Slings and Stones

AN ALTERNATIVE THEORY to the epic battle of David and Goliath has brilliant proposer covered in praise and laurels. Eventually.

People seem to enjoy easter eggs hidden in the JIG BS strips, so when I do get the chance I try and sneak a few in. This doesn't work with every strip and I don't try and force the concept, but every now and then a cartoon arrives that works really well.

Point in case is last Thursday's strip, a play on the classic tale of David and Goliath. There are numerous things hidden, most of them obvious and almost all a bit absurd. To set the scene, this is the legendary battle between David, who was at that point still a goat herder or something. As the tale goes, he was bringing food to his brothers, who were in Solomon's army and about to face the Philistines. When the Philistines called for the Israelites to send forth a champion, apparently nobody was willing to step up. So David got into the fray, knocked the giant Goliath down with a sling and proceeded to decapitate the dazed warrior.

Now, with that history lesson in mind, you might notice two things in the picture: specifically the helmets on the Philistine side (one on the crowd and one on the ground near David). Both are Greek, which is something I could not resist doing. There is a lot of evidence that suggests the Philistines were actually a Greek tribe that moved Southwards to escape the Spartans (or the Cretes; my knowledge of the ancient Greeks is undeniably poor). Contrary to the rosy image painted in the movie 300, the Spartans were quite adept at enslaving other nations and making them do the dirty work, like farming and such (The people of Crete were perhaps a bit nicer - they only demanded tributes from their unconquered nations under threat of military action). The Philistines encountered the nations of the near East and probably quickly proved a superior force. Not to diss their opponents, but Goliath's kin had bronze age weapons technology and military manoeuvres that made them very dangerous.

The Greeks have obviously had this problem for a while and one supposes this is the reason why they called out champions. What happened between David and Goliath is a classic Greek battle - if you saw Troy you'd have seen Achilles in a similar situation. I'm sketchy on how often this was done, but it's likely that Solomon had quite a force with him and the Greeks, though assured of victory, were not willing to suffer a Phyrric one. 

It just fascinates me - this ancient Biblical story, one that tied Israel's greatest ancient king to his destiny, can be related to political and social upheavals in the ancient Greek world. One wonders: what if the Spartans never got uppity with their neighbours? Would David have ever become king? Would Solomon's rule have lasted longer? There is a similar tangent between history and a biblical tale: Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph, went to Bethlehem as part of a Roman census, ordered by the new Emperor, Augustus. Augustus was not only the first Emperor of Rome, he was also Octavian, the nephew of Julius Ceasar, who nullified the Republic and became dictator for life after defeating Brutus, Cleopatra and Anthony in the brutal civil war that followed Ceasar's assassination. Other people don't seem to care when I point this out, but it still makes me slightly giddy...

Onto the hidden stuff. In the back crowd you can see all kinds of decorations: a rocket, Star of David, sock, chequered flag and a net. My signature is back there as well, purely because I couldn't find space for it in the usual bottom-right corner. In the front crowd: on the left, by Goliath's elbow, is a guy in a hockey goalie mask. The crowd on the right: a cap with beer/soda cans in it, a wizard's hat and next to that a poor rendition of Asterix's helmet, from the Asterix & Obelix comics. This is totally and entirely out of place, as this battle would have taken place long before Asterix canon, but I couldn't resist. Also, he and Obelix did visit Palastine in the book Black Gold.