“Easily” and “fucking lethal” are the historic realities.
According to Vegetius, this would be the Baleraic slingers who were trained that way. He advocated for every Roman soldier to be trained in slinging.
Reading it again, David had great skill and has used his sling to that end with a lion and a bear. Lions have about the same resiliency as a man but bears are tanks who can take gunshots and keep on coming. While there is some interpretation is seems to be safe to say that David could use the sling in ways that were highly lethal, and David knew that.
David also was not thinking about Goliath as a warrior, but simply an opponent which gave him an advantage over Saul’s army. He probably saw that he could easily take him out with a shot or two and wondered why everyone was so afraid, which got him admonished (which is part of the biblical story, don’t believe what others say about you or your capability, God has chosen you for this task and has prepared you for it with the skills and this is your time).
This, I believe ties into the relationship David had with God, and also why David was not afraid. David was not listening to the world, but already knew what God has called him to do.
As I now read it, this was not a story of an underdog so much, but God choosing His champion, over who the world (Saul’s army) would have chosen. It’s a story of God stepping in and overruling Saul, and putting His champion in to answer Goliath’s taunt.
Another theory has Goliath suffering from Marfan’s. That can allegedly cause skeletal disorders including thinning of the skull at the forehead leaving him susceptible to a stone slung at his head. Both acromegaly and Marfan’s are very likely to be explanations, wild theories that it is all a myth are clearly infeasible .
As the Wizard of Oz cautioned us all: Do NOT look behind the curtain. That’s cheating.
Okay, but regardless of how he did it, David had to win. If Goliath had won then the story wouldn’t make sense. Since David believed in God he is justly rewarded. If David lost it wouldn’t have even been mentioned in the Old Testament.
I don’t think so. David would have been branded a coward for running away.
No, but he probably get traded.
If it was two kids fighting in a parking lot, maybe. This was a couple armies watching their champions fight. At the very least, David’s army would have been humiliated and, possibly, the Philistine army would have just been “Well, their guy ran away; let’s go kill them now”. In any event, for all we know, Goliath would have had the stamina to run him down, or the armies would have closed up ranks to pen David in or some other turn where running around making Curly/Zoidberg noises ain’t gonna work.
Or would have been a lesson in not having enough faith or somehow disobeying God, etc. Lots of tragic endings in the Bible or examples of hubris gone wrong.
Or (assuming he was real), he was just a big guy (the oldest texts just have him at 6’9, not freakishly huge 9’+), and he went down to slingshot because slings are deadly weapons of war, so no special vulnerabilities needed.
I mean, imagine if someone just picked up a big rock and threw it as hard as they could at you and hit you right in the center of the forehead. You’d be seriously hurt; you’d go down like a sack of potatoes. That sort of thing can kill any person, but at the very least you’d be down for the count. Baseballs that hit people in the head have KILLED them, and a baseball is far less dense.
Well, a stone thrown from a sling is much faster than that. A human, practically speaking, cannot throw a projectile of any sort faster than about 160 km/h and most people can’t throw one anywhere near that fast, but even 160 km/h is terrifyingly dangerous, and a sling in the hands of a highly skilled slinger can push projectiles faster than that. It would be devastating (and at short range, nearly impossible to dodge.) No human who ever lived could take a direct hit to the forehead and not, at best, be very badly hurt.
Sling projectiles usually weighed about 2-3 ounces. If Goliath got hit in the forehead by a 2-ounce stone travelling 160km/h or even faster, he’s going down. He doesn’t need a thin skull, he’s a dead man.
I didn’t invent these theories. I stick by a simpler explanation, it never happened. Was one 6’9" guy supposed to defeat the entire army of the Israelites?
No, the challenge was for the Israelites to chose a champion, and letting that combat decide who is the victor and who will serve who. Battles in such times was an exciting time of adventure of an otherwise dreary life but the men were not exactly keen on actually fighting much, and less keen on dying. Normally the bigger side (more likely to win actual combat) could thus dictate the terms of combat.
Well previously in the Bible one man (Samson) had defeated an army of 1000 using the jaw bone of an ass. So they had to up the game.
Even more evidence it didn’t happen. That is the professional wrestling mode of operation, so if anything like it happened it would have been a ‘work’, IOW faked.
Who knew Hulk Hogan was a Philistine?
Well you have to look at from the guys in the armies perspective, the Philistines didn’t want to die and had this huge guy that they were certain could take on anyone man to man. So why die fighting for the choice of who your master would be or what god you prayed to when you didn’t give a damn about either.
Even if the Philistines won the battle many of them would die and they would take fewer prisoners/slaves, why damage your prize? So why night make a offer to settle everything with a cage fight you were sure you win and let everyone live except David.
So they make a deal to let their respective champions duke it out. What stops the losing side from reneging and going to battle anyway?
The Straight Dope: Has an important battle ever been decided by single combat?
For the Philistines it would be observing the power of David’s god taking out what they perceived to be an invincible man. Being the stronger force they would just retreat from the battlefield, not be enslaved which I don’t believe the Jewish people were ever into (please correct me if I’m wrong). In fact the Philistines continued to battle King Saul later and kill him, leading to David becoming King.
Also, it’s a bible story meant to teach a lesson.
Thanks but I’ve already heard the spin from the Israeli side. Did the Philistines ever say?