India, Aug. 24 -- In the Biblical classical underdog story of David and Goliath in the first Book of Samuel, chapter 17, the diminutive young shepherd David faces the nine-foot-tall, bronze-armoured Goliath, the head of the Philistine army. With a slingshot, David fells Goliath. A great feat for a shepherd boy.

The story is evidently meant to show that the wandering Israelites defeated the Philistines and occupied their territory as if it were the will of their God against alien people. The Philistines were a people of Aegean origin who settled on the southwestern coast of Canaan (present-day Israel and the Gaza Strip).

Thus, as if favoured by their ancestral God, the Israelites made forays into alien territories flowing with milk and ...