This unlocked a memory for me. Back when I was a kid I remember one of the religious whackos told us that the reason the ark of the covenant killed the dude that touched it was because it was a battery. He used the fact that there was no battery technology at the time to support the fact that god is real.
I know it’s off topic, but harnessing energy reminded me.
This would have been a decade before that.
You don’t realize how much batshit stuff you’re told as a kid and I never examined it as an adult. A lot of this shit is coming back to me and I’m realizing just how much of a thing all this crazy shit was even before it became widespread on the internet.
Well now I know where he got the idea, and I doubt he could have remembered the word capacitor. So that became battery in his mind.
It’s possible that the Ark could have generated enough static electricity to give you a shock on the order of rubbing your feet on the carpet and then touching a door knob. Maybe.
The fun part is we don’t have any real evidence outside the Bible that the Ark of the Covenant even existed. Did it exist? Who knows? You can’t really take the Bible’s word for much.
I mean, all the Ark of the Covenant is is a box that holds the “original” (oldest version of the) Torah. So…sure, it existed. If I write a novel and put it in a cigar box and say it’s super special and has magical powers, the box and the book exist while the magic powers probably don’t.
