So anywhere up to 10 kilometres, further against aircraft?
If they just have to avoid looking at it, all you need to do is build a box around it with an open front. Presto! People in front of your death ray get melted, people behind are fine.
How will they observe this fact? And even if they do, fighting against an enemy that is effectively blind is still a massive advantage.
I love that story - the follow-up is just as wierd: as a peace-offering, the Philistines make golden statuettes of their hemorrhoids (and mice), one golden hemorrhoid per philistine city, one golden mouse per lord, and return these, with the Ark.
It doesn’t say what happened to the golden hemorrhoids. Gives me an idea for the next Indy movie: “Raiders of the Lost Hemorrhoids”.
Oh well, can’t be worse than that Crystal Skull thing. 
The precise moment this thread can veer off deeply into G.D. territory.
IMHO, the power of the Ark, an Ark, is without. Not within. It’s not a bomb or wickedly powerful device. Think about the construct of the last sequence with Indy, Marion, the Nazis and so on on the mountain.
A wisp flies out and becomes- to the eye of the beholder- first beautiful then deadly.
For those who believe in this kind of God, the power is without not within something as limiting as a stone box carried on the shoulder.
For those who don’t believe, or can see the yarn as just a yarn, it was an “Amplifier for talking to God”. A nuclear waste dump isn’t necessary. Just keeping it quietly tucked away was the only good idea… and that’s what Spielberg did.
Also, of course, it was a lovely nod to Citizen Kane’s final shot.
Calm down, guys. King James screwed many things up.
“In the Hebrew text of this passage the Qere substitutes for it the word techorim, a term which occurs in the next chapter in the description of the golden models of these swellings that were made as votive offerings (1 Sam 6:11-17). The swellings were symptoms of a plague, and the history is precisely that of the outbreak of an epidemic of bubonic plague. The older writers supposed by comparison of the account in 1 Sam with Ps 78:66 that they were hemorrhoids (or piles), and the older English term in the King James Version is a 16th-century form of that Greek word, which occurs in several medical treatises of the 16th and 17th centuries. There is, however, no evidence that this identification is correct. In the light of the modern research which has proved that the rat-flea (Pulex cheopis) is the most active agent in conveying the virus of plague to the human subject, it is worthy of note that the plague of tumors was accompanied by an invasion of mice (`akhbor) or rats. The rat is not specifically mentioned in the Bible, although it was as common in Canaan and Israelite times as it is today, a fact demonstrated by the frequency with which their bones occur in all strata of the old Palestinian cities, so it is probable that the term used was a generic one for both rodents.”
nm
Meh. It is certainly possible, but this reading makes the Biblical sound more like a history-book concerning an actual event (for which we have little evidence).
What this commentator is missing, perhaps because he or she is looking at this as if it were an actual historical event rather than mythology, is the essential perjorative intent of the passage. The whole point of the story is that the Philistines - enemies of the writers of the Bible - were forced to make models of their swellings and of mice, each of which was in fact “named” for a Philistine city (for the swellings) or lord (mice).
The point is that the Philistines were, according to the myth, overrun with death, filth (“mice”) and disease (“tumors” or “hemorrhoids”). We today know that rats in fact help breed deadly disease such as plague, so it is of course tempting to equate these and assume the Philistines were striken with Plague and that the “tumors” in question were really Plague bulboes. This may “work” if the Bible were recounting (perhaps mythologized) history … a dubious assumption in this context.
But the ancient Israelites had in mind comparing the Philistines, at least symbolically, to filth and disease, by having god force them to make models of these things.
In short, they were forced (by God) to make models mocking and humiliating them. For that purpose, a golden hemorrhoid “works” as well as any tumor or bulboe- it is, in effect, symbolically comparing philistine cities to hemorrhoids, and their nobles to mice.
Meh.
The Commander in Chief can control his nukes. He can’t control of God.
If the stories about what happened to the Nazi’s on that Greek island are believed, then they are truly eff’in with something beyond their current understanding or control.
I think you come to a neat answer if you combine these thoughts. Imagine you are, say, Nixon. You know you’ve done and plan to do some pretty dark things. Would you actually want your country to have a weapon that is semi-autonomous and attacks sinners? Only the insanely self righteous would fail to realise the weapon may turn on them.
I think your priest was right about the Ark, but wrong about the movie - and for the same reason that the schemes put forward here for using the Ark safely wouldn’t work. The Ark isn’t a mechanical device, where you manipulate it in fashion X, and reliably receive result Y. Rather, the Ark is a vehicle for the will of God. Trying to “game” it to get a result you want (by having blind people open it for you, or kicking it out of an airplane over Berlin, or what have you) isn’t going to work, unless God decides he’s okay with you using the Ark. Biblically speaking, God is very, very particular about who is and is not allowed to use the Ark. And the “is not” group is pretty much “everyone on the planet who’s not a Jewish priest.” Jewish priests being in pretty short supply in 20th century, the US government trying to trick the Ark into killing its enemies for us is probably going to land us in a world of hurting, even if we operate from the assumption that God favors the Allies more than the Nazis.
To be clear, I’m one of the few who said it shouldn’t have been locked up, but I think it should only have been studied. Any attempt to use it would be hubris of the highest order, and would suffer the same fate as all hubris.
Maybe I’m too optimistic. Maybe it’s just not consistent with human nature for the thing to be known, without everyone trying to use it.
How could you study the Ark without opening it?
Sure, you could X-Ray it or run some other tests like that, but eventually you’d exhaust all those options as well.
Plus, who’s to say you’ll get the same or correct results with the tests? The Ark is a transmitter to God, could run carbon dating on it and the results would say that it’s an apple.
If you can’t figure out a way to safely open it, to the satisfaction of the people who’d be doing the opening, then you don’t open it. And “Don’t use it” is not the same thing as “don’t open it”.
And if you did get different or inconsistent results on all the tests, wouldn’t that be a worthwhile thing to know?
The inside of the Ark is like the surface of the Obelisk in “2001”. It is beyond what we can comprehend.
Or, as God said, " I am that which I am."
I like this. G-d looks around and decides that sandstorms don’t really fit in the artistic theme of Washington D.C., but bureaucratic snafus do. Mission accomplished, with a minimum of unesthetic intervention. I can only assume that G-d buried (and then hid in the warehouse) the cosmic telephone line to G-d because quite frankly G-d got sick and tired of hearing what whiny, arrogant, humankind has to say.
No, he wanted the ring to keep others from using it. Gandalf often says that Sauron’s biggest fear is that someone may appear, wielding the Ring to cast Sauron down and replace him.
Dude! I was at that show! Remember when Jerry soloed on “Dark Star”?
Dude! Where were you in this thread? I got my horse shot out from under me for suggesting the exact same thing!