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 27

"What can I do with you?"

Chin 28

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