Slingers were a separate set of ranged troops for the roman armies.
I can’t recall precisely where I read it but what made slingers so deadly was their capacity to aim with precision on very small targets, unlike archers that would generally send arrow volleys in almost a suppression fire mode. A slinger could aim for the head, arms, eyes or joints for cripling or even deadly hits.
Slingers often used lead to create “bullets” by just smelting it over a camp fire, making holes on a patch of sand with the tip of a finger, and pouring the molten metal in. A volley of these small, extremely dense but compact and deadly projectiles would wreck havoc on enemy lines or could be used to target commanders to break the chain of command and demoralize troops.
How in the world was a sling more accurate than a bow? You can hit a bullseye with a barebow from 50 yards away. A sling is whirled around your head and then released. I don’t understand how that can be accurate at all, since I’ve never used a sling, but it seems impossible that it would be more accurate than a bow.
A basic sling should be very consistent and simple. Early bows have a lot of advantages but the mechanical complexity makes them less consistent. 50cm of rope is 50cm of rope, it’s gonna throw the same every time as long as you’re practiced. Bows are made of natural wood and fibre with all kinds of tensions and inconsistencies, as well as requiring more work to repeat the same action precisely
You still get two-handed control over the plane the arrow takes (before drift) and it’s easy to dial in angle and draw length. A sling bullet leaves tangent to a circle spinning at considerable speed and distance. The fact anyone can hit anything with a sling is a testament to the human brain’s that-looks-about-right capability to treat tools as extended limbs.
The same for the bow, when considering we only figured the archer’s paradox already in the XX century and demonstrated it when high speed cameras were develope.
A sling shoots forward in a straight line and it only depends on the thrower to give it centripetal force.
Slings are still used today as weapons and effectively. And hunting with one, particularly birds, is an extremely complex exercise.
On a related note, I once read a nice DnD-esque summary of why Jesus was a Lich - that would fit right into this collection. (not my own pic or theory, just something I stole from imgur … still sorry for the missing pixels)
I always understood it to be that things exist to be fruitful and multiply. In a sense, a person who does not love, who doesn’t multiply goodness in the world as Jesus modeled, was like the fig tree. Such things could be thought of as cursed, withered and twisted versions of what they could and should be.
So it could be explained that Jesus is a carpenter but not a gardener, and a gardener just look at Jesus and wondering why the heck an adult would curse a fig tree.
Pretty much, only detail missing is that it was the season for fruit. So, there is an added sense that by all natural laws the tree should have had fruit and it’s lack was a particular aberration to a societythat used the fig so much.
Also, thematically, it rounds out God’s domains. Up to this point, there had been miracles showing dominion over weather, matter, human life, animal life, spirits, disease and now there’s plant life.
Except that the gospel of Mark specifically states that it wasn’t fig season. Why did Jesus even look for the figs when he should have known they were out of season. Why then curse the tree when it was just doing what fig trees are supposed to do? Guess Jesus can be an ass when he’s hangry.
Possibly an extremely contemporary metaphor, where the first-century audience was expected to recognize it as reference to a specific authority figure.
The understanding I’ve generally heard, and which seems supported by the context, is that the fig tree symbolises the unfruitfulness of God’s people. This is particularly apparent in that both Matthew and Mark record it as happening alongside Jesus casting out people trading in the temple (Luke records the cleansing of the temple but not the fig tree thing). It is then followed by Jesus telling a series of parables against the religious leaders. There may also be a relation to the parable of the barren fig tree earlier on in Luke 13.
Soloman is friends with some guy who had half his pay stolen by a demon and it keeps sucking his thumb. So Soloman is given a ring with a pentagram on it by Michael that can command demons. He commands thumb sucking demon to get Beelzebub and Solomon enslaves him. Now Solomon controls all demons and uses them to build a temple.
Got that from the wiki page for Testament of Solomon, there’s more to it if you’re interested.
I recently learned that most of the aps people use for lemmy don’t do formatting correctly. The thesewords look like they have a strike through on whichever ap you are using, let the developer know that ~word~ should be subscript, and that ~~word~~ is strike through.
DM: After dinner, a group of thugs approach the house and knock on the door. They want to give you a “proper welcome”
Levite: The fuck…
DM: They really fancied your ass.
Levite, getting up to leave the session: You know what? Fuck you. But fuck the guest’s daughter first, then the concubine, then you can go fuck yourself, too, you sick fuck, I’m out.
Judges 19, for anyone curious. Shit gets real dark.
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