Found the vid, its from history channels "lost science of the bible" documentry.

Its 15min total but the david and golith part is the first 5min. A professional slinger demonstrates the skill and science behind the kill shot david made.

I don't believe the serpent became a snake until God told him. Genesis 3:14. And it was satan incarnate, so he could probably take whatever form he wanted.

"That is impossible in the Religion Forum, as the Truth of Jesus' Gospel cannot be posted there." - O_P

After the rib-women.

Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Light. No one comes to the Father but by Me."

If you have a forum that frowns on that, then no, you can't post the Truth.

Do we really?  The length of a cubit was the distance from the tip of the finger, to the point of the elbow.  Who measured Goliath?  David or Goliath would have very different sized cubits.

I don't know about "great."

The overall point is good, but...

About 8:00 and on, he describes the sling and missile as weapons.  He says 35m/sec as a speed, which is about 115FPS.  That's about 78MPH, which is absolutely not faster than "any baseball thrown by even the finest of pitchers."  78MPH fastballs aren't even competitive in the minors.

Then he says the "stopping power" (we'll excuse that one) is the same as a "forty-five millimeter bullet" (okay, fine, I guess we'll excuse that, too).

A 45ACP slinging 230gr at 850FPS is right around 400ftlb energy.

Barium sulfate has a density of 4.5 g/cm^3.
If the velocity of David's rock is 115FPS, and energy is 400ftlb, that's a projectile weight of 1.4 pounds.  At 4.5g/cm^3, that's a rock about the size of one of those miniature soda cans.  Baseball-ish.

You could sling a rock that large, but it wouldn't be a commonly selected projectile for a slinger.  The low velocity and high diameter/drag means range is greatly compromised.

The speaker's later claim of slingers being able to throw a stone 200yd or more...  yes... but not *that* stone, and not at 35m/sec.  Maximum range from a ~35* launch angle, considering some basic air drag calcs, is going to be 50-70 meters.  A straight-on shot with minimal arc (such that it could be reliably aimed at something the size of a head) is going to have a flight distance of closer to 20-30 meters.  

That gives Goliath a get-out-of-the-way time of less than a second time-in-flight, but that's not the whole story there.  If Goliath saw David wind up (and the body mechanics to launch a sling bullet are really obvious when it's going to happen), he could have shaved his reaction time down quite a bit.  Normal human reaction time is something like 3/4 of a second to an unexpected event, but to something that is well-anticipated (e.g. a baseball pitch), you can drop reaction time (really, adjustment time, since you're beginning your swing as the ball is still being thrown) to something like a third of a second.

I've played a lot of paintball.  They fire at 300FPS, they're much smaller than a fist, the gun doesn't telegraph to you when it's about to fire (although the gas puff is fairly obvious when it does), and it's very possible to dodge them by pulling your head back into cover, even from 20-30 meters away.  You gotta be quick, but you can do it.  You do have a natural bonus to it, though, as ducking from objects flying at your face is surprisingly instinctive.  

115FPS?  That's obvious it's coming your way?  A normal person can duck the shit out of that, easily.  That's really slow.

Granted, David in a tunic and sandals could probably outrun Goliath in full armor, giving him some time for a reload, but still.  By the story, he only needed the one shot.


Which is why I say the overall point is alright, because he concludes that Goliath must have been practically blind.  There's absolutely no way that anybody who could see a baseball sized rock at 20 meters could get hit in the face by it.

Personally, though, I'd suspect that David would have selected somewhat smaller (and therefore, faster) rocks.  Half to 3/4 of a pound, maybe something like that, just because 1.4lb of rock is super difficult to get any ass behind it.

I absolutely do believe that a .5-.75 pound rock at 150FPS or so will knock you the fuck out.  Kill outright?  I mean, you're gonna have a bad day, but probably that's not a lethal blow by itself.  Hence the sword-chop and all.


But for the David and Goliath story to be true on its face, it had to have been a truly remarkable series of events.  You've got a one-in-a-billion giant, with just enough vision to be useful in combat but without the acuity to see a rock coming towards his face (making him even more rare), combined with just the right time and place (perhaps with the sun at David's back, if the attack occurred in the morning, and maybe a slight elevation advantage as well), at just the right range, with just the right timing, and of course David still had to hit his shot, which carries a relatively large percentage of error, even with a lot of experience.  And, even if he hits his shot, Goliath is still wearing a helmet (and with that, a cushioned liner), and all he's got to do is turn his head slightly, dip his chin, anything, and the shot doesn't knock him out even if it connects.

David is the underdog because the odds of the story being true as they are printed are super duper low.  One shot knock out, as it's described?  Goliath has to stand there and not see it coming, and David has to loose that shot perfectly.


Sure, sure, anything is possible with God.  I understand that's the point of the story.

But, if something like that really happened, then it would have been such an exemplary, unlikely sequence of events that people WOULD have talked about it for ages.

No...that won't work; there are minimal details between day 1 creation and when man/Adam appeared on the scene.  Best you could do is try to extrapolate how long homosapiens(?) has been around.

Actually, old testament is far more history than "mythology", entire sections read more like history books than religious treatise.  But you's actually need to read it to realize that...

Tom Cruise would have been a pretty tall guy a couple of thousand years ago.  The average male was what, around 5' 4" - 5' 6"?  

I think Cruise if 5' 9".

Correction: There is no  "accepted biblical scholars" 6000 year old earth, anyone claiming that is neither accepted, nor scholarly.

FTI, it doesn't say specifically.  The 6000 years BS was the result of a monk who tried to add up all the events in the bible and extrapolate a figure.

Spitballing before I google-fu but wasn't a cubit the length of the average man's forearm?

ETA: Cubit = The tip of the middle finger to the end of the elbow. A lot of variations from region to region and time periods but it seems the typical cubit was about 18" with a "long cubit" measuring about 21".

I say you put the actor that plays the Mountain against say me as a teenager (120lbs soaking wet) and you got it pretty close.

Doesn't the bible also talk about a race of giants?

Ok, lets start with Genesis. You're saying it's more like a history book than a book of mythology?

The entire creation story is absurd. You need new history books.

Even if David was 6' tall, which he likely wasn't.

I wouldn't want to tango hand to hand with a 9' tall, mountain of a man with 125lb armor and a giant weapon.

Goliath probably had some nephilim origins  , he was from Gath, which happened to be one of the three places where Anakim remained,  it is possible that Goliath was a descendant of the Anakim the Bible says were nephilim giants (Numbers 13:33) who mixed with the Philistine population in that area.


Of course " modern science" loves to discount and cover up all evidence of giants. This would hurt their precious theory of evolution. Many specimens of giant human bones have been donated to the Smithsonian, only to be "stored away" and never seen again. I recall reading about the giants of western Nevada , Lovelock Cave excavation. Those huge bones were given to the Smithsonian never to be displayed.   One thing consistent with many of these Giant skeleton skulls is that they all seem to have 2 rows of teeth.

The earth is very old. The story of adam/eve to now about 6k years though.

Excellent post, bud.

Your mention of the time of day and placement of the sun is keen insight. I would think that both combatants would be cognizant of that matter, but Goliath may have figured "who cares, I got this" and given up that tactical advantage.

It's probably accurate that Goliath's eyesight wasn't that great, too. I'm not saying he would have been nearly blind (what army would want to hitch their horse to a blind soldier, albeit a 10' tall one), but it's entirely possible or probable that his eyes suffered from his condition. That would explain what the bible says about him.

Lastly, about the shot from David, we know that Goliath and the Philistines taunted the Israelites for over a month, and I'm sure everybody in the neighborhood knew about what was going on. David surely heard about Goliath and how the Israelites were terrified of him. But he had plenty of time to practice and hone his skill with the sling. By the time he went out to meet Goliath, I'm sure he was supremely confident in his ability to hit his target. Having said that, remember he had five stones in his pouch, "just in case."

Wars have been fought over less.

So water covered the earth up. To 29k feet and Noah his family, animals and dinosaurs didn't freeze to death or die of hypoxia

David missed with his sling and stone.  In reality, Goliath was hit by a .30 cal bullet fired from an Izzy FAL with silencer, fired by Benjamin Netanyahu from 400m away in his hide site in a hillside.  Netanyahu got there and back via the Ark of the Covenant which is actually a time machine, kinda like a Hebrew TARDIS.  The Reptoids told me this when I visited their secret lair underneath the new Denver International Airport.

 Hey, it's not the most outlandish thing posted in this thread!

What would adding a miraculous amount of water to the earth's surface do to the atmosphere? Beats me.

My beef was with the faulty 45 feet above sea level number that came out of nowhere.