Post on 29-Mar-2023
FULLER SEMINARY
RESEARCH PAPER: SAMSON AS ISRAELITE FOLKTALE
SUBMITTED TO DR. HAYSIN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
OT881 THE HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT ISRAEL
BYRYAN CHIN
MARCH 27, 2015
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Samson as Israelite Folktale
Heroic myth is characteristic of many cultures. From the
earliest of heroes, Gilgamesh, to the most famous fighting men of
ancient literature, such as Hercules, Samson, and King David.
Samson is a similiar famous figure, even if he is one of the most
peculiar Biblical men and certainly an acerbic judge among
Israel’s hall of heroes. Samson is often regarded as a tragic
story that stands apart from the other Judges, but how did this
account come to be? What other sources did it draw from? What
does the story of Samson say about Israel? This paper will
examine Samson; it will take a form-critical approach, spend some
time in form criticism, and look at the heroic culture of Iron I
Israel. To tighten the focus of the study, it will not go into a
structuralist approach or heavily into a literary approach.
First, this study will look at the historical-critical work
on the text. The Samson narrative, Judges 13-16, was “neglected”
when Martin Noth developed the Deuteronomic History.1 He defined
1
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the Dtr for pre-monarchic Judges to range from Judg 2:6 to 1 Sam
12, excluding Judg 17-212, and concluded that the Dtr writer drew
from pre-existing sources, a list of minor Judges and local
tribal heroes.3 This became Judg 3-16, and because Jephthah
appeared in both sources, the Dtr identified the tribal heroes as
Judges and added elements such as speeches and chronological
notices, as well as theological and historical comments that
reflected Exilic 6th century Judahite4 authorship.5 Noth, however,
was unsure if Samson belonged with the other tribal heroes
Jepthah, Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, and Gideon, and considered that
the Samson narrative was a post-Dtr addition.6
Gregory Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East (New York: T &T Clark International, 2006), 3.2 Judges 17:6 indicates post-Monarchial date, and would be excluded from early history.3 Martin Noth, The Deuteronomistic History (trans. J. Doull et al.; JSOTSup 15;Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981), 4, 8, 42, as discussed in Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero, 3.4 Judges and the Dtr possesses numerous references to the exile. Noth suggested the Dtr was assembled in the exilic period, but Frank Moore Cross proposed pre-exilic Dtr1 and exilic Dtr2 redactions and editing based off of pro-monarchial pericopes such as 2 Samuel 7 and 2 Kings 22-23. As discussed inAnthony Campbell and Mark A. O'Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History: Origins, Upgrades, Present Text (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000)11-12.5 Noth, Deuteronomistic History, 43-46, as discussed in Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero, 3.6 Noth, Deuteronomistic History, 23, 52-53 as discussed in Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero, 3.
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Wolfgang Richter developed Noth’s idea of pre-Dtr hero
stories, and conceptualized the hypothetical Retterbuch, or “Book
of Rescuers,” as the pre-existing source that Judg 3-9 came
from.7 Jepthah and Samson originated from other, older
traditions, and the Samson material was the last addition to the
Retterbuch-Jepthah composition by the Dtr.8 The Dtr would have then
gone on to render a theological framework around the stories of
the tribal leaders.9 Noth and Richter's Dtr underwent further
development in scholarship, notably by Frank Moore Cross who
proposed two Dtrs. The historical-critical situation around the
Judges text did not change much, however, and Noth and Richter's
work still remains influential. In a fairly recent and
authoritative presentation of the Dtr and its different layers,
Campbell and O'Brien wrote still that Judges 13-16 "probably"
shows "no characteristics of dtr origin, neither in language or
7 Wolfgang Richter, Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Richterbuch (Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1963), 339-40 as discussed in Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero, 4.8 Wolfgang Richterbuch, Die Bearbeitungen des "Retterbuches" in der deuteronomischen Epoche (Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1964), 61, 74. As seen in Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero, 4.9 Anthony Campbell and Mark A. O'Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History: Origins, Upgrades, Present Text (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000)11-12.
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thought" and "they do not appear to have contributed to the
schema identified within the DH."10 The Samson narrative does not
possess hints of Deuteronomistic theology, at most, it as a
tribal hero story that may have exilic elements added to it.11
Scholars have long been searching for the historical-
critical origin of the Samson narrative, and near the end of the
nineteenth century, scholars began to make connections between
Samson and the Sun.12 Theorists13 were inspired by cuneiform
literature and compared Samson, Gilgamesh, and Herakles, or
Hercules, speculating that each hero represented a fallen solar
deity.14 The sun was a powerful force in the lives of ancient
peoples, and the Semites were no exception15. The ancient song of
Deborah refers to sun, תתתתתת תתתת תתת “like the going out of the
10 It should be noted that Campbell and O'Brien were addressing other passages and included the Samson narrative with "probably;" they were not singling out Judges 13-16, per se.11 Robert C. Boling, Judges, AB 6A (Garden City: Doubleday, 1975) as discussed by Mobley, Samson, 4.12 Theorizing what Mobley sums up as a "personified description of some solar phenomenon in every action." Mobley, Samson, 6, discussing Steinthal, "The Legend of Samson" and Palmer, The Samson Saga and its Place in Comparative Religion.13 H. Steinthal & A. Smythe Palmer, who were inspired by Max Muller. As discussed by Mobley, Samson, 6.14 Mobley, Samson, 6.15 A. Smythe Palmer, The Samson-Saga and its place in comparative religion (New York: Arno Press, 1977) 59.
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sun its/his force,”16 and is accompanied by other ancient
personifications of the sun.17 Many attributes of solar deities
are also shared by Samson, such as being judge of the land and
having “valiant strength,” and Samson does not fit the role of
divinely appointed Judge of Israel as easily as his fellow Judges
do.18 Could this be part of religious and literary syncretism of
common Solar deity myths and tales?
To explore this question, this study will next take a closer
look into the text. Zakovitch writes that there is no etymology
given for the name Samson, perhaps the storyteller is concealing
a connection between Šimšon, or "Samson," and šemeš, "sun," in
order to redact a pagan connection.19 Josephus and the Talmud
attempted to explain the etymology of Samson and disconnect it
with any notion of the Sun and pagan mythology.20 Also, Samson is
to have lived between Tzorah and Eshtaol, where Zakovitch writes
16 Judg 5:3117 Palmer, The Samson Saga, 59-60.18 Ibid., 61-63.19 Yair Zakovitch, Valerie Zakovitch, Avigdor Shinan, From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends (Philadelphia: JPS, 2012) 192.20 Zakovitch, From Gods to God, 192. They used intrabiblical methods; Josephus connected Samson to Judg 5:31 and the Talmud connected the name to Ps84:12.
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that "the town of Beit Šemeš was located," though the name is
avoided in the Samson narrative.21 Zakovitch also suggests that
redaction took place in Judg 14:18, where the word for sun is
He also suggests redaction 22.תתת instead of the expected ,תתתתת
concerning Samson's birth resulting from sexual relations between
his mother and the angel.23
Zakovitch is convinced of pagan origins, stating that it is
"clear that the story of Samson's birth, as formulated in the
book of Judges, was aimed at uprooting an ancient tradition that
told how Samson was the son of a divine being and human woman, a
tradition like that of the [Rephaim.]"24 The literary
construction of the barren woman may be the remnant of "the
mythical motif about gods having relations with women."25 It is
not far off that Samson was one of the famous rephaim giants, his21 Ibid., 193.22 Ibid., 193, also cherec appears only twice in the Dtr.23 The basis for this is the verb from the root b-y-ʾ, which is sometimes translated "go in" with sexual connotation. The word is used in Judg 13:6, butalso in v 8 & 9, and not used in v 11, perhaps indicating the author purposely denied such implications. When angel meets Samson's mother, it is pointed out that her husband was not with her, and they meet in a field, a type of location witness to crime and trouble, and according to the Deuteronomic Code,a place where a woman is especially vulnerable to a man. For more see Zakovitch, From Gods to God, 191.24 Zakovitch, From Gods to God, 194.25 Such as Leah and Rachel's pregnancies, Zakovitch, From Gods to God, 195.
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strength alone demands such. It should be noted that Zakovitch's
point is not that the Samson narrative must have happened this
way, but that the heroic tale draws from mythologies of
surrounding cultures, tapping into something of a common mythos,
such as the rephaim. The Jewish tradition took familiar myths,
replaced notions of divine parentage with human parentage, and in
doing prevented a character such as Samson from achieving
divinity. For all his feats of strength he is but a human being,
and his story ends in death.26 Perhaps the Samson we possess
today is a Dtr monotheistic redaction of a popular heroic folk
tale.
Mobley is thoroughly unconvinced of solar elements in the
Samson narrative, calling such theories "imaginative but forced
allusions to astral activity."27 There have been efforts to
connect "Samson's hair as the rays of the sun; the donkey jawbone
as lightning; [and] Delilah as a lunar goddess," but Mobley
emphasizes the present text, and has determined that there is not
26 Ibid., 196.27 Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East, 7.
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enough evidence to justify a solar myth reading.28 Mobley rejects
solar deity association, but he acknowledges Samson sharing
tradition similar to that of the next major aspect of the
historical-critical approach, the comparison of Samson to
Herakles.
There has been a long tradition of comparing Samson to
Herakles, beginning in the Middle Ages by the Church Fathers and
persisting until the late twentieth century.29 The speculative
divine and human parentage should not only invoke the rephaim to
mind, but also Herakles. Zeus, the supreme Greek god, impregnated
Herakles mother, an ancient heroic motif that could have been
replaced by the Hebrew motif of the barren woman30 whose womb is
"opened" by YHWH.31 Othniel Margalith wrote fairly recently about
the parallels between Samson and Herakles, and his work includes
most of the previous theories of parallel, so it shall be the
prime Herakles-Samson work examined here.32
Margalith's main argument is that Samson is a Semitic 28 Ibid., 7.29 Ibid., 7.30 Zakovitch, From Gods to God, 195-196.31 Gen 29:31, 30:2232 Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East, 7.
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Herakles, an Iron Age I Israelite, or Danite, composition that
drew from their Philistine neighbors that lived along the coast
while Israel inhabited the highlands.33 He arrives at this
conclusion by way of the Greek motifs shared in the story of
Samson, and follows the theory, and interpretation of the
archaeological data, that the Philistines were sea peoples
originating from Mycenaean Greece, reaching the Levant ca. 1175
BCE.34 The Judges period is roughly 1200-1000 BCE.35 Mobley writes
that "it is believed that the Herakles tradition goes back at
least to Mycenaean times36, if not earlier," but it is impossible
to reconstruct a Mycenaean Herakles tradition. Most of the
allusions to Herakles have been located to the fifth century BCE
and later, around the time when the Samson narrative was in the
process of being developed, until the sixth century BCE and the
Dtr.37 This seems like enough probable cause for a starting
33 Ibid., 7.34 It should be noted that Mycenaean origin is probable though not totallyconclusive, as recent scholarship has not been shy to question the conclusionsof 1930s and 1940s archaeology. For further reading see Eliezer D Oren, The SeaPeoples and Their World: A Reassessment (Philadelphia: University Museum, 2000) vxii-xx.35 Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East, 7.36 1600 to 1100 BCE37 Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Hear East, 8-9.
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point, as research has been written on uncertain foundations
before, but Mobley proposes that this uncertainty "severely
weakens" the connection between Samson and Herakles.
Another of Margolith's arguments is that Samson's physical
strength is unrivaled in the Bible. Everyone else, even the
towering Saul, was "certainly a mere mortal," but Samson was
"endowed with superhuman powers," as a result of his hair, an
experience that was not like the Nazarite vow described in
Numbers 6.38 A concept of magic and holy hair is present in Greek
mythology, though no exact parallel to Samson exists. The rarity
and strangeness of the riddle is also telling, as the answer to
the riddle does not seem to be any natural phenomenon at all,
except that in Greek mythology bees are linked to carcasses,
there was a Bee-god, and a riddle in the tale of Oedipus. 39
Mobley combats Margolith's conclusions, stating that Shamgar from
Judg 3:31 and David's gibborim are credited with feats of great
strength, and that a riddle is exactly the kind of oral tradition
38 Othniel Margalith, "Samson's Riddle and Samson's Magic Locks," Vetus Testamentum v36 n2 (1986) 230-232.39 Ibid., 228
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that could escape being recorded. There is no reason why the
Israelites could not come up with their own riddles40 or their
own "superman."41
Margolith proposes that "the hero bewitched by a woman's
wiles," the primitive weapon of slaughter, the primal unarmed
killing of a lion, and an association with the city-gates all
stem from similar stories in Greek mythology.42 On the event of
Samson and the foxes specifically, he proposes that it is a
legend that explains the Greek idiom behind the Greek word for
fox, "torch tail."43 Mobley explains these apparent connections,
that the aforementioned parallels exist "in other cultural
traditions, [and] are common folklore motifs that cannot be
claimed as the legacy of any single culture," and that the torch-
tale parallel is "too far-fetched." Mobley again focuses on the
present text in its entirety, taking into account the differences
in the present traditions, and he argues that no prior tradition
40 Hebrew hidah, occurs 8 other times but used differently and not in narrative.41 Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Hear East, 8-9.42 Othniel Margalith, "The Legends of Samson/Heracles," Vetus Testamentum v37 n1 (1987) 63-70.43 Othniel Margalith, "Samson's Foxes," Vetus Testamentum v35 n1 (1985) 63-70.
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of Herakles can even be located. He does conclude, however, that
the similarities between Samson and Herakles suggests folklore
motifs at work, and this study will next take a brief look at the
perspective of folklore.
Susan Niditch writes that the "Tale of Samson is composed of
elements of content and larger narrative patterns that evoke the
content and structures of a wide cross-cultural range of
traditional literatures."44 Samson is distinctly Israelite in its
historical, cultural, and literary characteristics, and requires
holding both biblical narrative and a "broad range of non-
Israelite literatures" in hand, along with as much as can be
obtained of the "authors' obligations and audiences' cultural
expectations."45 Niditch defines folklore as stories that "share
the key characteristic of patterned repetition," be it in the
language, the scenes, or the motifs.46 She explores the hero
pattern, and writes that at its most "basic 'generic' level, a
narrative pattern pattern presents a 'problem' and a 44 Susan Niditch, "Samson as Culture Hero, Trickster, and Bandit: The Empowerment of the Weak," CBQ 52 (1990) 60845 Niditch, "Samson as Culture Hero," 60946 Susan Niditch, Underdogs and Tricksters: A Prelude to Biblical Folklore (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), xiv.
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'resolution.'"47 Hero stories consists of its hero resolving
problems, and a character is a hero if he or she shares in the
characteristics of other heroes of folklore, that is, a character
is defined as a hero by the degree of shared attributes, events,
and actions of other heroes.
There are different opinions on what the most basic points
of the hero pattern are.48 Mobley prefers to start at four: "a
special birth, an alienating crisis in youth, adventures in a
foreign land, battle, or nature; and a return to society."49
Niditch gives five: "unusual birth, family rivalry--conflict over
states, journey/adventures, successes in new environment often
including marriage, and resolution of rivalry/reunion." Samson
has three of Mobley's four, his special birth that results from a
divine messenger visiting a barren couple, Samson adventures
abroad in Philistia and nature, and he returns to Danite society
though in a funeral procession.50 Samson does not require an
event to pull him out of society, or rather, the event happens 47 Niditch, "Samson as Culture Hero," 60948 The proposed patterns are meant to apply to the breadth of folk literature, not just Samson or Biblical story.49 Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East, 1250 Ibid., 13.
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before his birth, when it is decided he will be a Nazarite.
Different hero patterns have been established, and Samson
can be viewed under the pattern of the trickster, which crosses
many different kinds of literature, and describes a hero that
"brings about change in a situation via trickery," never gaining
full control of the situation at hand, but play their hands to
"survive to trick again."51 The trickster also uses deception to
increase his or her status at the expense of others, or of their
challenges to his status.52 Tricksters survive as folk stories
because they speak to the ordinary human that must deal with
insurmountable and uncontrollable forces in life. They are a
personification and containing of the ever-threatening chaos, and
especially appealed to the Israelites who viewed themselves as
the underdog and the trickster.53
In addition to being a trickster, Samson also possess
characteristics of the bandit, which Niditch calls "a variety of
hero and trickster whose tale involves a challenge to the power
51 Niditch, Underdogs and Tricksters, xi52 Niditch, "Samson as Culture Hero," 60953 Niditch, Underdogs and Tricksters, xi
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of the establishment by weaker or oppressed elements in
society."54 Samson, ever the underdog, slaughters and kills
thousands of Philistines, who are said to have been ruling over
the Israelites at the time of the story. The "us" vs. "them" and
marginality vs centrality is central to the broad conflict
present in the Samson narrative, the desire and quest for
autonomy, "both personal and political."55 Both the trickster and
the bandit encompass the marginal's confrontation with oppressive
authority, in this case Israel's conflict with their Philistine
enemies.56 Samson is about victory of the weak over seemingly
implacable forces, as even the strongest man if the land is
subdued, but through him God leads and frees his people.
While studying the hero tradition, Yakovitch must be
revisited for his additional work on Samson. He sees the Samson
narrative as a result from the transformation of mythological
material into a religious story,57 was was discussed earlier from
his book From God to Gods. Zakovitch envisions and reconstructs an
54 Niditch, "Samson as Culture Hero," 60955 Ibid., 610.56 Niditch, "Samson as Culture Hero," 62457 Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East, 15.
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older mythic story where Samson is a giant, has sexual relations
with Deliliah, and is of divine parentage. This is based off of
post-biblical sources that view Samson as a giant, comparisons of
Enkidu and Shamhat's love-making, and theorizing at what has been
redacted according to what common heroic themes we know of
ancient literature.58 Zakovitch proposes that religious ideas
were added to the narrative, such as Samson's magic hair being
explained by an odd form of Naziritism, strength that comes from
the ruah of YHWH, and prayers that reduce Samson and increase
God's importance in the narrative. Mobley protests that religion
and myth be so strictly dichotomized, saying "Why should the
earliest Samson story be devoid of religion?" Gilgamesh contains
many religious markers and details and is even older than
Samson.59 He disagrees that mythological or folkloristic motifs
must be part of older versions of a text, stating that "super
heroes" and "women taming wild men are common narrative themes,
found even in contemporary narrative, and could enter a tradition
58 Ibid., 15.59 Ibid., 16.
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at any point in its development."60 Mobley does agree with
Zakovitch's general analysis of the development of the Samson
narrative, that it has been redacted to fit the Bible--though
"the sacred and profane are not mutually exlusive categories, and
cannot be related simplistically to a chronological typology."61
Mobley emphasizes the present text because he is not willing to
presume what we could know, and emphasizes that the formation of
the text is something we cannot know.
Another folklore category is that of the "Wild Man." Hermann
Gunkel compared Samson to other men of nature, including Enkidu,
emphasizing how Samson performs all his feats without, as Mobley
puts it, "means of culture."62 He kills a lion with his bare
hands, tears apart his enemies instead of cutting them with a
blade, yanks his hair out of the masseket, and destroys the
Philistine house with brute force. When he does wield a weapon,
it is a donkey jawbone, untouched and unrefined by human hands
and culture.63 He does not have an army of allies, just a band of
60 Ibid., 16.61 Ibid., 16.62 Ibid., 17.63 Ibid., 17.
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foxes, and his diet is primitive and his hiding place, a cave.
His strength coming from his hair is also an extension of his
kinship with nature, in contrast with the Philistines, who use a
shearing knife to cut off his hair.64 However, Niditch points out
that Samson does engage in culture in possessing speech, and that
his actions affected the culture of the Israelites, beginning
their deliverance from the Philistines, cementing Samson as a
šopet and causing Niditch to refer to him as a "culture hero."65
The wild man category and its uncivilized hero, is the
gateway for what Mobley calls the "liminal hero." The liminal
hero is one that occupies a marginal place and ambivalent status
in a society, floating along the boundaries and the norms.66
Samson the man is a "bundle of contradictions: insider/outsider,
natural man/cultural man, wild man/warior." He is foreign and
familiar, freakishly strong but still a Danite.67 The concept of
a hero operating outside the social norms is extremely prevalent
64 Hermann Gunkel, "Simson," Reden und Aufsatze, (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913), 39 -43, as discussed in Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East, 17.65 Niditch, "Samson as a Culture Hero, Trickster, and Bandit," 613-614, asdiscussed in Mobley, Samson, 18.66 Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East, 32.67 Ibid., 109.
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to this day in modern heroes and superheroes. Heroes with
extraordinary powers also grapple with the fact that they will
never be ordinary, and heroes of physical normality transcend
social and cultural norms, of which they will always be an
outsider of, even if they ascend above their own society, they
are still on the outside looking in.
The last aspect of Samson that this study will explore is
his role and status of a warrior. Mobley defines the ancient
warrior, in light of liminality, as "provisional wild men" that
have a "preference for the field and concomitant ignorance or
avoidance of cultural comforts; and the restlessness, savagery,
and strength of beasts."68 Women characterize warriors by being
the intermediary for their liminalness, women humanize wild men
and pacify warriors, domesticating and converting them. In
Samson's story, movement toward culture is not his purpose. His
first marriage fails, and Delilah deceives him to his doom. It is
YHWH's desire and action to return him to wildness, to keep
Samson "in the raw," in the liminal state.69 This is fascinating,
68 Ibid., 108.69 Ibid., 108.
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especially when it is taken into account that the text implies
that Samson is seeking love, and explicity states that Samson had
ʾahaba for Delilah, not a kind of desire or covetousness.70 Samson
loses love but dies a warrior, and the warrior culture of the
Ancient Israel is what this study will look to next.
It is difficult to pinpoint how ancient Israel regarded its
warriors over time. The stories that were passed down over time
were once stories of heroes and battles, but when the DH went
through its Exilic redaction, the Exilic historians had "seen too
much of siege and defeat in their lifetimes."71 The survival of
the Exilic community was not dependent on mighty warriors or
remembering a martial spirit, but it depended on "correct cultic
practice and obedience to Mosaic teaching."72 Violent resistance
was no longer the way, and even the ideal king of their
generation, Josiah, was slain battle. Any hope for military
deliverance was "projected into the cosmic sphere," their
warriors stayed in the past or were projected into the future,
70 Mobley, The Empty Men, 195.71 Gregory Mobley, The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 2.72 Mobley, The Empty Men, 2.
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while Exilic memory focused on the preservation of Judah, be it
from a fiery furnace, lions den, or from cultural extinction.73
The stories of Israel's warriors The DH sought not to remember a
past of violent resistance, but rather it sought to answer the
question "What went wrong?" Heroic stories were turned into
sermons and history lessons, and Wellhausen would say that "the
heroic figures of the judges refuse to fit in with the story of
sin and rebellion" that is now known as the DH.74
Perhaps in part due to the aforementioned phenomenon, there
is little data on Israelite warrior culture, however, bronze
arrowheads that predate stamped coinage provides an abstract list
of warriors and evidence of a social network.75 The arrowheads
are dated roughly between 1200-1000 BCE. 2 Samuel 21:15-22
recounts the heroics of David's servants, and 2 Samuel 23:8-39 is
the long list of the gibborim, the heroes who "belonged to
David."76 Without going into detail, Mobley writes that the
arrowheads and Biblical lists provide indirect evidence for 73 Ibid., 3.74 Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel, (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1973), 234. as discussed in Mobley, The Empty Men, 7.75 Mobley, The Empty Men, 28.76 Ibid., 31.
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social groups of warriors in early Iron Age Syro-Palestine. They
consisted of clan militias within kinship structures and "empty
men" working outside of blood relations.77 The idea of empty men
should be connected with Samson, the wild man, whom God deemed
for wildness, that had no children and no lineage, and if you
take the parallel with Herakles, maybe even no father.
The "Empty Men" is a major contribution by Mobley to the
reconstruction of Iron Age Syro-Palestine warrior culture. The
phrase ʾanašim reqim, "men with nothing," meaning men with no
kinship or blood relatives. They belonged to no tribal militia,
instead they formed "pseudofamilies under the patronage of
warlords," similar to the idea of mercenaries, ronin samurai
warriors, or knight-service, perhaps they are the beginning of
that tradition. Empty men were "trading their services for
portions of martial harvests and brigandage."78 These men were
once great heroes, but to the Exilic historians they were only
echoes of the past.
Samson fits under Mobley's distinctions of heroic
77 Mobley, The Empty Men, 38.78 Ibid., 2.
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conventions, of what elevated one in warrior culture. Samson had
an extraordinary number of kills, and in the last breath of his
narrative, and with his last breath, "those he killed at his
death were more than those he had killed during his life."79
Samson kills an elite adversary, and not just an elite adversary,
but a wild beast. Another of Mobley's types of feats is the hero
is fighting solo, which Samson does exclusively, and Samson's
boasting in the text reflects a pride in fighting alone.80 Some
warriors in the Hebrew Bible also experience the ruah of YHWH.
It comes "upon" Othniel and Jephthah, "clothes" Gideon, "impels"
and three times81 "rushes over" Samson, imploring him to his
heroic feats. By the ruah of YHWH, Samson rips apart a lion with
his bare hands, kills thirty men, and snaps the ropes that
restrained him on his way to killing a thousand men82 with the
jawbone of a donkey.83 Mobley calls this the motif of 79 Judg 16:30 NRSV80 Judg 15:16 NRSV81 For more information on the importance of three and the cyclical natureof Samson, see Jichan Kim, The Structure of the Samson Cycle (Kampen: Kok Pharos Pub.House, 1993)82 Fore more information on numbers, see Marco De Odorico, "The Use of Numbers and Quantifications in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions," State Archives of Assyria Studies, (Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project of the Academy of Finland, 1995), 159-179.83 Mobley, The Empty Men, 60.
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"inspiration."84 To close his study of general Hebrew warrior
culture, he suggests that combat consisted most often of raiding,
and mentions Samson going to Timnah "at the time of the wheat
harvest."85
All these things, what can be known about Israelite Iron Age
warrior culture, give us a primary image of Samson, the image of
an Israelite warrior. He displays "virtually every motif of the
Israelite heroic tradition with a few exceptions."86 He actually
embodies motifs to his enemies as well, acting as the elite rival
of the Philistines and the greatest sacred trophy of them87
Further embodying Israelite warrior culture, Samson is the
ultimate empty man. He was a wild man, a liminal warrior, living
in the margins of his society, feared by his own people. God set
him apart and made him distinct even before his birth, and God
deemed Samson for wildness. Samson had no children and no
lineage, perhaps even no father. Samson sought companionship,
love, but for all his power he was unable to obtain it. It seems
84 Ibid., 61.85 Mobley, The Empty Men, 67, and Judges 15:1 NRSV86 Ibid., 205.87 Samson is sacred, set apart by his Nazarite vows and marked by the ruah.
Chin 25
like God has taken these things away from him, and left him one
of the ʾanašim reqim. The text even tells that YHWH "was seeking a
pretext to act against the Philistines."88 Trickster, bandit,
warrior, Herakles, Samson was pulled out of society by God,
emptied of all things, and by the time he buries himself, along
with the Philistines, he has nowhere else to go. "He is the
ultimate empty man."89
It is here that this study must end, though I would very
much like to continue to go deeper into the character of Samson,
and further into Israelite warrior culture and what can be
uncovered. However, there is much to be discussed here, for now.
My hope is that this study has illuminated Samson in such a way
as to raise questions and interest into its function, character,
and what it reveals about Iron Age Syro-Palestine, not to mention
the development of mythology and the treatment of folktale in
Israel. It is in this kind of study that Samson can truly be
appreciated, for he is often dismissed at the "fantasticalness"
or sexism of his story. The Samson narrative was not written in
88 Judg 14:489 Mobley, The Empty Men, 207.
Chin 26
ignorance or to make a point, but it is the result of centuries
of oral tradition and the amalgamation of myth and folk stories
that grew out of the a universal human fascination with heroes
and how they inspire us with courage and with fear. Like Niditch
wrote, Samson is distinctly Israelite but also a heroic folktale,
which is why the tale persisted and why it lasts to this day. I
would not be surprised if the next foray in Biblical cinema is a
Samson movie--in fact, I would be first in line. The story of
Samson though, is not just about war, violence, love, deception,
and divine interruption, it is about sacrifice. The sacrifice of
Samson, who was born with what some might consider everything,
but left with nothing. The text says nothing about him defending
his people, or wanting to vanquish the Philistines to protect his
tribe or uphold some moral code. He simply wants revenge. That is
the tragedy, the great warrior, brought down by his own actions
and want for love. Like the warriors of Israel, like the United
Monarchy, Samson is a relic of the past, and like the
Deuteronomist, we must look at Samson, in its complexity, in its
mythic and folk roots, in its strangeness, and asks ourselves,
Chin 28
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