Sola Scriptura

 6 Now when David returned, after he slew the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with timbrels of joy, and cornets.  7 And the women sung as they played, and they said: I Saul slew his thousands, and David his ten thousands.  8 And Saul was exceeding angry, and this word was displeasing in his eyes, and he said: They have given David ten thousands, and to me they have given but a thousand; what can he have more but the kingdom?

1 Samuel 18: 6-8

News that I missed, courtesy of The Babylon Bee:

TUSTIN, CA — A previously lost episode of the beloved children’s classic VeggieTales has surfaced that depicts a young Dave, portrayed by Junior Asparagus, chopping off 200 pickle tips and bringing them to King Saul as tribute.

The lost episode was discovered by Trilogy Animation Group while they were reviewing archival footage as part of their work in developing future VeggieTales content, but the crew now wishes they’d never found it.

“It’s shockingly graphic,” one member of the team said. “Some of the most lifelike animation ever done for the show, certainly, but… yeah, it’s gross.”

The story was an adaptation of 1 Samuel 18, which tells how King Saul charged David to bring him 100 Philistine foreskins as a dowry. The quest was intended to be a suicide mission, with King Saul assuming David would die in the ensuing battle. However, David not only succeeds, he more than doubles the dowry, delivering 200 foreskins. In an attempt to make the story suitable for younger audiences, the creator and former writer of VeggieTales Phil Vischer replaced the foreskins with the more appropriate (and vegetable-themed) pickle tips.

“It didn’t work,” Vischer said, recalling the abandoned episode. “We never aired it because it was just too horrifying.”

The lost episode not only depicted the circumstances of David’s predicament but also his unyielding faith in God as he slashes hundreds of pickle tips.

“We didn’t have Dave actually kill any of the Philistines, but that kind of made it worse,” Vischer reflected. “So much screaming.”

Go here to read the rest.  When my parents gave me a Bible as a Christmas present in 1970, at my request, I began a daily habit of reading a chapter from the Old Testament and a chapter from the New Testament each day.  The New Testament was quite as I expected from listening to readings at Mass.  In the Old Testament I kept encountering readings like the above, which, for good reason, I could not recall hearing at Mass.  Even back then my mind set was that of a  proto-historian and I understood that Judaism had been established, at a high cost in lives, in a world utterly hostile to it, a fallen world indeed.  Read with that understanding the Old Testament became a cohesive whole, paving the way for Christ.  However, certain stories are definitely not for kids!